A spot of tennis.

The Great British Public is like a sleeping leviathan, awakened early from its deep and tremulous slumber.

We’re not supposed to be interested in tennis until Wimbledon, which is really just an excuse to crack open the Robinsons and get some strawberries in a bowl, but that dashed Murray has forced people to get on Wikipedia to try and remember again how the game works many months too early.

For tennis is like ice-skating – no matter how many times you go, every time is like starting again. I could spend hours perfecting a triple axle, but stop five minutes for a minty hot chocolate and I’ll be back on my arse in no time. It’s a true fact.

And so the Brits emerge bleary-eyed, like hedgehogs poked early out of hibernation, into a world turned upside down by a fellow countryman in a Grand Slam final. He’ll probably lose anyway.

A misspeak of the tongue.

I was half-listening to the news on the television last night but not really paying attention because I was reading a book recommended to me by a friend who had been given it for Christmas by her stalker.

My ears pricked - well, not up but perhaps sideways, they twitched a little - when I heard the newsreader talking about the Tarly Barn in Afghanistan. At first, dear reader, I thought she might have been talking about some chic-but-rustic new eaterie in the green (for excellent salads) zone of central Kabul, but tearing my eyes away from the compelling text I soon realised that the duncette was referring to the extremist former rulers of the beleaguered land.

Seriously now. It wasn't the BBC, so the poor love had no chance of ringing up the pronunciation department to get a judge's ruling, but even Sky News has an advisor on hand to help the presenters out with any word in the script longer than two syllables. For goodness' sake, we've been blowing seven shades of shit out of the Tallyban for almost ten years now. You'd think she would have cottoned on, it's really a matter of professionalism. Admittedly she was probably in primary school when the planes hit.

I returned to my book. A number of hours later I sat down and started composing a blog post on the issue, and at that point I realised that not only was I tiptoeing stealthily towards an ominous middle age, but also that the blog post is the new stiffly worded letter. This was one of those evenings where nobody won.

Busy like a beaver.

Busy-ness is such a foul friend. You know how you can be busy doing something but not really busy doing something? Of course, it might look like that here, but I have naturally been scribbling away in my notebooks at various points, I just haven't had the time to write them up. Not that I need subbing, of course, being a consummately professional writer, but I do like to have a quick squizz over something I've knocked together and just make it even funnier.

Actually I always find it difficult editing something I've written at any given point in time (on the blog, that is - an article for a particular outlet really only exists for the moment it goes live and not before)  because a blog post is so of the moment, representing my thoughts and feelings at that stage of the day/week/month/life that may not be reflected at any other point in time. The only reference notes I have from that moment in time are sat in front of me, and I'm really quite bad at remembering the emotional context something was written in.

Isn't that a funny thing about memory? You can remember what, where, when and maybe why but the actual feelings are often lost in the morass of your mind. Feelings are more fleeting than we might perhaps imagine - remembering what you were feeling at a certain time might bring a flush of sympathy pains, but it never quite compares to the intensity of the moment. It's a human protection mechanism, I think, a sort of forgive-and-forget gene.

But I only stopped by to apologise for being busy and you distracted me, you wee scamps. Never fear, back to business as usual soon.

Germ warfare.

I have been wondering – how often should I disinfect the lid of my alcohol gel? If the little diseasey buggers that populate my hands – not even thinking about the .05% of known germs that aren’t killed dead with each squirt and zealous application – if they know what’s bad for them then surely they’ll jump right onto the lid of the bottle every time I go in for a hygienic splash and dash?

I’m not like totally mental about germs, but I do think about these things. I hate seeing keyboards with hair and snot and skin stuck between the letters, mice with that unspeakable inexplicable dark green grime that builds up through years of abuse at the hands of hands.

I like winter for allowing me to wear my leather gloves and not look like a twat, for being able to touch the escalator hand rail, for being to hold on whilst using the tube, for pushing open the door of public toilets and not fearing that I’m going to die of some horrific disease that could have been prevented by the old man eight seconds ago washing his hands.

I’m not a germ freak, as I say – I think it’s important to expose yourself to a certain amount of stuff to build up your immune system. I regularly, for instance, snort up spores from the mouldering fruit on the kitchen sideboard that is always bought but never eaten. You have to draw the line somewhere though – and I am definitely not suicidal.

The beat goes on.

Public transport does grieve me so.

Frankly it upsets me that I have to pay so much to ride on something that essentially spends the entire day going ceaselessly back and forth along a set route which is invariably at least two changes from where you’re actually going. This, and it would continue on this tarmacadam mobius strip whether I was aboard or not.

