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I had big plans to be a better blogger this year. Following my ill-horse-induced hiatus, I started to pick up the threads in December, writing, visiting and generally settling back into the blogosphere. But it's already February and it's almost two weeks since I have blogged.
I blame Facebook. I joined in January, just to have a look. Initially, that's all I did. Then my sister joined and quickly became addicted. She badgered me about it and I started to play. Then I started to understand the attraction. Just like when I began blogging, almost a year ago, I discovered a new and - dare I say it - addictive world. Except Facebook wasn't a totally new world; it was peopled by lots of lost friends, colleagues and acquaintances. Suddenly, I was corresponding with people I hadn't seen in more than a decade and thinking about the fun I used to have; Friday afternoons in the pub that stretched into drunken evenings; sunny days when we sat, legs dangling out of first floor windows singing along with The Monkees; feeling filled with energy and enthusiasm.
Of course, it's inevitable I will compare that with how I feel now. Yes, I am quite content, but I am tired. I start to think - again - that I'm getting old. I look at the subject matter of my blogs so far this year and there is a slight theme emerging: worrying about my age. I still have a year and a half left in my thirties but I feel I am on the cusp betwixt young and old. I don't know how old you have to be for a mid-life crisis. Is it too early to buy a Harley Davidson?
Five o'clock in a Friday night city centre is a special place. Picking your way across a road filled with snarled up traffic, you can sense a crackle in the air: energy, anticipation, expectation. Already, people are sucking hard on ciggies outside pubs and buskers by escalators advertise their MySpace pages on guitar cases as they seranade commuters with Oasis's best.
As you rush, caught up in the stream of humanity tasting the freedom of the weekend, you think how pleasant it would be if you too were on your way to the pub. You remember other Friday nights after work, fag in one hand, gin and tonic in the other. Friends and drinks and maybe dancing later. Or home to shower and change, TFI Friday on Channel 4, red wine, then out on the town. Bouncing along, buoyed up on the wave carrying you into the weekend; no time to stop to catch your breath.
Now, although I can feel those ripples of energy, they aren't strong enough to support me. I no longer have sufficient oomph of my own to sail into the weekend without stopping. Now at the end of the week, uncorking a bottle of wine is just about my limit.
So, that’s another weekend gone. You spend half the week looking forward to it, then, wham, bam, it’s passed you by in a blur. And, if you’re me, you probably haven’t managed to do half of the things you’d decided put off until the weekend.
Sometimes, I wish I could press a pause button on time. I spend so much time willing it to speed up (when I’m bored, when I’m skint and pay day seems a long way off), then looking back and asking myself: “Where did that day/week/month/year go?”
I’ve been watching and listening to the TV and radio coverage marking the 40th anniversary of the release of Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. I listened to that album a lot in the months before I went to university. It staggers me to think that it was 20 years ago this September that I went to uni. I was as distant then from the release of Sergeant Pepper’s as I am now from leaving home and striking out alone.
Andrew Marr’s A History of Modern Britain is fascinating me. The world he is describing seems distant and alien; but it’s not. Just look over your shoulder and crane your neck to see around that last bend in the road. I can’t believe it’s 25 years since the Falklands War. I can’t believe it’s already seven years since the Millennium. When I was a kid, I thought I’d be old when the year turned from 1999 to 2000. Perhaps I am.
I had big plans to be a better blogger this year. Following my ill-horse-induced hiatus, I started to pick up the threads in December, writing, visiting and generally settling back into the blogosphere. But it's already February and it's almost two weeks since I have blogged.
