New Year’s Resolutions

Posted on by Alex

First original observation of the new year: it would be better to live one’s life under a continual state of improvement than make once-per-year spectacular promises that are never likely to be kept.

There you go. I’m sure, nobody has ever thought about that before, ever.

New Years ResolutionsMy resolutions from 2013 have been stuck up on the fridge for three years now. You will note that I did so well with them that I neglected to make any resolutions at all in 2014, and that they were so well thought out that it didn’t seem worth doing anything other than reusing them for 2015.

I’m hoping that I can shame myself into action by reviewing these in retrospect, so:

  1. Tick. Done this. Finally. Will write more about it in due course.
  2. Cross. Abject fail. I started going for runs again, on about five separate occasions. To the hilarity of people in the Village Pub, Village Shop etc. as they watched me go past. But I’ve not been able to reach that point where it isn’t all hurty. And I have got to that sort of point where I walk the four hundred yards or so to the Village Shop and think ‘oh good, I have done my exercise for the day’. Which probably isn’t that healthy an attitude, especially when I walk out of there with a coffee and a big Pork Pie.
  3. Cautious tick with a cross through it. I have very much tried to be a better parent rather than my initial inspiration, Mr Von Trapp in the early bits of the film, with the whistle and stuff. My main problem has always been that I can’t quite get to grips with the fact that they’re young and stuff, so I will shout things like ‘well why didn’t you set the boiler to come on for a further hour if you were going to leave the tap running and use all the hot water?!?’ and my son will look at me with sad and confused five year-old eyes before booting up the Childline app on the iPad.
  4. Another sort of ticky cross. It is quite easy to become insular when you write for a living, which is one of the reasons that I spend less time writing for fun (or messing around on social media) these days. You need things that will get you out of the house and into the fresh air. I have been appointed captain of the snooker team!!! So that has helped.
  5. Cross. This needs to go on the 2016 list.

Archived.

Posted on by Alex

So I left Jonny to his own devices here for a while. Before deciding that, although I’m not going to write any more as him, I still need a website and this is as good a place as any.

The design and all that is a bit of a work in progress, and reflects the fact that I don’t spend nearly as much time these days fiddling about learning web skills when I should be doing something constructive.

The original JonnyB’s Private Secret Diary is now archived in its own section on here, lest anybody should wish to revisit it. The weirdest thing I found when doing this was that it had simply never occurred to me that I’d find it interesting in retrospect as an actual diary. So suddenly I’ve found myself looking back on so many memories from that decade or so, from meeting new friends to the birth of my children. Even if as a personal document of my life it’s a little… unusual.

Thanks if you read ‘Sex and Bowls and Rock and Roll’ – I’m proud of it, and I hope that it surmounted a somewhat guileless lack of artificial peril (or even just peril) through the simple medium of good comic lines (I read a LOT of memoirs when I was writing it, and it was striking how many true-story autobiographical works are framed around terribly neat storylines. That’s not knocking anybody – it probably makes for better books in the long run). If you haven’t read it then – drum roll – copies are still available.

One of the ‘occasional’ characters in the blog and the book took his own life last year. He’d been so supportive of this thing, and so encouraging in other aspects of my life, and I looked up to him immensely whilst also despairing of the bloody stupid loveable twat. Anyway, life is shit sometimes; I very much enjoyed creating something in that little style of writing that could only ever acknowledge the comedy in life’s minutiae, but that doesn’t work all the time and I’m going to do something else now. Although it’s occasionally been tempting to dig Jonny out from the cupboard, especially following the whole debacle with Narcoleptic Dave at the punk revival gig.

Anyway. I will post occasional news and stuff here. After all, who knows what might happen next year? *taps side of nose*

Onwards.

Alex.

Whatever you want.

Posted on by Alex

It’s a cold evening.

“Laydeeees and Gentulllmen!!!” hollers the man through the microphone. The field descends into hush.

I am in a crowd of about three grillion people, which is most definitely not my natural habitat. I have also been persuaded to drive here so that other people can get very drunk, which is also not my natural habitat. I am less a fish out of water than a fish that has been signed up to undertake a charity bike ride across the Sahara. I shift my weight from foot to foot, which is the sort of thing that one does in these circumstances.

“Welcome to these wonderful stately home surroundings!!!”

In aid of Distressed Anglers.

It is weird; the whole thing is weird.

A while back, I wrote a book. I never meant to, but people started asking me, and then I sort of thought ‘why not’, and then I worked out that this little Private Secret Diary would never really work in book form anyway, and then more people asked, and I got drawn in. And in the meantime, the thing that my old friends would always ask – invariably, every time, without fail – after they’d done all the ‘how are you’s’ and ‘are you well’s’ was: ‘So how’s the bowls going, then?’

“By kind permission of your host, Viscount Coke!!!”

And I began to realise this: that the whole theme of my life today could be encapsulated in one simple concept: just how bloody, bloody disappointed my eighteen year-old self would have been at how things turned out. I mean, I enjoy my life immensely. There is nothing better than living in Norfolk and keeping chickens and playing bowls.

“On this stage tonight!!!”

But my eighteen year-old self would be appalled. And it struck me that here was the entire basis about what I should write about. So I did. The rural life. The insularity. The chickens.

“Laydeeees and gentulllmen – please welcome…”

But of course there would be nothing that my eighteen year-old self would have been more disappointed about than the fact I played bowls. Nothing. It would be the bit underneath the barrel; the depths of horror and naffness to my aspirational would-be-cool teenage self.

“STAYYYYTUUSSSSS QU-OOOOOOO!!!”

Thank you, and goodnight.

A short post involving a chicken that pretty well encapsulates my life in a couple of paragraphs.

Posted on by Alex

11 a.m. There is a knock at the door!!!

It is Big A. He is going away for a long weekend and would like me to look after his chicken. I am pleased to look after his chicken. It is no trouble, as he just lives round the corner, and as chickens go, his is no trouble. I know where the chicken food is kept, but he goes through it again, and I promise to treat the chicken well. To be honest, it is quite nice. Once I was a newcomer to chickens, fumbling around with my ‘keeping chickens for beginners’ book. Now I am the go-to man for looking after peoples’ chickens whilst they go off on long weekends. I bid my friend goodbye and wish him a pleasant break.

2 p.m. The chicken dies.