Today I catch a bus, but tomorrow I don’t and the same for the next 34 days until I catch a bus again. And yet it's always full fare – I am essentially paying not to be on that service for 35 days by covering all of the bus company’s costs in the interim period. If you travel every day, and increase the bus company's costs - wear and tear on the seats, the extra petrol your heft requires - then you inexplicably get a discount for the pleasure.

Perhaps the bus company might be taking a hit on all the dreadful inconvenience of paying tax, going to an MOT, filling up with petrol and the small matter of actually driving, but I think I would rather put myself through the inconvenience in order to not have to walk in the rain for ten minutes at either end of my journey, you know?

Now, a taxi – that has to make a special trip out of its way, the driver putting down his Daily Express and having to give some consideration as to how he is going to get you where you want to go. Now that I will fork out for. The bus? Forget it.

The ordinariness of excellence.

What is it about a streetlamp that goes out as you pass that gives you the willies? Perhaps it’s merely the out-of-the-ordinariness, which is by very definition a surprise and occasionally a delight.

I never find myself walking down the road and admiring the feats of technology, endurance and the greatest of minds in street lighting uniting in common purpose as I amble past a light that gamely stays on.

Clearly I have important things pressing on my magnificent brain, but perhaps I should be more appreciate of the daily, more impressed by the ordinary and the ongoing. Perhaps we are too demanding as people, that we have become blind to the munificence of life.

This extends further – I’m never grateful that I didn’t fall down a carelessly open manhole, or crushed by a badly-maintained wall. I think it’s human nature to accept the good and the excellent as merely acceptable.

But wouldn’t you know it – I’ve typed in a whole blog post and haven’t been electrocuted by my laptop once. Brilliant.

James is officially office head.

I had the good fortune to work quite regularly in the same office for the last couple of months, on a freelance basis. To the extent that people who were working there when I started in November left and were replaced. I was no longer the newest member of staff, I knew where the coffee and the mugs are, how to get through the security card doors and how to adjust the crippling computer chairs.

When I first started there was a magnificent Indian version of Engelbert Humpadinck manning the security desk, bouffant and proud. He was a fine specimen of a man, with a booming voice and Engelbert’s full, just short of Steve Tyler lips. He went, and I missed him. He cheered me up as I entered in the morning and as I left in the evening, setting out on my long march to freedom, two-and-a-half-hours of commuting away.

I had to get up at 5.30am to get to this place – there was one day my alarm went off and I was practically brain dead for the first 45 minutes of pseudo-consciousness. All my brain could during that time was repeat the name ‘Benedict Cumberbatch’ ceaselessly. I mean that – over and over in my head, until my emergency coffee kicked in and my mind stopped flatlining.

It’s fascinating observing an office, though – the muffins baked in favour of this, the stupid moustaches grown in favour of that. The coming round with sponsorship forms, the emails reminding you clean up dishes in a places you’ll never know and inviting you to socials you’ll never see. You see the concentrations of power – the loud, chatty clumps of desks. The men-of-a-certain-age who insist on a shirt and tie every day versus those who insist on casual over smart.

Often in many ways observation is the best kind of taking part – there but knowing it’s not a permanent state of being. It’s the same with anything you observe, being transient heightens the senses where permanence relegates everything to the wallpaper. Hark at me, the freelance poet...

New Year's resolutions.

I don't really like to make resolutions - I suppose a resolution is the sort of thing that you give to Neville Chamberlain. It's a nudge and a wink and go back on it five minutes after reassuring yourself that it is indeed quite true. My New Year's resolution is 1280x800.

If I'm actually going to do something then I make plans. For instance, I have plans afoot to write my first book this year. I am a fan of pithy narrative non-fiction, a travel writing niche opened up by the likes of my favourite writer Tim Moore, and I want to get in on that action.

I'm not going to talk too much about my plans, because of the unique way I plan for them to be funded, there's no point in giving away the fun for free. I'm going to self-publish, shamelessly self-promote and then I'm going to persuade a publisher to take it on. It will be part-adventure, part-homage and part-history lesson and I'm really looking forward to it.

I so very much want to do this and make it happen that I have taken the bold step of saying so on this here blog, which so studiously avoids the dull minutiae of daily life. This won't turn into one of those dull I'm-writing-a-book blogs when I finally get down to do the dirty deed, but in return for this largesse I shall expect you to buy at least 12 copies each.

Also, I'm planning to give up smoking and lose three stone*.


*N.B. This isn't true.

A short moment of self-reflection.

I have been told that I moan too much.

Or, as my bluff-but-essentially-charming northern friend Chris said to me on New Year's Day; "You're a tool. Do you ever stop moaning?" You cut to the core of me, Baxter.

