An old year is ending, another beginning.
I know it’s not much, it’s just another day, but. But.
The chance to mark the passing of time and the possibilities of tomorrow is something I can put meaning into more easily than the birth of someone 2000+ years ago whose manifestation in organised religion I choose to reject.

I like marking that time is passing, and that we’re on the edge of another year, in which anything could happen. I like that. Hell, I like the first time I have to remind myself to change the numeral at the end of the date. I like that when I was 8, I imagined what I’d be doing in 2005 (flying cars and space travel featured highly, I remember). I like that it’s a celebration of the future.

And yadda yadda yadda, I’m going to get drunk now.

Happy happy new year.

Happy happy happy. Happy.

Last week, or this week, I don’t know, I lose track - at some point in the last while with the word week in the phrase somewhere, I found a preview dvd hanging about at work. It was spare, there were a small pile of them, and someone important said I could have it. So have it I did.

Preview tapes have always held a certain fascination for me.
Preview tapes are the things I would get if i was a tv reviewer. Preview tapes are like seeing into the future. Preview tapes are like having a magic window that no one else has. Possession of preview tapes means that you can hold the following, utterly cringeworthy dialogue:
Someone else: Oh, I’m really looking forward to that much-talked-about star-studded one-off drama on TV tonight…
You: Oh, I wouldn’t bother, I saw it ages ago - not great, and it’s no fun when everyone ends up happily ever after, is it? Well, Apart from the mother of course. And what an unconvincing shark That is, god, if you’re going to get killed by anything… Oh, gosh, sorry…

So, with no intention of doing the above, of course, I took the preview dvd home. It had a drama on that I quite wanted to watch. And, you know, it was a preview tape (wooyeah!)

And then I was at work late. And then we were out, and then we were too tired. And then there was the choir Christmas concert (we were very good, by the way), and then the next night I was tired, and then I was at work too late, and then it was Christmas, and we were in different places, I with my lovely family and he with his, and then the next day it wasn’t Chrismas anymore and work was very very very busy and then I was too tired to watch it and then we were out and could and then and then and then. Hm. Not sure how much of that time i actually had it. Just wanted to mention the choir thing really. Anyway.

It came to tonight. And we had to watch it tonight. Because, you see, it was on telly tonight. And although I wanted to watch the thing, I didn’t want to watch it *that* much, I didn’t want to watch it after the bloody thing had been on telly, that would have been like taping it, and that Wasn’t The Point.

You know what we ended up doing?

And I’m blushing typing this: We ended up watching the bloody programme a whole 14 MINUTES before the rest of the country. Because we had a Preview Tape, and it was the principle of the thing.

Come on, though.
That’s natural - right?

It wasn’t that great, but I still thought I might ring people I suspected would have been watching it and discuss with them how it ended before it had, for them. It’s not like I was going to tell them what happened (he was generally a bastard, then less of a bastard, then died, bit sad), I just wanted to have watched it first for a Reason.

Natural, right?

Sorry to be so quiet. I was working from early Sunday morning, all through the week, and have just stopped today, which is good, because the stupidity of not taking time off brought my wavering cold roaring back with exhuastion to boot. Exhaustion and mucus, a well-loved and time-honoured holiday combination.

I’ve watched the news, and read the news, and been surrounded and enveloped in the news all week, which was overwhelming and saddening and the thing to make you feel more helpless than you thought you could feel, helpless and angry and stupid. I don’t know what the word is for that, sorry.

Some things make you more angry than others, though.

On Sunday, as the tsunami death toll was rising by at least a thousand an hour (it has, of course, multiplied to more than ten times the highest of those estimates) I was reading every news source available on the internet.

On one - and I still can’t believe the crassness and stupidity of this, the News agency were obviously desperately attempting to get some kind of personal hook, some story that represented personal tragedy, had only managed to come up with something with the headline:

Dream wedding ruined by tsunami

Or something very similar. The story, in essence, said this:

A couple, from England, had been planning a beach wedding in Sri Lanka for some time. It didn’t clarify whether the wedding was actually that day, the 26th. The whole thing had now been utterly ruined by an inconvenient 8.9-richter magnitude earthquake causing a tsunami.

There was a quote from a friend of the family, of a member of the bride’s family, or something, which was, and I remember this quite well:

“Well, at any time this would ruin your holiday, but they’ve been planning this wedding for AGES. It’s just awful for them. They’re trapped in the hotel, don’t know when they’re going to get home or ANYTHING.”

