This English January #

4 January 1999

“When you’re this high, you can only come down.” So read anti-drugs messages on advertising hoardings back when I was in my early teens.  Narcotically-speaking, I’m clean as a whistle, but emotionally-speaking, this 1980’s government warning describes my mood perfectly.

Even when my festive period has not been spent in such a sociable and enjoyably drunken manner as this year, I still abhor January.  Cold, wet, dark, English January, with nothing to look forward to and all daylight hours filled with mind-numbing, spirit-crushing ‘work’.

Work.  That came as a fucking culture shock, my 5:30am reminder call striking fear into my heart (how this was omitted from the Q chart of “15 most terrifying sounds on earth”, I’ll never know).  More weeks ahead of doing… whatever it is I do.  Oh well.  It pays the bills, and by Easter I’ll have some cash with which to return to Scotland and do it all over again…

But meanwhile I’m stuck in this English January, a prisoner of both time and economics, trying to remember how to make it all pass by less painfully.  I’ve got the comfort food (chocolate, crisps, muesli – but no alcohol, my liver wants a week or two to recover), and the imported CDs and books.  Now I just need to feed my technolust with some new gadgets.

I think I’d better start making plans for my weekends – do some travelling, see friends in London and Derby, Bradford and Manchester, Hampshire and Edinburgh…

It’s only January Nelson.  It’s nothing to be afraid of.  Remember, everyone else feels this way too.

I wish I had more time to read other online journals, there are plenty of great ones out there.  Take Cyberpunk Musings, which has been making me laugh recently.  Melissa recently dyed her hair red (good on ya!) – wish I still had that option open to me.  I only once really altered my dark brown hair, by bleaching it to yellow.  I wussed out of colouring it, and dyed it back to brown a few days later.

Now, with my career prospects to think about, it’s too late to play about with hair dye, more’s the pity.