I think the danger of a blog is that you create for yourself a certain sort of character that works and takes over into real life to an extent, and I think I've said this before on here, I often seem to welcome bad things happening because it will make for a good blog post. How much then do I subconsciously try to engineer these situations then?

It doesn't help that I'm a funny man. Whether I get paid for it or not, I am a comedian - I live for the laughs, for the provocations and the validation. And when you find a funny seam in the rock you mine it 'til it's gone. It is all quite strange, though, because I am essentially terribly happy, well-balanced, positive, occasionally quite contemplative and have even been known to be quite pious. It's like Reverend Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

Positive and pious just aren't very funny, at the end of the day. Or even during it. No-one wants to hear about how great my walk in the countryside was, or that I saw a lovely little dog outside of the greengrocer's. Because that really would be dull and also because those moments are for me. I enjoy being shallow, miserable and cynical because that's really not what I'm about - it makes me laugh, amuses me.

Another factor here - and we're getting deep into crock psychology here - is that I often like to play the weakest link. Nobody likes a smartarse, as I have discovered since an awfully young age. But they do like a funny one. People can often set a tone for others by their behaviour, and someone being supremely shit can put others at their ease.

Goofing off eases competitive tensions and means that people can have fun. This does, as a side bonus, solve my great paradox of being intensely competitive yet completely lacking in any sort of ability to crush anyone at anything. Checks and balances.

Now, I'll try and find something to be positive about, but I won't promise anything. In the meantime, if you catch me moaning - don't laugh, because you'll only encourage me. Besides, I probably don't mean it anyway.

We'll tak a right gude-willy waught for auld lang syne.

I'm not one for big set-piece celebrations - Christmas, New Year, birthdays - I've long ceased getting to excited about the actual occasions, but I do love a good excuse to entertain and be entertaining. Whilst I do enjoy seeing in the latest year with my family as I have done every year since I went to Paris with my friend Amy and we missed 12 o'clock because there were kids dropping fireworks underneath people's legs (what a trip that was, we didn't speak for three months afterwards), it was magnificent to spend this New Year's Eve away with friends.

It's like that BT Friends and Family thing that was big a few years back - your family is in the room, but your friends are the ones you choose to call and share your life with. Both have ups and downs, and all things in moderation. What's even better is when one of your friends lives in a barn conversions in Yorkshire. Barn conversion does this masterpiece an injustice - it is a beauty that dates back to the 1400s and a project some 25 years in completion, a Grand Design from the days when Kevin McCloud was just a twinkle in his project manager's eye.

It is great to have people around whom you're comfortable, where you can be relaxed and frolicsome and full of laughter. No bubbling subtext, just the excitement of catching up with those long unseen. I think that's what Robert Burns had in mind when he wrote Auld Lang Syne - "and we’ll tak a right gude-willy waught, for auld lang syne" - bottoms-up to old friends, basically.

I'll certainly drink to that, but not too much - I'm driving.

An open letter to 2011.

Dear 2011,

Of my many traditions on my blog (meaning things that I have done twice), writing a letter to welcome in the New Year is one of them. I wrote your ancestor 2009 and your sibling 2010 in their turn and now I am writing to you.

2009 was a portent of doom - it started off all jolly and excitable and ended in a quagmire of misery. 2010 was a little more circumspect, trudging a mean line that was very mean all the way through - thoroughly average, nothing spectacular. I don't know where to pitch the beginning of my 2011. Personally there is much to be excited about, the beginning of a new chapter of my life where I feel like I've been treading water for over 18 months.

For the first time in a long time I feel like I've got the oysters and the world and exciting things ahead - that's got to be good. It's not like that for the rest of the world, so best not to rub anyone's nose in it until I'm fully assured of a prosperous New Year, etc, etc.

My dear 2011, it is my sincerest hope that you do not get overwhelmed by those sodding Olympics that are happening in 2012. It must be difficult being a year where nothing really happens but you're next to a year where something really big does. Chin up - 2001 was worried about coming next to the millennium year and look what happened there. You could have a little epoch-shaping surprise in there somewhere.

I'm glad that we can measure our lives in more manageable bite-size chunks. Imagine if your whole life was one year, your only chance to make an impact. Years are a great opportunity by which we can measure ourselves, our lives, our progress. I hope that each will be a step up from the last, but I don't imagine that the sort of ecstatic nirvana you would naturally extrapolate from that by the age of 34 is really plausible.

There are ups and downs - thankfully I have at least the potential of more years to come. I'm sorry, 2011, that this is your one shot at the big time. I'll try and do my best for you, but I have to admit that I'm already feeling 2.5% less positive about your chances this 1st January.

Yours, etc, etc,

Sam