My happy jar...

Right, it’s no use. Time to get this New Year kick-started into action. Today the decorations have gone back in their boxes, the tree was taken down, a few much needed calls were made to ‘sort some things out’, and the beginning of a very sketchy plan continued to be very sketchy indeed. Of course both MCW and MLD felt that I didn’t do my fair share when it came to removing the decorations, but taking down that sprig of mistletoe wasn’t the easiest job in the world.

Yes, in the magnificently poetic words of the Scottish rock gods who were Pilot: ‘January, sick and tired of you hanging on me, you’re making me sad with your eyes and you’re telling me lies’. I don’t know about ‘don’t go, don’t go’, how about bugger off and leave me alone? God it’s all so bloody depressing, just like that bloody awful song which still manages to make a grey cloud appear, hanging over head whenever I hear it. Yes, bugger off, stop bloody smiling and take those bloody silly haircuts with you

.

Maybe I need a lie down.

As you may have guessed by now I’m already finding it hard to hang on to my happy Christmas thoughts. Perhaps it’s the time of year (does anyone like January apart from Pilot?) or maybe I need more drugs. I’m even thinking about starting one of those jars where you write down all the good things that happen to you over the year and then at the correct time open it up and read them in an attempt to keep your sanity just before Christmas. Of course because, as I am reliably informed by MCW, 'a miserable git’ and an ‘unfair, lazy do-nothing moaner’ I do have a few concerns with this:

- What if no good things happen and my jar remains empty?

- What if good things happen that then turn into bad things? Do I take them out of the jar and destroy them?

- Do I need a jar of bad things to balance the good things in case I become too happy-clappy and put in things like: ‘Gosh I love the lyrics of January by Pilot’?

- Do I need an empty jar as a control (as you would with a proper scientific study of the happenings of the year) or will that just happen naturally if my jar remains empty?

- If a good thing happens retrospectively can I retrospectively add it to the jar or do good things have a shelf-life and if they do will they go bad when they pass that shelf-life?

So many uncertainties…

Things, even good things, are never quite as simple as they should be are they? You’d think that writing good things down and putting them into a jar would be pretty straightforward, but life isn’t like that is it? Things are constantly changing, morphing before your very eyes and what started out as one thing can easily end up as something else altogether. I remember once being given a large bonus. ‘How great’ I thought. It was one of those things that would definitely go into the ‘good’ jar. Sadly a couple of months later it became apparent than rather than being a ‘thank you’ it was something of a ‘sorry’. Well, you can guess how that ended.

Another time I seemed to be getting on with my partner better than I had done it years. If I’d have had a happy jar back then I’d have reached for it and popped a happy note into it. As it turned out she was only being nice because she was seeing someone else and was covering her tracks. That note would have not only been transferred into the bad jar, but would have been smothered in petrol, burnt to ashes and then pissed on like she pissed on me.

Yes, sometimes things are not always as they immediately appear to be.

Of course, there are a lot of good things around me to hooray about, but I usually have to take the time to look and see them. Luckily for me I have plenty of time to see that warmth in the candle flames or the play of shadows on an evening lighted wall. I have time to savour the peat in the malt I like to have each evening before I go to bed – just half a finger with a single ice cube and sipped not glugged. I have time to revel in some wonderful words of poetry when the mood takes me. I even have time to listen to January by Pilot over and over again until I completely lose the remainder of my marbles.

MCW has been known to describe me as a ‘miserable bugger’ and as a word of caution - candle flames can cause a fire and burn things down, shadows build to become the deepest of darks, whisky is addictive and potential ruinous, poetry can lead you up a beautiful but sometimes weed-ridden and dangerous garden path and listening to Pilot will eventually make you blind.

Yes, my happy jar - oh, oh, oh, it’s magic…