I felt like screaming. Finding their family, screaming at them:
“Are they Alive?! Are they NOT DEAD? Well SHUT UP THEN. SHUT. UP.”

I’m sorry for the title of this post, which I know may seem cold and unfeeling and in bad taste. My point was only going to be this:
If someone is waving at you, not drowning, then you should thank god, and shut up, and turn and try and find someone else to throw a rope out to, because you are the lucky ones.

And I don’t know what else to say, because I’m not important enough or clever enough or good enough to come up with the words about these kinds of things.

I feel helpless and small and sorry. And angry.

Donate.
Or here.

And all through the… oh, sod this, I’m going home.

Merry merry merry merry whatever everyone.

And all that.

All you people on an office chair!
(Crowd goes “Yeah?“)
Put yo’ hands in the air!
(”YEAH!“)
[Christ, you have no idea how stupid this sounds in my accent. Let alone in an empty office]
All you people with at least 4 hours work left to go lemmee hear you say ‘ho’!
(”HO!“)
Say Ho!
(”Ho!“)
Say Hohoho!

Update on the update under this update

There is one less mouse in the world, because of us.
We made it dead.
I’m trying to summon up some liberal guilt about this, but it’s very hard.

It’s sad when you realise that the breaking of a small neck can make you quite this happy.
It’s sad, but - you know - not that sad.

An update

So we still seem to think it’s one mouse. But no ordinary mouse.
It’s fucking Mighty Mouse.

When I last posted - I think it was yesterday, but I shall explain, in case you’ve forgotten (it seems that many people read this site while drunk) (which is fair, since I mainly read it while drunk) - there was the mouse. I was scared of the mouse. I was not going in the living room or kitchen if I could best avoid it until the mouse was dead.

This situation has not changed. I have been in the living room for approximately 10 minutes in the last 36 hours. And we will be eating out until the thing is passed over.

I realised something yesterday, actually. Living so close to a cemetary, it’s probably a cemetary mouse. Which means it’s not only a mouse, but it also carries with it the putrid stench of death. Well, kind of. That was my theory, anyway. My beloved thought instead that it looked rather well groomed and looked after, suggesting it might be a pet mouse.

A pet mouse.
This is some cause for pause.
I don’t like to think of someone being sad to have lost their mouse, so I would put up posters saying ‘Mouse found - please telephone ………’, but to be honest, I don’t think they’d appreciate the state of mouse in which we’d hand it back.
“There you are, little Timmy. That? Oh it’s only a *small* spike through his head, I’m sure he’ll perk up… Oh Nononono, mice *like* having broken necks. It means they can look behind them.”

So on the night I wrote the last post, we set the good old-fashioned trap that we’d borrowed, and baited it with peanut butter.
All good, we thought. That’ll do it, we thought, mouses like peanut butter, we thought.

And we were right, they do. It ate the peanut butter. But the trap didn’t go off.

This was not terribly alarming. It was an old trap that we’d borrowed, and a cheap one, not going off if you poked it with a pen, but going off fifteen times when you tried to set it. It was a good trap for catching people, basically. Probably designed by mouses.

We knew we’d have to expand our trap ideas, if we were going to top the beastie. My annoyance was that not only were we housing it, we were now feeding it as well. So off we toddled, and four shiny new traps were bought. Baited with peanut butter, they were laid around the kitchen and left for the killing of Timmy’s little friend overnight. Four traps. Boy was that little fella going to get a surprise.

You know what happened?
Three of the traps.
He ate the peanut butter off three of the traps.
Presumably he was too full by trap four.

This isn’t a house mouse, this is a super-mouse. It’s a stealth-mouse. It’s the mouse of my nightmares. We have images of it, attached to a little mouse wire from the ceiling, slowly lowering itself down. It feels like we’re Coyote and the damn mouse is Roadrunner, snarfing the food off our acme traps before disappearing again in a puff of smoke. ‘Squeak Squeak!‘… *vroooooooom*

The cunty little fucktard.
Hate it hate it hate it.
And when we catch it, I’m going to get its serial number and report it to the board of mice, because this just isn’t playing fairly. We set traps, it dies. That’s it. That’s how it works.
I’ll see you in court, Pinky, or Brain, or whatever your damned name is.

I’m still scared, yes, but now I’m more cross. It’s in my house. It’s In My House, and it Does Not Seem To Want to Leave. And It’s not even paying any damned rent.

Do mouse have a point? Is there a point to mice? What useful purpose do they serve? None.

