As much as I like to pretend I am perfection personified, the truth is I am a deeply flawed individual.

My life is literally littered with bad decisions and unfortunate choices, the results of which continue to dog my days on a daily basis.

It’s fine to reflect upon ones mistakes, as long as one is not mistaken into thinking that something can be done to rectify them. The choices you make can’t usually be undone and the consequences will be with you until the day you die and may even continue to effect others after you’re gone.

I’ve got no particular decisions in mind, this has more to do with a general overview than anything specific.

I don’t want you to think every choice I’ve made in my life has been wrong, I’ve made some good choices too, but lately I’ve been thinking about some of those moments in my life, where I zigged when perhaps I should have zagged.

It’s easy to second guess your own decisions after the fact, when the fullness of time and experience yield the missing pieces of the puzzle that weren’t available at the time of taking the decision. It’s also an exercise in futility.

Much of life is futile and pointless, so its not really enough of a reason not to think about these things.

There’s a theory that states every time a decision is made, the universe is split and alternative realities follow both paths and that all of existence consists of a “multi-verse” of infinite existence. Everything that can happen, does happen, just not in your reality.

Somewhere in the multi-verse, there’s a version of me that successful, happy and fully fulfilled. No doubt taller, too.

How’d I get stuck in this reality? If there really is a multi-verse, then in at least one of them (and possibly many more), I’m king of the planet and in charge of you all. Don’t worry, if there are infinite possibilities, then you get to be king or queen of the world yourself, and I get to be your slave.

Not all of the realities in the multi-verse would be sunny, as I expect there are plenty that don’t turn out as well. Think about it, how many realities exist without me? Perhaps in some, I was still born and never even got to take my first breath.

I know that even when my decisions have been wrong, they’ve been right for me at the time. I have to believe that, because I can’t travel back in time and change them. At least not yet, anyway, but give me another six months and my time machine will be up and running and I’ll be charging loads of dosh for rides to the past and future. Think you can afford it?

My many personality flaws, at least as I see them, colour my every move. I’m certainly my own worst enemy and I’m more responsible for holding myself back than anyone else.

I used to genuinely believe that anything is possible, but as I get older, I’m less convinced. As you get older, the corridor of options narrows and while you may still create the illusion of choice, your choices become more and more limited with each passing day.

I can’t remember where I heard this one, but it made a lot of sense: “You spend the first half of your life acquiring things and the second half having them all taken away from you.”

I’m undeniably in the 2nd half of my life. It’s not too much of a stretch to see where things are going for me. Its all downhill from here.

Can you tell that my birthday is approaching? It’s about 2 months away. Hey ho.

If I had the chance to do it all again, would I do things differently? Of course I would, what honest person wouldn’t?

That doesn’t mean I would do everything differently, but there are a few wrongs I would certainly put right.

It doesn’t matter because no one gets a second chance, except in the multi-verse reality where reincarnation happens and it was just my luck not to end up in that one either.

Socrates said “the unexamined life is not worth living”. If that is really true, then I have the most worthy life known to man.

Either that or my narcissistic tendencies are starting to overwhelm being an obsessive-compulsive sociopath with manic-depressive tendencies.

You have a nice day, too.

This is turning into the diary of the infirm.

Sorry, I know this used to be the capital of online fun. Maybe I should bring back the virtual blackjack tables? At least the house would always win.

I’m still feeling crap. The medication I’m taking is providing me with a host of side effects, all of them seriously dull and no fun.

I saw my GP again last week, he changed the brand of the meds I’m taking, which has subtracted a lot of the nausea, but not all of it and I still have the other side effects. Like breathlessness, heart palpitations, dizziness, headaches, tiredness, confusion and forgetfulness…need I go on?

My GP ordered more tests, which he says is to rule out some other things, rather than confirm anything he suspects. I think that’s supposed to be comforting.

My back seems to be holding its own. I still have pain, but I can cope with it. I’m still seeing the chiropractor, twice a week down from three visits and its always better after an adjustment. It tends to slide back a bit in between though, which I think is down to the fact that my thyroid levels aren’t right yet. The inflammation is being held at bay, but it’s not disappearing completely because whatever originally caused it, is still causing it.

