Bah Humbug

It snowed today. I don’t like snow, at least not how it snows in the South West of England. In the South West of England it’s always wet and it always turns to mush within five minutes. It’s depressing seeing the kids so excited about a few flakes, scrabbling around in the muck for some crumbs to make snowballs to throw at each other. And I say snowballs, when really they’re more like mud balls with some specks of white in.

Old misery guts, yeah that’s me. So what?

I hate this time of year. I hate it because it’s cold and wet and because everyone wears forced fake smiles and puts pressure on everyone else to conform to their expectations of what ought to happen at this time of year. Maybe that’s what I hate the most: the expectations and the accusations of misery-guts whenever someone simply doesn’t want to conform to those expectations. Sometimes you know I wish I were a bear or something else that hibernates… I’d at least love to be able to hide away for the month of December. Or maybe only from mid-December until the start of January. Escape the whole Holiday Festive hype. Whatever.

Alex said a few months ago that he had this image us four of us (him, Neal, Clare and me) this holiday season all sat around an open fire drinking mulled wine, snow piling up in the window. It’s a nice image, but I’m sure he knows as well as I that it’s not going to happen. I mean, really… Alex is as much a dreamer as me, which is admirable and strangely comforting. I remember when he made that film in college and I saw it and nearly started crying because, aw hell, just because.

And today I mailed Sethe, or Doris, or H, or whatever she may be called in my head today, with a stupid email about a stupid story involving roses and Belle and Sebastian lyrics… orange roses they were… and… and wrote something about how the ‘and's’ of our lives creep up and carve gaping holes in our hearts when we aren't looking. Or something that makes equally little sense, as indeed do twelve orange roses in the thoughts of sparklers. And, here’s another And: And did I ever show you that dried up rose in the tin with the candy hearts? And did I ever tell you I remember the day she pressed that rose into my hand like it was yesterday? Like it was burnt onto the retina of my soul.

I should shut up now.

Fucking snow…

posted by duke harringay at 7:07 PM