Now is not the time

Things this posting is not dealing with today: Have you done your Christmas shopping yet? No. Posted any cards? No. Feeling Christmassy yet? Hardly. Even I, as someone with the sketchiest of Christian backgrounds, knows that this is Advent - Christmas follows that. Cold enough for you? It's nearly the beginning of winter, what else would it be.

OK, I'm being a touch grumpy, but here we are at the fag end of the year and frankly it's all looking a bit shit. The knobheads in charge have given billions in taxpayers' money to lunatic bankers and then had the gall to come back to the taxpayers and tell us we've got to stump up more. This morning Blair, whose smile gets scarier every time you see it, admitted that all along he was hell bent on invading Iraq, WMDs or no WMDs. (Don't know what they are? Well find out, this is important stuff we're dealing with here - for a change). So, what have we got? Well, we've got a Parliament consisting of politicians whose behaviour only the most benevolent - or deluded - person would fail to judge as criminal. It might seem petty to bang on about MPs' expenses when arguably there are more serious problems in the world, but if our politicians don't know how to behave when governing themselves, how can we expect them to follow basic decencies when deciding how the country should be governed.

Never mind, you may say. Not only are we at the fag end of the year, we are also at the fag end of this sorry misbegotten Government. In only a few months we can all troop off to the polls and kick out the existing bunch of bludgers and vote in. . .oh yes, another bunch of bludgers. Does anything you see in any of the parties, or any of the prospective candidates you might already know of, give you any hope? Apparently Ernest Hemingway said: "Optimism can keep a fool from accepting failure". Could desperate optimism be blinding us to the reality of the situation now? I know this is all deeply negative stuff, but failing to acknowledge we're in a hole does not stop us being in a hole. I believe at Alcoholics Anonymous meetings people have to say: "My name is Blah Blah and I am an alcoholic." Well maybe our country needs to say: "We are Great Britain and we've spunked it all away."

Of course, I could be wrong in taking such a negative stance. I hope so, because having a bunch of grubby bastards in charge should not blind us to a) the beauty of the universe and b) that time is whizzing by. But wouldn't it be even better if there wasn't a bunch of preening arseholes in charge? I don't know what the answer is. I think I'd better take the dog for a walk - it might cheer me up. But before I go, just remember this, they haven't even called the election yet. Ahead of us we've got weeks of wannabes spewing nonsense to try to win our votes. Do you remember May, 1997? D-Ream (I think) . . .Things Can Only Get Better. Well now all we can do is pray they don't get worse. I'm off, where's the dog?

All dressed up and somewhere to go

The somewhere - it being that time of year - was my work Christmas party, which I had at various states of the tide looked forward to attending, railed against and even decided I'd skip despite paying up in advance for the event and accommodation. Anyway, we pitched up at the Saunton Sands Hotel, found our room had stunning views down the beach and out to sea, then spruced up and descended for drinks, dinner and dancing. So it was fun to have fun with colleagues in a setting that was out of the workplace and it was good to be able to point out to my long-suffering wife the various people I work with and tell her about at the end of my working day. My ever-loving and I did the jigging around thing in an increasingly sweaty mass of people only to be very slightly put off by noticing that both our GPs were also jigging around. Many staff from Bideford Health Centre were there, which I suppose would have been very handy if anyone keeled over with a heart attack at any time. As it turned out, after a certain amount of sweatiness we decided enough was enough and sloped off to bed.

What is it about alcohol that ensures you get a rubbish night's sleep? Whatever it is I woke up shortly before 5am. We'd left the curtains open so I looked out of the window at the sweep of Bideford Bay with Hartland Point lighthouse and the lights of the communities that line the bay and the estuary. Above us were the stars shining hard and bright - a cold night outside - and a waning moon almost resting on its back. Getting back into bed I mulled over the previous evening and realised that while I enjoyed the company of my colleagues - after all, I spend more of my waking hours with them than I do with anybody else - what had made the evening for me was being with my wife, and if there had been no one else there other than her, that would have been enough. So what, some might say, well, I suppose the answer to that is simply that it never hurts to be reminded of the people who are important to you. It is easy to take people for granted, but life is far too short to do that. With that thought sinking in, I lay in bed looking out at the stars wheeling across the sky. (Yes, I do know that the stars don't move - as such - and that their motion is, in fact, the impression given by the earth's rotation and travel on its orbit).