My thyroid levels won’t be right for a while, as my GP says the dose I am on now, that is giving me all these fun side effects, will most likely needed to be increased after my next blood test. Doubled, actually. I can’t wait.

I haven’t felt like posting much lately, which is annoying because there’s loads I’d like to write about, I just don’t have the attention span to focus very long.

For all the jokes and references I’ve made about being middle aged, I’ve never really felt it in my bones. These days, not only do I feel it, I think I look the part too. It’s all dreadfully tedious and I’m bored of it all already.

I liked it better when I thought I was healthy. Clearly, I wasn’t really healthy, but I thought I was and isn’t that what really matter?

My doctor says that once my medication is sorted out, I’ll feel better than ever. Right now, I find that really hard to believe. When you feel shitty every day, its hard to be even a little bit positive about anything.

The following is a hippy health update:

I haven’t mentioned how I’ve been feeling for a bit, because I’ve pretty much been feeling the same. There’re two pieces of good news, though…I’ve got a definitive diagnosis. I have something called Hashimoto’s Disease.

Hashimoto’s Disease is an auto-immune disorder, probably genetic in origin and it causes my bodies T-cells to attack my Thyroid Gland, resulting in Hypothyroidism, which is an under-active Thyroid and causes all sorts of metabolism problems.

And Dr. Hashimoto is the guy that discovered it and it is the first recognised auto-immune disorder.

This diagnosis ties together all sorts of symptoms I’ve had over the last 6 months to a year that I hadn’t really put together or even thought were symptoms of anything. I just thought I was getting old!

Mainly, it explains the acute inflammation in my back, which continues to cause me pain, though not nearly as bad as it was when it started. I never thought my back problems would be caused by something bigger and scarier!

My other symptoms included loss of energy, appetite and concentration, poor sleep, a lump in my throat and flutters in my chest. I’ve had all of those things to one degree or another and I simply attributed them to middle age and my erratic work and sleep patterns. Silly me. I didn’t put any of this together.

When the back trouble started, I began treatment with a chiropractor, who I credit with helping a lot, but I still couldn’t completely shake the pain. After three weeks I saw my GP, because I thought I might have Shingles - I had a minor rash on my side. It turned out I didn’t have Shingles, but my GP ordered an x-ray (which was negative) and a battery of blood tests, which included a test for Thyroid function.

The test came back and confirmed my diagnosis. My GP also prodded my throat and said he could feel my swollen Thyroid Gland. I had noticed a slight sensation when swallowing for a while, but didn’t think anything of it. It wasn’t painful, or even uncomfortable, it was just different.

I’ve learned a valuable lesson and that’s to listen more closely to what my body is telling me and to do something about it!

Thankfully, Hashimoto’s Disease is very treatable and I will be on a medication called Levathyroxine for the rest of my life. It replaces the Thyroid Hormone my body no longer produces and once they get my dosage to the correct level, my body will go back to normal, whatever normal is…

I’m having side effects from this medication, nausea, sweats, and palpitations mainly, but these should pass soon. I hope.

Left untreated, it could eventually cause heart failure and death, so its a very good thing my doctor caught this. I’m lucky I have a good GP too.

Oh and the other good news is thanks to Hashimoto’s Disease and my cool new daily medication, I now get free NHS prescriptions for life. Now all I need them to do is approve cannabis prescriptions on the NHS and this disease stops being a curse and it becomes a real blessing!

Anyway kids, your Uncle Hippy is on the mend and it won’t be long before I’m back to my old self and trying to touch you all up again!

Greetings and salutations. Hello. Welcome. Yes, I am still alive.

Well, I’m as alive as I can be, following my recent health troubles.

For the last 15 days I’ve been suffering with serious back trouble. I could barely walk for the first week or so, every step was pure agony. Sitting was agony too and laying down was impossible. I was well and truly fucked.

I’ve been seeing a chiropractor and I think he’s helped a lot. I’ve had countless adjustments, starting with a home visit because I couldn’t get to his office. I’m walking well now and have much less pain, I’m hoping to return to work later in the week.

