If I was a boy at sea I would be swinging from a broken tree

Christmas is over! I was supposed to go out last night, which would mean that I'd be still awake now, but the odds were against me in a way that I was secretly glad. Hayley has to work early, Fiona never got in touch, Bethan was at Arrans and to top it off, I'd just worked nearly 10 hours straight on the first day of the Boxing Day sale. However, I think I've developed some kind of gum, tooth or mouth infection, and the ulcer on my tongue has made it nearly impossible to enjoy anything festive, such as Christmas dinner, all my sweets and the buffet in the staff room yesterday. I have consumed soup, yoghurt and water, like some kind of diet fanatic. I didn't expect anything more, this is what Christmas is to me.

But it's got me thinking (that and a drunken over enthusiastic conversation with Hayley on Christmas Eve) about the qualities I hope to have next year. I enthused that each night after work should be dedicated to something that will make our lives, our home, our health and our future a better thing. It's also about spending time with people and doing things. When I thought about it, and maybe this is cos I feel a bit ill, but when I thought about it, going out all night on Boxing Day didn't have that twinkly tinselly ravey appeal it used to when I was 21. As Ming put it yesterday: "you are old".

Anyway, I wrote a list, which sort of correlates with the evening plans I told Hayley about, and so, I present to you:

2014 is...

Being Fit
Finally, the benefits of being fit have convinced me against the benefits of drug abuse. Oh, wait... Ideally I want to go swimming, maybe for an hour every other night, as it's the only sport and exercise I think I can benefit from. There are other things too, like ballet work outs and whatever, you can get loads of exercise videos on YouTube. My arms and my chest are areas that I want to change.

Being Healthy
After the poor health I experienced in 2013, there is no way I would ever jeopardise myself again. But I want to eat healthy and practice healthy habit from now on too. One night a week I want to cook a healthy and wholesome meal for everyone, and get more involved with my diet and food preparation, as I am more likely to eat healthier if I make it myself. And to eat MORE. 

Learning Self Defence
Too many times I've been attacked, intimidated and scared in the streets. And something to do outside of work, a skill, learning, is also a way to meet people. I am thinking of doing this pretty soon. One evening a week, or two, doing something aggressive like kick boxing. I don't want to do a martial art, though the discipline side does appeal. I don't have time to be gracious. I want to be ready.

Toughening Up Myself and Standing up for Myself

I don't want to ever be the push over I was in 2013. I might have a lot of confidence to build back up after everything, it might be hard. That's the whole point of this list. I never want to be used again.

Acting
To get confident, I want to take acting classes, or an acting workshop. I think being able to act, or talk to a whole stadium of people, or whatever, is a sign of pure confidence. If I can do that, then I have got my confidence.

Creativity
I don't ever want to waste my time again next year. Not that time was purposely wasted. I was recovering a lot of the time. But I want to have results from the production of my creative expression this time. That can be a night dedicated to photography, crafts, beauty, writing, films, dinner parties, fashion, art, music, reading... rather than just thinking about doing all those things.

Dedication to Work
At work, whatever it might be, I want to stay dedicated, focused and professional, keeping a friendly but distinct separation between my social life and my work life. I don't ever want to make the same mistakes I made at Lush.

Family
I want to make time for certain family members so I can help them, see them and appreciate them face to face. I want to write more to my granny and I want to spend weekends with other family members, not getting too wrapped up with myself.

Redemption, and 'starting over'
I want to love myself in a way that is forgiveness and practice redemption. I want to redeem myself by accepting that I have made mistakes, and that I am sorry, and that I am rational in thinking that hey, we all make mistakes and I am only human and that I really am starting over with myself.

Modesty
The idea that physical looks, superficial accomplishments and self indulgent charity aren't reasons to be proud and that being proud isn't something that is important. Modesty is an attractive trait that I do have, if I just think about it.

