Should ALBOWIEB be forgot, and never brought to mind...

Well, happy New Year, my little blog chums. Didn’t that come around fast? I’m already trying to get my head round why it was two-thousand-and-eleven, but now we’re in twenty-twelve. They both just sound right, don’t they? But wrong the other way. There’s some sort of unfathomable natural law at work here.

December was by far the bloggingest month I’d had since May, despite publishing a risible eight posts to ALBOWIEB. I’m not given to New Year’s resolutions, because they are stupid and you never do them, but if I did then tending to my dear blog would certainly be among them.

I remember the heady days of posting something to my blog every day. Sometimes several times a day. Sometimes with pictures and other such goodies. I’m not sure whether I had more to say, a lack of an outlet, or just didn’t get out very much. Probably a lamentable mix of all three.

But, dear blog buddies, I shall make the effort to update you more often despite my flourishing career as a talented motoring journalist. My fear is that I only have so many words in me in a day, and I do need those to put in our magazines. Perhaps what I should do is keep a little shoebox for all the ones I have to cut out when I go over my word limits.

In recent years I have done a special jumbo post with my favourite entries from each month picked out. Whilst it would only take me about eight minutes to pick out my highlights from the 95 posts from 2011 (versus 271 in 2010), they would invariably be a bit crap and sparse. I will bottle the guilt like an aftershave and use it as a piquant scent to freshen up my forthcoming proses. Or something like that.

For now I am going to enjoy the best bit of the new year. Like any relationship, everyone’s on their best behaviour for the first five minutes and then it’s downhill from there. Bottoms up.

30 Kampfs.

I think 30 Rock is perhaps the funniest thing I’ve seen this week. Perhaps even the funniest thing on my television at the moment. Tina Fey is a delight, Alec Baldwin (of the Baldwin Baldwins) is an absolute hoot.

Even as I cobble this post together I’m sat watching episodes towards the end of season four rammed with quotable ROFLable quotes: “Did you know this is the only restaurant in America with a veal tank?” “Yes, it’s so much better when you pick your own.”

I’m really supposed to be wrapping Christmas presents, but what’s a guy to do when he keeps putting interesting DVDs in the machine? I can’t be held responsible for the goodies that keep popping up on my screen.

Sadly, none of my presents is Mein Kampf, which I recently read that a Waterstone’s in Huddersfield had been advertising in-store as the ‘perfect Christmas present’. Maybe it is the perfect present, for these downtrodden times, the country being helmed by a weak, unpopular government. Etc, etc.

Do you know what? Perhaps Weimar Germany just needed a release. If only it had 30 Rock.

I saw three ships a-sailing, on a Christmas special.

Yay, it's Christmas. Hark the herald angels stuff their faces with all kinds of heinously fattening snacks before ramming inappropriate amounts of roast dinner down their maws. Tis' the season to be jolly, even if in practice it turns out to be about the least jolly of all the seasons. Have an aspirational Christmas, chums. While shepherds washed their socks by night, and all that.

In all seriousness, I do hope you have some wonderful time over this festive holiday to reflect on what may/may not have been a great 2011. I am, beneath it all, quite the optimist - whatever the last year may have held, the New Year has all the promise that a fresh beginning brings with it. Enjoy your Christmas, and have a wonderful and prosperous 2012.

I miss the thes.

When did we start losing our articles? Indefinite or otherwise, they are dropping like flies. I don’t even think it’s a collective laziness on our part, it appears to be a concerted grammarcide.

I was watching a television advert the other day – it could have been for Argos, which is horrendous enough with its arse-clenchingly contrived ‘Argos it!’ punchline – the advert included the sentence: “Get £99 off Xbox 360 with Kinect!”

When did an Xbox 360 become simply Xbox? And more to the point, how have we allowed this to happen? I blame our education system, and I blame the parents. In no particular order.

We have a similar situation at work, where we have taken a style guide decision to ignore the Driving Standards Agency’s efforts to call itself simply ‘DSA’. DSA does this, DSA announces that.

I realise we live in a time of increasing government frugality, but slashing reasonable use of the word ‘the’ is certainly not going to save the billions that the chancellor needs in order to meet his spending commitments over the next five years.

Whilst the entire establishment and much of academia scratches around for a meaning behind the ridiculous riots of July 2011, I suggest we put it down to bad grammar. I might write to prime minister and tell him so.

Sex smells.

It seems to be one of the unwritten rules of perfume advertising that their alluringly persuasive messages of corporate enticement are completely stark raving incomprehensibly bonkers.

I literally cannot understand the link between people doing sex on a beach and someone going into a shop in search of smelling better. Or possibly a better-smelling relative. Sometimes it’s not sex on a beach, it’s sex in a bed, or in a warehouse. Or people looking at each other and dreaming of doing sex, lustily.

I realise now that there is a lot of sex involved in perfume adverts – this could be a subliminal thing.

Perhaps the perfume people are trying to encourage us into thinking that we too could be stuck on top of an Italian supermodel in 15-degree seawater getting sand up our naughty pockets if we would only make a significant investment in their product.

Of course, I think perhaps in my case it would be less to do with sweet aromas than Rohypnol. Whatever the unwritten rules, I’ve never really understood why perfume people can’t do funny adverts, or inspiring adverts, or any adverts that don’t centre around sex and that.

Do it, perfume people. Then I would certainly buy some of your elixirs of endless reproduction.

Literally three days in a row.

Isn't this amazing? That's now literally three days following in a row that I have posted to my blog. I am a little bit sad, I just checked - it's the first time since May that this has happened. Unprecedented. Since May.