This episode really freaked me out, I was practically crippled. I couldn’t even make it to the loo without assistance from Mrs. H, I couldn’t get dressed, prepare a meal, do any household chores. I couldn’t even sit at my desk and use my iMac, I couldn’t use my laptop for the first week or so. If it wasn’t for my iPhone, I would have been completely cut off from the world.

There’s a sense of panic and desperation that one is overcome with in these situations and I was no exception. As I sat upright on my sofa, for the fifth or sixth night, desperately trying to snatch an hour or two of light, unsatisfying sleep, dark and dangerous thoughts would bubble to the surface of my brain.

What if this is permanent?

What if this is the beginning of my slow, gradual health decline leading to my premature death.

What if I don’t get better?

What if the excruciating pain never ends?

What if….

I found myself having mini-panic attacks, hyperventilating slightly and relief not coming through the codeine or spliffs.

Though my back may be improving, I find myself filled with a lingering, nagging depression over my future.

Is this the beginning of the end?

They say that every second after your born, you are one second closer to death, so in the more general sense, the end has no beginning; or rather the beginning of the end, begins at the very beginning.

But that’s not what I mean. I just have this horrible, deep feeling that my best years are well and truly behind me. It’s probably true, as its undoubtedly true that I’ve lived more than half my life already as the chances of me even coming close to 90 are slim to none.

I’m feeling my mortality and I don’t like it. I feel like I’ve aged in the last fortnight, like my years have finally caught up with me. I don’t feel youthful, as I always have, instead I’ve felt like a decrepit old man.

The thought of a slow, painful slide towards death fills me with dread. I don’t want to suffer through a litany of minor and major health problems until one of them finally snuffs me out. That just sounds horrible!

I suppose death is very much on my mind because of the death of my cat a few weeks ago, which I witnessed firsthand in all its miserable, torturous glory. While her death was mercifully quick, she didn’t go gently into that goodnight.

Watching her contort and struggle against the hand of the grim reaper has had a profound effect on me, though I am still trying to decipher what exactly what effect it has had. I’d never actually been with any living creature, human or animal, at the point of death until her passing three weeks ago.

My younger brother, who is far more spiritual than I could ever hope to be, says I absorbed something from this experience, which manifested itself with my back trouble, or perhaps was this was the trigger for it. I can’t say I am convinced.

When the chiropractor was taking my background and history, one of his first questions was if I suffered any traumas recently; my cat died about a week before the real pain started, though I had soreness in my back a few days before it really hit me.

The chiropractor said that my back trouble was building up over time, that the inflammation had worsened to the point of spasms in my back muscles, causing acute pain.

Is this a coincidence of timing or definitive cause and effect? I couldn’t really say. You could convincingly put across either side of this argument and I just don’t know.

All of this has left me hating aging and mortality even more than before and I didn’t think that was possible. What’s a self-confessed sociopath and amateur narcissist to do?

Keep hoping that someone works out a way to download my brain into a computer after the death of my body, so I can continue to exist, in digital form. How else can I hope to keep posting drivel here throughout eternity?

I am in severe pain and have been for 5 days. I did something to my back.

I have no idea what I’ve done, but I do know it hurts like a motherfucker.

It started on Monday morning, when I woke up. My back was sore and stiff and I wasn’t moving well. By Tuesday, I could hardly walk and by Weds I was glued to my sofa. Getting up is a struggle, walking is nearly impossible. I’ve tried to get out to a chiropractor twice, but couldn’t manage it. I’m getting a home visit tomorrow, he thinks he can help me.

I’m missing out on loads of work, I’m not sleeping well or eating. A trip to the loo takes 10 minutes. This is seriously no fucking fun.

Thankfully, Mrs. H has been around to take care of me, or I would be royally screwed.

It’s a struggle to even type this on my laptop, and sitting at my iMac is not an option. I’ve been surfing lots on my iPhone though. I’m really glad I’ve got it.

I’m heavily dosed up on codeine and weed, which is keeping me chilled, but not touching the pain. Please send me all your cool and groovy healing vibes, because this hippy needs to get better and quick!