Learn a Language
I want to learn French, so I have started to learn basic bits, but by next year, I want to be taking proper lessons, and for my 30th, I'd like to go to Paris. I said to Hayley that a lot of the reason why I want to do things like this is because I think it's appealing and a turn on when someone has a skill, or when someone can learn a language, and as a single man, I want to be as appealing as possible, because there is no way I am entering my 30's feeling like the loser I did this year.

I regret the flower power

Christmas Day today! Not that I give a shit. Here are some things I have learnt about Christmas this year:

1. Not being part of it/not celebrating it reduces stress at an already stressful time
2. Not being able to afford it also adds to its abhorrence
3. I am not into consumerism and shopping at all
4. I like to work hard to pass the time quicker
5. I don't mind the day and the drinking
6. Boxing Day night is a bigger celebration than Christmas Eve
7. People won't be more gracious to you in public because it's Christmas
8. It's just a couple of days out of the year
9. It's generally a waste of money
10. I prefer the summer

take me now, cos dreams are made of this

smile, you love us

I'm not going to be writing much probably over the next few days. It's that time now where it's busier and I am working later. And I feel I've exhausted Christmas anyway, don't really want to soil my blog with anymore Christmas shit. As as update - I spent the weekend drunk. On Saturday, I splashed my glee around with Wigs, the girls and Steffi. The day after was the work's Christmas party, which I was also very drunk at, but well behaved, pleasant and coherent.

I'm not hugely looking forward to Christmas obviously. The idea of waking up on Dave's living room floor freezing my tits off and still drunk on Christmas Day is not a thought of comfort, but Boxing Day night is the traditional party night out AKA 'Big Boxing Day Bang' (insert 'Black' if you sleep with a black man). I hope Hayley comes out. I really want a total mash-a-thon.

I'm reading Evelina at the moment and looking forward to getting paid and moving to town, and looking forward to next year, but for now I am just getting by with what's available to me. I keep having feelings of single self pity, sometimes I discover a new reason why it would be so good and useful to have a boyfriend. I never knew I'd become this kind of undatable socially awkward dweeb from hell.

SJP Tree

smoke gets in your eyes but I chaffed them and gaily laughed

Merry Christmas and all that bollocks. I am feeling very happy and very good because I recently got bought loads of Lush stuff and my skin has turned a corner (on improvement). Also, my brother is back from Thailand and I am happy because I was convinced that while he was there he was going to die, or be killed.

He brought back some lovely presents: 200 cigarettes that feature really horrible off putting graphic warning photographs of dying Thai people and a t-shirt. The problem is I haven't smoked in nearly a month, and have spent these weeks coughing up excessive chunks of nasty. I am cleaning my lungs out! I do feel better about it, however I am conflicted not because I don't treat smoking as a habit, but rather a pastime. Yet, I feel bad that after all this coughing to clear them out, I will dirty them again with smoking, even if it's at the right place during the right time. And the warnings on these cigarettes really make me feel dirty already, and I haven't even had one yet.

I didn't think I would ever feel so happy though over cosmetics. Aromatherapy and good skin really do bring me happiness, during a season where most people are fooling themselves into thinking that buying pointless shit will make them feel good.

GHOST TOWN

Ghost Town (DAT Politics, Powermoon 2013) as mentioned in my previous post.

tell me are you better, now your new life starts to unfold?

This is one of the rare times where I am attracted to a woman (girl on the left). She pretty much sums up how I feel about the cringeworthy excitement of getting married, Christmas, wearing seasonal themed clothing, and combining all three things for this awful photo-op that only this girl can save.

I've been outside wearing my device, I came back in wearing the same device as you

I miss my old room and my old house, full of stuff, with the window I always loved to look out of, wearing the scarf Nanny Sam made me.

taken December 3rd 2010

Christmas Tree 2010

This was taken during a sick day off work in December 2010. My memories of then were that I was still enjoying my job at Lush but I had been quite ill that year with gastroenteritis and dehydration and had recently been in hospital from dehydration. It might not look it, but I was actually quite unwell in this photo, and the hospital band is still on my wrist. This was the year where I stuffed 2 large stockings for my ex boyfriend. I think it was the last Christmas I ever actually enjoyed.