I'll let you in on the secret: I'm off work this week. That's right, on holiday. Actually, that's not a secret. I just checked. This is the second time since Monday that I have mentioned this. Hardly subtle. You can look back at Monday's post if you need a quick refresher. None of that 'previously on ALBOWIEB' stuff here. Maybe I need to start doing that, using the first paragraph as a quick reminder of the last post. The next paragraph would be one sentence long before I cut to a commercial break.

It's not been a classic holiday week - I can't imagine many people spend their annual leave in Coventry. It's quite the tourist destination if you like, say, road traffic layout follies of the 1960s, or once great automotive powerhouse production facilities now lying under acres of rubble. That sort of thing. There is also the UK's first city centre Ikea store, which is much better than the UK's previous out-of-town Ikea stores, because you can just about find your way round it and it's easier to get to the meatballs.

It's not been a classic holiday weather week - most people like to take their holidays when the weather is sunny, so that they can return to work the following week and people will coo for several minutes at their peeling sunburn and get a little jealous. I might have to sit in my local sunbed for 20 minutes and slather myself in cooking oil. That will make my colleagues well jell (that's an Essex phrase).

I have broken some eggs.

I've never understood that thing about having to break some eggs if you're going to make an omelette.

Because, of course. That is what the recipe requires, in order for you not to have bleeding gums. That cliched aphorism does not hold any real meaning in the usual contexts that people use it in. "Well, you see, if you want to do that thing, you're going to have to follow the generally accepted set of tasks in order to complete it." That is also known as 'doing stuff'.

The saying could also imply that there is collateral damage involved in performing certain unsavoury tasks, but in actual fact if you are unable to crack an egg and get it into the pan or other omelette preparation receptacle...well frankly you shouldn't be in any position of responsibility, oval or otherwise.

The only reason this is all in my head is because I am currently making some poached eggs to eat. I love poached eggs. If I wasn't so lazy I would eat them every day. But everyone knows that in order to make poached eggs you need to use some eggs. Man, I still don't get it.

The silence of the cuckoos.

I am doing some holiday this week. I've not really taken any time off since I started my new job way back in June, so there were a few days to take. I have a stack of books, a pile of DVDs and plenty of time in which to sit in my pyjamas and ram them down my throat like so much Ben and Jerry's cookie dough ice cream.

I'm house-sitting you see. Sister-sitting too, whilst my parents swan off to Egypt for a week and do scuba-diving and shit. I hope they get sunburnt personally, it's not right for them to be having fun at their age. Life is supposed to be a grind, a slog, a mill. There's no room for frivolity, japes and excitement.

It's weird how you have to do those things in threes, right? I've tried it other ways round, but three is the magic number. It just fits, goes, works. See what I mean? It just wouldn't be right if it were two, a couple. It's like ending a sentence halfway.

The main problem with being in this house and not at work is that I have nothing to think about, and my head is full of the cuckoo clock. It ticks apocalyptically loud, and the cuckoo is like Sir Tom Jones bellowing through a bullhorn with gusto having taken a couple of deep breaths of helium.

It's a delightful thing, this cuckoo clock - a truly premium piece of Black Forest craftsmanship. I even took a picture of it once. But as with so many things, it's much easier to appreciate from a great distance. For one thing it distracts from the books and DVDs.

It rains, it pours.

We British are a febrile bunch – one moment working ourselves up into a lather over the incessant rain, the next moment panting hopelessly as the sun beats down on our leathery, wizened pink foreheads. Now we’re sorry, though, as winter beats its sadistic way to our doors, killing all the flowers on its way up the garden path.

As the rain patters against the window and I put off running outside to the car to go home, I find myself chuckling at the news item this morning which said that the south of England would be stuck in a drought until the middle of next year. I’ve never understood this drought business – I’ve not used a hosepipe in years, and as long as water continues to flow out of the tap and I can enjoy ridiculously long showers (it’s where I do all my thinking) then there’s not a problem.

You don’t really worry about things you can’t see, like internal organs, your bank account, or Africa. Perhaps it’s simply easier to worry about stupid things like the weather, a shallow concern, just touching base with the fact that you’re just about still human. I have gradually become at one with the realisation that I am not much of a human being – I don’t really care about my bank account, Africa or the weather.

I lie. I am worried I’ll get wet if I go out to the car just now.

It's a brave old world.

I have deleted my Facebook profile. It's been a long time coming, this cauterising of a social media limb, but I've been fearful. Of becoming a social outcast, of missing out on things, of doing something silly. So far I feel liberated, but it's only been three days. I probably couldn't miss it too much in my current computerless state. (My laptop went on fire the other week - more on that another time).

There are many reasons in favour of a complete delete though. Not least the reclaiming of your privacy and personal identity, asserting your desire to think for yourself, or attempting to reestablish meaningful personal interaction.

Surely the thrill of discovery is something in itself? I don't want the internet to second-guess my next move or tell me things I might be interested in, I want to find them out for myself. I don't want a distant set of Frisco boffins tracking my every move through any webpage with a like button. Perhaps this is naive of me in this day and age, but I can only do what I can do.

Perhaps I shall miss out in not having that constant connection to friends, family, acquaintances and colleagues that I've enjoyed for the last five years. But then again, I find that Facebook has rendered social interaction shallow, fleeting and pointless - OMG, it's been ages. We should do coffee. Well, fine. Ring me, email me, we'll get something down. I don't mind having a concentrated circle of people who are the only ones I keep in touch with regularly - I don't need the illusion of a massive social circle.

People have always asked me whether having a blog is oversharing, giving away too much. For me it's the fact that you decide what you're sharing that makes it interesting. It's a creative endeavour, I'm sharing my thoughts, not the last practical details of my life. It's like with the mobile phone - it's not a constant connection to the outside world, precisely the opposite. I choose when I'm available. Facebook demands constant presence, instant attention. It's hungry for information, details, titbits - I think it's time it went on a diet.

Meanwhile, for me, it's a brave old world.