My cat died suddenly yesterday. She was old and in decline for the last few months and I did know the end was nearing, but it was still a shock to have it happen like this.

One minute before she died, she was eating. I’d helped her to her dish in the kitchen and left her there, happily munching away and returned to the living room. All of the sudden, one of my other cats leapt with a start and I heard the sound of something falling over in the hallway. I thought it was just some post coming through the letter slot in the front door. I was wrong.

It was my cat, she’d fallen over with what I am fairly sure was a stroke. She was gone in about 2 minutes, but I was there with her.

She was around 16 years old, but its possible she could have been older. Mrs. H got her in 1994 as a fully grown cat, I knew her for over 11 years.

Before Mrs. H got her from the local shelter, she had been living in the local market, existing on scraps and hand-outs from the traders. She loved people food and if it was good enough to be on your plate, it was good enough for her - she’s eat anything, fruit, veg, meat, cheese, bread, you name it, though of course we mainly fed her cat food.

On Monday night, she had cheese from a pizza and licked the remnants of a bowl of chocolate ice cream, which was her absolute favourite.

I appreciate if you’re not a pet lover that this post is probably tedious reading for you. I am a pet lover, I’ve had dogs and cats my entire life. The relationships you have with your pets are some of the most honest relationships you can have.

My cat hadn’t been well for the last few months. She gone mostly blind, her appetite was decreasing and her back legs were getting weaker. I would be lying if I said I didn’t consider putting her down and my one real regret is that I didn’t trust my instincts. The day before she died I thought about it and even yesterday it crossed my mind more than once. I could have spared her a brief, yet horrible death.

Dying is horrible and witnessing my cat’s passing was distressing. While it was mercifully brief, my cat fought and struggled to her very last breath, but that’s what she was like. She was a fighter and didn’t take shit from anyone, not even Death, though in the end, Death always wins.

I spent the last couple of days talking to my cat, telling her how much I would miss her when she was gone. I really did sense that the end was extremely near. My other three cats were all distressed as well when she died and could sense something was very wrong. And even though I cleaned up the spot in the hallway where she passed, they are still sniffing around it. They know, even if they don’t understand.

Pets are part of your family, they have personalities and strong characters and are loyal and faithful companions, dogs and cats alike. When you lose one, it hurts and hurts deeply.

I can remember when I was a child and we lost a pet, my mother being so very distraught that she would always announce with great authority and finality, that this was the end and she would have no more pets, ever, because losing them is so painful. It’s not fair that they have such brief life spans!

I’ve lost 2 cats in the last year and it doesn’t get any easier. I’m lucky now, the three I have are all quite young and I hope it will be a good long time before I have to face losing any more.

I’m going to miss my sweet little girl so much, I already do now and she hasn’t even been gone 24 hours.

In truth, she was partly gone already, as I watched her health decline, especially over the last week or so. I know its a cliché, but she is at peace now. Every day was increasingly becoming a struggle for her. She doesn’t have to struggle any more.

I hate death. It sucks, but I think the dying part is the worst of all.

The entire month of April slipped quickly and effortlessly through my fingers. I say “effortlessly” because that is precisely how much effort I’ve put into my site this month and for that I am ashamed.

You shouldn’t have to pay the price for this and you won’t, which is why I am extending the deadline on my “bubbler contest” until the 1st of June, so there is still plenty more time to enter. And don’t worry if you’ve already entered, your email still counts very much so and you will continue to have an equal chance with everyone else.

I’ve had loads of emails with questions about the contest, which I will answer here in a mini-FAQ:

Is the contest for real? YES

What’s in it for you? SELF PROMOTION

Do I just send you an email to enter? YES

Will you really post me the bubbler if I win? YES

How will you choose the winners? LITTLE PIECES OF PAPER WITH YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS WILL BE PUT IN A BOWL AND I WILL WITHDRAW 16 OF THEM, ONE FOR EACH PRIZE, FROM 1ST ON DOWN.

