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2019 and the 2010s done and dusted in one brutal second. Lots of people Facebooking about the huge changes in their lives in that decade. I jokingly participated by saying at the end of 2009 I was podcasting and at the end of 2019 I was podcasting. But to be fair, at my age, just keeping your head above water and staying in the same place is an achievement.
And this decade has seen me get married, have two kids and (best of all) win two House of Games trophies, so I can’t complain (even if it also includes three Pointless defeats).
I know the world has gone a bit batshit, but I think a lot of that is down to us not really knowing what to call the decade for the last twenty years. Now we’re going to be in the twenties I think everything will settle down and there will be no more political upheaval. Unless there's a huge pandemic of some kind and we all have to stay inside, unless we don't feel like it or we need to go for a drive to find out if we can see.
I am a bit worried about the lack of environmental concern taking place, given it seems we have limited time to turn things around, but hopefully God will turn up and reset the thermostats if we all pray hard enough.
On the whole though, this has been a fun and successful decade for me and I come out of it a better and more together person than I came into it. Which is all we can personally hope for.
I have a charmed and lucky life and it seems unlikely that I can keep up this fortunate run without something going seriously wrong. But evens I reckon the 2020s are going to be my decade.
Or possibly my final decade. But either way, well played me. Hello December 31st 2029 me if you’re looking back on this. You’re only 62. It feels like you should be way older than that.
All of us reading this have got this far. Not all of us will get to 2030, but fingers crossed you and I at least will make it. Fuck the rest of the idiots reading this. It’s only us two that matter. I’ll be upset if either of us aren’t here for the last entry of this decade (will I still be doing this by then? I mean, it seems likely to be fair - I may not be the best blogger, but I intend to be the last one).
I got through the year without a (deliberate) drink and wasn’t tempted to toast the year out with champagne. I will push on for the moment and hope to get to the end of January at something like my summer fighting weight. For the second year running we didn’t even stay up to greet the new year. Midnight is a bit of a stretch for us these days, even though the kids are sleeping a lot more reliably (we’re still up at 6.30 most days even so). I never liked New Year and it’s enforced celebration anyway and am very glad to step away and do my own thing. We watched a film in front of the fire and my wife had a couple of drinks and then in bed and asleep by 10.30pm. What a pair of legends.
I did manage to knock out a couple of end of year podcasts - introducing the forward facing God, Anus to the
Stone Clearing podcast millions and then sneakily trying to record a snooker frame, when I should have been working on my scripts, terrified that my wife would find out what I was doing and be furious with me as she wasn’t looking after the kids so I could play snooker.
I was actually at a stage of the writing process where I required a distraction to let things cogitate in the background, but even though she’s a writer too, that’s not really her method and so I don’t think she’d believe it. It led to some sloppy play and
a funny podcast where I am trying not to make noise.
I thought I got away with it, but as I came downstairs she appeared stoney faced and said, “Have you been playing pool?”
POOL??!!
For so many reasons my wife doesn’t understand me. But to be fair, I am not sure there are many people who do.
Either that or she knew what to say to hurt me the most.
After that I couldn’t really not take my turn with the kids and whisked them off to the supermarket, foolishly thinking that no one else would be doing that on New Year’s Eve. But everyone was and it was a living Hell.
Happy New decade everyone, (but especially you).