We have new traps.
We reset the four traps this morning, and then my beloved bought two more.
And they’re Double-hard-bastard traps, too.

We are trap-city - approach ye, mouse, gauntlets thrown down, thus have our destinies met. Approach ye, mouse, and have a go, if you think you’re hard enough.

And all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a, oh, no, hang on, a mouse… A MOUSE. It’s a fucking mouse. There! There - Mouse! Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck.

If you don’t know my big fear by now, you will, you should, you’ll see (this first paragraph can be taken as some kind of hint)- it is the mouses.

I hate them, with the scurrying, and the noises, and the hiding, and the nibbling and the dirtyism, and the fact you don’t know where they are, and you have no control over them, and the running all over you in your sleep and eating your face and all those kinds of things.

I freak out. In the flat I lived in in Iona, I refused to go downstairs for 5 weeks. I wouldn’t set foot on the floor of my craft studio - my workplace, luckily it was off-season - for two weeks when they were found in there. I went in there, I just wouldn’t walk on the floor. In our last house - the first place I came to when I moved to London - I wouldn’t go into the kitchen for quite a while, because I knew there was one in there.

Then we found another in the living room, and you could only get me to run from the front door to the bedroom with my takeaway, lock the door and stay there until I had to leave again. Then we suspected there was one in the bathroom. I was conflicted.
Or con-something, anyway.

I was feeling so happy, because there had been no mouses in our little flat. I had asked the letting agents if, to their knowledge, there had ever been mouses, I asked the upstairs neighbours if there were mouses, I thought there might be no mouses, and we had done well. We’re not slovenly, the place is newly done out, there’s not food everywhere and still, Still, STILL… The mouses.

You have to excuse me for going on. I may go on and on and on, I’m still shaking, and I’m not sure whether I’ll be able to, right, I’ll put this in context. In context you might understand how this mouses fear works.

About 6.30: We get home. After both being on early shifts, we have been Christmas-bloody-shopping. We have heard from the letting agents. The upstairs neighbour has rung them twice, saying the alarm in our flat is going off. My beloved thinks that the alarm is defective. I, however, know that there is a mouse, and that is what has done the alarm thing.

Annoyed that people came round and the house wasn’t tidy enough, we tidy thoroughly. Collect all the papers for recycling and stuff, repile all the notebooks, round up the anna-detritus, make-up and such, and put the dry dishes away.

The kitchen is one end of one big room, the living room is part-divided, the other half of the room. It does not take us long to clean and make nice.

While he is putting the drying up away, I am sitting on the sofa in the living room, sorting through papers. He yelps. When I look up, I see a small shape dart across the back of the sink, down the curtain, across the floor. I freeze.
Then scream.
Then freeze.

From that point until 7.30ish I sit on the sofa, staring at the kitchen floor. I cry, and cannot breathe, and cannot think. If I do not watch the kitchen floor, it will move, and I will not know where it is. If I watch the kitchen, and am aware of everything, I will know, and that will not be so bad. The only thing that will be better is to make it dead.

We spend a while trying to make me move, trying to think, and trying to think about how to make it dead. I move between hyperventilating and remembering the breathing exercises and trying to do them. I cannot look away from the kitchen floor. If I do not know where it is I will be sick, or cry, or scream, I don’t know, but I know I need to keep looking at the floor, because then I know what is happening.

After 7.30, between then and about 8 We go to a supermarket. There’s nowhere we can think of that might sell things for making mice dead this time of night. But we think we should probably try the supermarket. We think perhaps there might be some poison. In the supermarket. Where they sell food. Saying it again now, I’m not really sure what we were thinking at this point.
Surprisingly, we find no strong poison in the supermarket where they sell food. We ask a lady in the supermarket. She suggests we try “that big D-I-Y place, you know the one - up near xxxxx xxxxx, the one owned by Sainsbury’s. That’s open dead late. Dead late. You’ll get one there no problem.”

Between 8 and, ooh, lets say half nine We get a bus toward the place she mentions. She said there was a Macdonalds nearby. Soon, we realise how many Macdonalds there are in the world North London. I can breathe by this point, by the way. But only just. When I start thinking about going home again, I cry. When I cry, I cannot breathe all over again.

We get three buses, see a lot of North London, recieve internet help from a darling sister, phone help from two different phone-help companies, and discover that if there were ever any D.I.Y superstore anywhere around, they all closed at 8.

Eventually, in the middle of nowhere and the rain, we catch a bus toward home.