Will you announce the winners? JUST THEIR INITIALS AND WILL CONTACT EACH ONE INDIVIDUALLY TO ASK FOR THEIR MAILING ADDRESS

And that’s it for now. Get entering!

While I’m here, a quick update on why I haven’t been here. I’ve been working too much, I’ve been distracted by other things, most notably a book which I will review at some point here, because it deserves to be read and I’ve been sorting out the usual bullshit at my north London lair.

My SKY+ box died a couple of weeks ago and I thought it was gone for good, but I was able to give it a master reset and getting it going again…for about 2 more weeks before it well and truly went to that great gadget shop in the SKY. It was around 5-6 years old, an original V1 Pace box and I’m surprised it lasted as long as it did.

I booked a call out with SKY, which costs £65 and included a replacement box and I really didn’t have a choice. Well, I did, I could have used this as an opportunity to upgrade to SKY HD, but I’m still not convinced its worth the extra dosh with so little proper HD content available.

The SKY engineer was cool and it took him all of ten minutes to swap the boxes and pair the new one up with my card. The box he installed is a PACE V3, with an 80gb hard drive, though I think that some of it is partitioned for SKY Anytime, which is where SKY choose programmes they think are the best of the week and record them to your hard drive in the background. It can be disabled if you don’t like it, but I thought I would give it a go and see what its like. I’m not convinced if you switch it off that it will free up the other half of the hard drive for my recordings, but its worth looking into if the SKY selected shows are crap.

The new box is about a third the size of my old one, its really dinky. It’s also a bit noisier than the old one, either because of the fan or the hard drive and I’m not certain which. It seems to work well so far and isn’t much different from the old one, except for the aforementioned ANYTIME feature.

It’s not just a device that died, but I found out last night that one of my mother’s sisters, my favourite aunt passed away over the weekend. She was nearly 84 and it sounds like she was surrounded by loved ones and went peacefully. Whatever the fuck that means.

I don’t like many of my relatives, and to be honest I downright despise quite a few of them, but not this particular aunt. She was really special and yes, I know people always say nice things about the dead, but I would have said the same last week, when she was among the living. She was consistently kind, generous and loving and was beloved by many, myself and my younger brother among them.

I hadn’t seen her in years, as is true of 99% of my family and its probably been 4-5 years since I spoke to her on the telephone. I would have liked to chat with her, but she’d become quite deaf and the telephone wasn’t really an option.

One of my earliest childhood memories, which is vague and hazy as I would expect of a minor event prior to my 3rd birthday, over 40 years ago to be, is of my aunt visiting us in a house we lived in, in 1965. She took me for a walk up to a nearby supermarket and I can just remember being excited by this unusual outing with an aunt that I loved and trusted. It’s just a small memory, but I still carry it around with me to this day.

Good bye my dear, sweet aunt, you will always be remembered fondly by the many people whose lives you touched, including mine.

Ho hum.

As much as I dig being the northlondonhippy and believe me, I do, sometimes I struggle to force myself to sit down in front of my computer to produce high quality, web-based content that both informs and entertains.

In other words, sometimes I just can’t be arsed.

I’ve always got ideas and a running list of a dozen topics which would dazzle the average hippyfan. Of course, you are above average and require a higher standard from this hippy. Don’t worry, I’ll disappoint you all today.

I’m actually in a reasonable mood this week as I took delivery of my fancy new coffee set up. I’ll do a proper post on it in the near future, but I am pleased to report that I am already pulling reasonable shots and producing quite drinkable cappuccinos and lattes.

I’m sure its not helping that my birthday is imminent. I think that’s why January sucks so badly, because right off the back of the stupid holidays comes my dumb birthday.

Getting old sucks. Yes, highly original and thought provoking, wouldn’t you agree?

I don’t really mind getting older, not that I have a choice or would prefer the alternative, but that’s because I don’t look my age. How much longer can people still see me as youthful? I’m forty-fucking-five years old for fucks sake!

My birthday brings out my ageing obsession, but don’t despair, it peaks every year around January and fades into the background soon after that. Then I can move onto other obsessions, like my utter failure at life.

Haha.