Seven Deadly Christmas Sins

Greed

you gonna eat all that?

Someone who thinks they can eat what the fuck they want because it's Christmas and then have the audacity to moan about how hideously corpulent their body has become as a result of the season. Also someone who just wants everything because 'they want it', especially because it's Christmas (perfect excuse to be a greedy asshole, me me me, etc).

Sloth

So lazy, only the animals turned up

Someone so lazy that they never even leave their home. They moan about everything not going their way despite the solution being in GETTING OFF THEIR FUCKING LAZY ASS AND GOING OUT THERE AND DOING SOMETHING.

Lust

A lot of men now would want this for Christmas

Gay men who 'want a relationship' but have needs so keep a Grindr, etc on their phone. People who treat relationships the same way absolute assholes treat cats at Christmas; just for Christmas. Like Greed, people who lust over people like they are possessions, all for their own pleasure and nothing else. 

Wrath

Burn it down

Horrible assholes who treat the hard working and down trodden like shit because they are in a bad mood only to return to their lavish, over dressed and warm homes to indulge in other sin related activities, if not all of them.

Envy

At least he GAVE it back. Some things are never returned. Like my dignity.

Assholes who go out of their way to DESTROY the lives of others because they can't be arsed to go through the tribulations and work of getting what others have themselves. Selfish ugly and smelly twats who are never happy with what god gave them, no matter how grotesque.

Pride

"one for facebook"

People who brag about things, sometimes things that don't behold an ounce of truth, purely to show off and falsely believe that their pride impresses people thus making them more likable. Not at all, asshole.

Gluttony

The Stark Contrast

Like Greed, but people who eat so much they start to physically embody every sin I have listed on here, and at Christmas, the curtain is opened, all is revealed, as these fat, over consumed whales waddle around town treating anything in it's wake like a piece of shit. 

Merry Fucking Christmas

***

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Once in Royal David's Ghetto

Work's going well. Bad luck hasn't destroyed the urge to work. In fact, it's making me want to work more. I get a lot from it. I suppose the only thing at the moment is that I am at that typical stage where you start to carve a little bit of dignity and confidence for yourself but then suddenly something happens and you're back being made to feel like the lowest ranking of the group. I suppose I should concentrate harder on keeping myself to myself. I'm impressing the people that matter, and I'm really nice to everyone.

However, I honestly don't feel a thing about Christmas. For the past 4 years, Christmas has been a joke. It's not brought me peace or feelings of happiness. It's a constant reminder of how poor I am. It highlights other people's suffering and sadness. I just think of how lonely some people are around this time, and how many people kill themselves. It's really depressing thing considering it's all based around the birth of a person who none of us know was real or not, in a religion that no one I really know are part of.

I wanted to embrace Christmas this year. I thought I could be won back by it. I wanted to theme each post this December with something Christmassy. And I think I will, in vain maybe, but I can't guarantee that I will be with you having a holly jolly wank of a time. Sorry.

I am looking forward to the staff Christmas party, because I want to see what everyone is like in a social context, and I want to socialise with new people, and I really want a drink and a cigarette, it's been that long.

He of Little Faith

With such a bad start to December I briefly felt like Christmas was pointless to celebrate. However, there is a middle ground for me, as there's no getting away from it. Somewhere inside me is the urge to go to church at Christmas, but that's another story. However I shan't deny that I'd like presents, and working where I do, and being surrounded by wanting and consuming, and the fact that I no longer want to be like Mother Theresa anymore, here is a list of things that I would like to WANT:

Humbugs - because they are tasty
Cigarettes - Gitanes to be precise
Spliff - every Christmas I'd have one between 2003 - 2008, straight after Christmas dinner
Whiskey - my favourite drink goes nicely with spliff
Lavender Oil - Useful
Cartridge Pen - because my other one broke
Notebook - preferably with tropical cover
Dream Cream - my favourite cream
Large leather suitcase - to store my memories in one place
Rose Water - to help my skin
Chanel No5 - Parisienne Chic
A comb - whatever happened to my old one ...?
A good book to read
Candle
Bathbomb
Sexy Underwear

Desperate XXXmas: Why internet dating is doomed

At Christmas, us single guys probably get a little more desperate. There is something about the festive season that makes you think you should be waking up next to someone in a plush city centre apartment you both share, while your chic and modern Christmas tree twinkles as you make egg nog latte's to drink in bed. Instead, I wake up surrounded by snotty tissues dowsed in Olbas Oil, next to no one, in my parents house, with a fat lip and a waning ego.

The other day I realised that the nearer to Christmas we get, the lower our standards become. But it's stupid because in less than 4 weeks you aren't going to meet someone, make a settlement and then be wearing matching Christmas jumpers on Christmas Day drinking frothy Christmas hot chocolate next to each other soaking up each other's Christmasness. No? Well, you might be. Gays go through the motions like no other, and everything happens at the speed of light. By New Years Eve you'll be divorced. By Chinese New Year you'll be at the Nightingale, waiting for your rebound, drinking cheap fizzle piss from a bottle with a straw.

The irony though, Christmas for an adult who has lost the magic (and let's face it, if you're single, gay and work in retail, the magic is hard to hold on to), and as much as you understand the consequences and the irrationality, you still go ahead anyway, making plans in your head, hoping to get off with the guy from the other department at the Christmas party or like me, hoping in vain to meet someone in A&E. When did I become this? Oh wait... I've always been like this. Just very much in denial "I refuse to be tied down to anybody!". Yeah right.

The reality is this: the guy at the Christmas party will have a boyfriend. You will go home alone, or worse, go on to a sleazy bar in town where you will drown the rest of mid winter away in a rummy wave of despair, and go home with a guy who's old enough to be your dad grandad.

So, in spite of all that, you still hold onto the hope that is Internet Dating. Internet Dating is a strange thing for me, and it's a permanent fixture in a lot of gay guy's lives, to some it's always been there, they still have the same profile from 12 years ago, I know this because each time periodically I make a new one, they message me. Or like me, it's a certain bane of your life, providing you with enough drama to at least have something to fantasise about before you fall asleep at night, but never amounts to anything in real life.

I think, for me anyway, Internet dating is doomed. I was at work, and one thing I do when I am bored of repetitive folding and 'helloing' is daydreaming about an imaginary boyfriend or a relationship. However, what daydream starts with an online message 'wanna meet for a coffee sometime'? Is this what I have been reduced to? Having to adjust my daydreams to an online agenda? Because in my fantasy, I meet a guy in public, face to face, at a party, anywhere, and I go home thinking about the encounter, it stays on your mind. It's something to think about.

When you're online, it's already mapped out for you. You're already expecting the worst. And with how Christmas goes for me each year now, I already know that clicking reply won't get me anywhere good. But I'll still do it because I already know how it ends.

Memory Music Video - Christmas Special (i): Bjork 'Bachelorette' (1997)

The song and video for 'Bachelorette', and the album it's from, 'Homogenic', conjures up memories of Christmas during a time where I was awkwardly changing from a sissy prepubescent to a sissy pubescent. My involvement with Christmas, and the memories I was creating, often associated with music, stem from around this time. The year before was my obsession with The Nightmare Before Christmas and from that my obsession with the American way of celebrating 'the holidays'. Like an adult, I wasn't ashamed to be into music anymore, and asked for 'Homogenic' for Christmas. 'Bachelorette' was the single released around this time, and out of frustration and impatience on Christmas Eve, went into Sutton and bought the single with all the remixes. I think I was about 13 years old.