On the way - we realise - we pass the place that we suspect the woman in the supermarket meant. It is five minutes from our house, in the opposite direction to the supermarket. We now assume this is what she intended by her vague pointing. We feel cross, which is exciting, because at least it’s not petrified. It makes a pleasant change.

After phonecalls to many people, we discover one house which has a spare mousetrap. It is the house we used to live at, which is probably ironic, or coincidental, or something, but we go round and collect it, and I want to kiss them, because they have given us something that will help make some living creature dead, and that’s what I want more than anything. More than life itself.

9.45 maybeish: I let my beloved go home before me. He is my knight in shiny armour. Or my knight in soggy jumper, as actually is. He sets the trap, and makes his dinner. I follow home. I cannot eat. I do not want to. I think I am fine, as I stand outside, looking at the crack in the curtains, smoking.

But as I put the key in the door, I feel tears rolling down my face, and I cannot breathe.

It is Only A Mouse.

But I cannot think, or rationalise, or breathe, or be a proper grown-up. It is alive, and scuttling, and in my house. I want it dead, or away. Or dead AND away, best, thank you.

About 45 minutes after we got in, I gave in, and after checking thoroughly, I have barricaded myself in the bedroom (woo - wireless internet), drunk some wine, and now I will lie down and - well, I’ll lie down. Then I don’t know. I will lie down and hear a thousand mice, most likely.

I hate them. And I hate them, and I hate them, and I hate it, I hate ‘IT’, and I hate them.

I’m sorry, there is no end to this post.
It is still alive, and it is still a mouse, if not a mouses.
There is no end to this post.

And I’m not dead.

Just in case you were wondering.

Someone sent me this…

After hearing it a couple of years ago, I have tried and failed to find it. Admittedly I didn’t try very hard. I have since looked, on the internet, and discovered it to be described as a ‘massive hit single’, and particularly ‘big in Bangldesh’. But I could never work out how to obtain it.
But then this morning, Pam dropped it in my lap (Thank you Pam)…

So for a limited time only, hear it here. And you have to hear it. Because you haven’t lived til you’ve heard Andrew Lloyd Webber performed this way.

And I had a can of Irn Bru open on my desk and Everything.

Hangover Schmangover. My day has been made. Listen to it. You’ll see.

No, I have the feeling it’s not, anymore.

I will, I will, I will post something here tomorrow. Today. Whatever. I will. I mean to, and I’m sorry, and I will.

Just very busy, and so any spare writing time goes to the joint (and hugely enjoyable) ‘Tis project right now - And hey - we only do it once a year.

Which reminds me.

I just wanted to say. Really quite proud of today’s (yesterday’s) entry.
Making bad poetry is fun.

A few carols may have got re-written.

A taster:

While shepherds watched their flocks by night all seated on the ground
one thought that he had lost his flask but then the flask was found.

“Fear not”, said he, “I’ve found my ‘tea’, so we’ll all have a cup.
Wow, bollocks-all happens to us, we’ll have to make stuff up.”

“What like?” said one. “Well, I don’t know” said our friend with the drink.
They scratched their heads and scratched their balls, and each one had a think…

The rest can, of course, be found here.

Apologies to North America people who - I know - sing some carols by strange tunes.
By which I mean ‘different’ tunes. Not ‘Philip Glass melodies’.
If you’re singing them to Philip Glass melodies or American tunes, they may not scan. Damnitall.

Go and read ‘Tis the season.
Please.
Thank you.

(But this time they’re on a postcard from Cyprus). (really honestly they are)

I just saw Father Christmas riding down the middle of the street on a bike. Only a short way down the road, he was pelted with gift wrapped boxes by a small crowd standing nearby. The spectacle surprised me, as he was thinner than I expected.

This wasn’t as odd as two days ago, when I was on the bus with a tiger. I didn’t notice until we were all preparing to get off. Me, the tiger, and its two companions. I assume they just called at the tiger shop. Because there it was, under the man’s arm. Curled up, as if in repose, the stuffed tiger was probably 6 foot long, end to end, not including the tail. It was a thing of unparalleled hideousness. I just couldn’t imagine where you’d put it. I tried to imagine having it in our living room. And couldn’t.

There’s this London webloggers party thing tomorrow.
Question, is it worth taking a long time deciding what to wear if you’re not going to let anyone take a picture of you anyway?

I’ve just realised. I now pass a Turner-prize winning piece of art on the way to AND back from work, every day. How fucking cultural and cosmopolitan am I? Hell yeah,