I don’t really feel like a failure, but it’s amusing to make jokes about it.

Considering all my faults, its amazing I’ve done as well as I have out of life and I thank Satan every day for doing that deal with me back when I was a teenager. Eternal souls are overrated anyway, or at least that’s what my master, er beastmaster tells me. If only I thought to ask him to make me taller! Being short sucks more than getting old, any day!

We’re already over a week into 2008 and I haven’t posted a thing. In that case, belated New Year greetings and seasonal wishes to you. I hope that this brand new year brings you everything you’ve ever hoped and dreamed for.

This is a shitty time of year for me, as I am not a fan of the holiday season, cold, grey weather, or my birthday which is also falls this month. Another year down the drain is all I can think.

I’m going to be 45 this month, which is undeniably middle-age, or at least how we define it. The reality of me actually making it to 90 is laughably ludicrous, which makes the term middle-aged a total sham in my case.

I don’t feel 45, not that I even know what 45 should feel like. I still feel 15, which could say more about my stunted emotional growth than anything else. Ageing is the physical process, maturity refers to your mental age. Maybe I am 15?

Sometimes I think I am obsessed with ageing and growing old; it’s even a category on my blog. I do think about it too much. It’s the passage of time that really gets me, not the growing old.

My life is finite. I only have so much time and with each day that slips by, I have less. If I am really hoping to accomplish anything with my life, I better get my skates on or come to terms with the reality that my dreams will never come true. I’m not sure which one is worse.

The change in the calendar, combined with a milestone birthday is really bumming me out. You see, even hippies get the blues. Forty-five years of underachievement and failure can have that effect on even the cheeriest of souls and trust me fuckers, the last thing I am is cheery!

What’s a poor hippy to do?

The usual, just keep plodding along, doing whatever it is I do and distracting myself as best I can. If it weren’t for soft drugs and consumer purchases, my life would be as empty as a void in deep space!

Oh and don’t forget my exercises in creative futility! I am going to record that album of original northlondonhippy music!

And I am going to work on my novel. My real novel, the one I have been planning for over a decade. I did knock out 2 other novels in the last few years, the second one will be published soon I hope. They’re not under my real name, they’re not even under my hippy banner. I don’t really count them, but they were fun to write.

My real novel will actually be done under my REAL NAME. I don’t do anything under my real name, so that should tell you how serious I’m taking it. It’s also why I’ve been taking so long with it, I want to get this one 100% right. I want it to be a literary masterwork, which perfectly captures the human condition.

I want a lot of things.

Like right now, what I want is a high-end, pump driven, espresso machine and this has become my latest obsession. I’ve been hanging out on a couple of coffee-obsessive websites, CoffeeGeek and HomeBarista are my two current favourites. If you’re serious about coffee, you should really have a look.

Don’t laugh. The pursuit of the perfect espresso is right up this hippy’s street. After all, caffeine is a drug and we all know I dig drugs and I also adore a good ritual as prerequisite to enjoying any drug. Espresso extraction is a skill and at the hobbiest level and beyond, it becomes a religion.

There are some seriously serious people out there making some amazing coffee at home and I want to be one of them. I’ve been doing research online for the last month or so and am now ready to take the plunge.

The first thing I learned is that the grinder you buy is every bit as important as the espresso machine you choose. And if you’re serious about coffee, you will only want beans freshly roasted, they start to go stale after around 2 weeks. You need to spend at least 50% of what you spend on the espresso machine, on a decent grinder.

Pulling the perfect shot of espresso isn’t simple, it requires knowledge, practise and skill, but if you can master this, you will be rewarded with exceptional coffee every time.

The home espresso scene is nowhere near as big in the UK as it is in north America, but there are several companies specialising in high-end kit. After a lot of research and careful consideration, I’ve decided to go with the Rancilio Silvia espresso machine, paired with Rancilio’s Rocky grinder - the doserless model. It has quite a good reputation with aficionados online, but is not an easy machine to master. I think that’s part of the appeal, that I will have to work hard to get the best results.