I didn't mature like a normal teenager, the typical things teenagers do I did when I was much older, and might explain why I don't ever feel how old I actually am, which is frustrating for me. While everyone was being typically 13, I wanted to 'make house' and Christmas was the perfect opportunity to get involved and feel grown up, and my tired over worked parents were more than happy to let me decorate and make cookies and cakes.

Bjork was my favourite singer around this time. In fact, she was probably the only music I listened to. Those days, to listen to your favourite song or to see your favourite music video, you had to wait hours listening to the radio or watching MTV, which I often did, and it was the arrival and anticipation of Homogenic where I probably experienced my first real excitement to a new release, having starting to understand her as an artist. You see, I was quite stubborn with music when I was at school, and it was NOT cool to like Bjork, I discovered, after proudly telling people I liked her. I learnt to keep it to myself, but there was no way in hell I was going to join the crowd and listen to the fucking Spice Girls.

On Christmas morning I opened Homogenic and listened to it all day. I made gingerbread men, making sure it was photographed with a camera I got too, taking over the kitchen and being homely. It was weird looking back but it was so exciting to me then. The music was the soundtrack, I think I played it in the kitchen, so the album is Christmas all over, but Bachelorette, and the video, directed by Michel Gondry, how lit up it was, theatrical, with Bjork and her sparkly dress and blue denim jeans combo, will always remind me of the cozy build up to Christmas, and the grey sky outside on Christmas Eve, as I let myself slowly burn against a radiator looking out the window in anxious contentment.

you'll be known as the boy who's always dancing

A weekend wasted on kindness, cars go by, in the city there's always people. A famous diver 'comes out'. A role model finalised, I think we now have one to be proud of (?). I look for them. Am I always going to be like this? Can I choose to not be walked on, pushed over, or is it part of who I am? I don't want to walk like a victim. I want to be someone you DON'T mess with.

I used to think I had beaten it, but I'm just as frightened now as I've always been. And I've never felt uglier. Fears flood back from far ago, like sitting in biology trying to remain dignified and cool while Martyn Carter kept knocking my glasses off my face. Laughing off humiliation is an art that is not nice to look at, and worse to create. Standing up for yourself can be hard on your face.

This December I want to try and write my blog every day, but with the theme of Christmas and being festive entwined in each post, no matter how irrelevant. It isn't cookies and egg nog and it isn't carols and candles. I understood last night once again the pointlessness of a time of year you have to really force yourself to enjoy when you see it for what it is. Charity starts at home, and it ends as blood spit in my mouth.

I won't give up on myself because that's stupid but I may give up on Christmas. I don't feel like it's something I will be able to notice. I don't give a shit. I really don't. I hate all this family shit. But I will remember stuff, and I will use it to help myself. It's around this time of year where I wish for summer, and I realise how good I look with a tan, and the happiest place to be ever is a tropical beach with your imaginary boyfriend.

in Love

I'm feeling really down, so here are some animals that are in love:

the seal of approval

two turtle doves...

polar opposites attract

monkey wrench

what a pair of lookers

what a pair of lookers (ii)

ear nibbles

beaky licks

On the first day of Christmas

I was going to write about Christmas, or Advent, or at least it being December, but I am not in the mood because after work today I was assaulted by a homeless guy for a reason so ridiculous I can't even imagine.

I may be angry, and what I am about to say might be just because, but at the moment, I will tarnish each and every homeless scum bag with the same brush. I no longer will give them anything, and never will ever waste my time, money or worry on them. I feel okay in now saying that although I may earn squat helping people with too much money, any amount of money if you're homeless is worthy, and that you should be grateful, and that if it isn't adequate, then maybe you should actually get a fucking job. I was punched in the fucking face, for not giving enough money to a down and out cunt who sits outside Sainsburys on Navigation Street.

There are times, like now, where I really struggle to hold it together. When will I be given a chance, I wonder. People are putting their Christmas trees up and are basically having a good time with their loved ones. I'm fed up of expecting this kind of luck all the time. I deserve a break, it can't be like this forever, can it?