That’s what hobbies are; distractions from reality. My new found coffee obsession is a healthy diversion from the things that bring me down. Once I have perfected my extraction technique and I am regularly fuelled with the finest cappuccinos, expertly crafted, I will be buzzing with caffeine. That in turn should inspire me to spend more of my increasing limited free time, writing. Everyone wins!

I’ll be ordering my new machine hopefully this week, as soon as they come back in stock following a rush on them for xmas. I’m hoping that by next week, I’ll be brewing my own, right here in my north London lair. How fucking cool with that be!

My life might not be perfect, but at least my coffee soon will be!

Happy fucking xmas, fuckers!

I hope you all stuffed your faces and got got everything on your wish list; not limited to, but probably including: an iPhone, an iPod Touch, an iPod nano, a MacBook, a PSP, a PS3 and if you are seriously lucky, a Wii and if you are super lucky, naturally you found an nlh deluxe under your tree!

I’ve had a fairly normal xmas, well normal for me, because I’ve worked right through the holidays and I ain’t finished yet! I worked xmas eve, xmas day and I am working tonight, boxing day too.

Apparently, loads of people have to work over xmas, only I didn’t “have” to. I chose to and given the chance, I will probably choose to again next year.

Next year is a long way, away. Who knows what the next 12 months may bring? Do you? If you answered yes, then email me with some horse racing results for next week, or better yet the lottery numbers for the next giant rollover. Please?

The first xmas I ever sold was 18 years ago. I was offered the chance to do a shift in a newsroom in NYC for double pay, 400 cool dollaroonies.

Did I just type “dollaroonies”? I must be stoned.

I am.

I remember ringing up my mother and informing her that I was going to be a newswhore for xmas and I’d be missing the usual family gathering. That was 1989. She was less than impressed, but ka-ching! That was a lot of money! It still is!

As a kid growing up, xmas was a big deal and in my (now estranged) extended family, there was much celebrating to do with both my mother’s and father’s side of the family.

As I got older and we fell out with various branches of our family tree, xmas’s were downscaled, but still big events in my immediate family.

I liked it mainly for the gifts.

Xmas stopped being fun when I stopped getting bicycles.

The last xmas I shared with my parents was 1991 and every year since, I’ve either worked or just not gone. My dad died in Sept 2004, my mother is very disabled and has been confined to a bed, following a stroke in 2003 and now lives in a nursing home. That’s 13 xmas’s avoided.

I tried to write about all of this last year and I couldn’t finish it. I went into far more detail and skipping down memory lane was difficult, if not impossible and I gave up. I still have what I wrote, but I haven’t been able to bring myself to read it again. Hey ho.

For most people, I think the holidays are pure stress. All you need to do is visit your local high street or shopping district and watch how cunty everyone is to each other to see proof of this. Expectations have to be met at all costs, even if it means elbowing some old lady out of the way, so you can get the last copy of Nigella Express.

Xmas for me, has come to mean my family, my immediate family. When I think about xmas, I think about the four of us, my parents, my younger brother and me.

I can remember spending many xmas eve’s unable to sleep, because I was so excited; adrenaline coursing though my veins, making it impossible to rest.

I can remember the smell of my mother’s home-baked xmas cookies.

I can remember my dad swearing when he thought I couldn’t hear him, as he tried valiantly to assemble some crappy toy that wouldn’t survive in one piece for more than a week.

And I can remember my younger brother, just as excited as me, checking to see if our parents were awake at ridiculously early times, because we weren’t allowed to go downstairs until they were ready to accompany us for the ritual ripping of the wrapping paper.

I can remember more, much more, but it all just depresses me now because I’ll never have those times with my family again. I can’t.

These days, I don’t get excited about xmas, instead I count the seconds until it’s the 2nd of January. Then its all over and I can exhale.

Though when I think about that first xmas I sold, back in 1989, for 400 dollaroonies, I wish I could give them a refund. Four hundred bucks for one more xmas with my family would be the bargain of the millennium!

I hope wherever you are, all your holiday dreams came true and you spent it with people far less miserable than me. Maybe having me trapped behind a desk over the holidays is good for everyone, not just me. We’ll never know…