Happy New Year? What was wrong with the last one?

I saw them out on the streets, drinking themselves to oblivion in celebration of the passing of one year and the beginning of a new one. But what were they celebrating? What was the reason for the mass joyfulness? Surely if New Year's Eve is any sort of occasion it is a wake where we should reflect on the fact that we all now have one year less available to us, that we've all walked another mile on the road to nowhere.

Perhaps this is my problem. Or one of my problems, for between the itching and the twitching I surely have a range of them. One of my main purposes of starting this blog was to encourage me to live life a bit more, instead of trying to hoard it like a time squirrel storing away little nuts of time.

Which, for anybody still reading after the frankly ridiculous time-squirrel analogy, is pointless. You can't keep a few slices of life in reserve for when you think you might need them. Life, like it or not, is one of the few things that you run out of whether you use it or not, along with triple-A batteries and my secret cache of chocolates.


The sea, killing me one wave at a time.


The Flaming Lips  sang:

Do You Realise - that happiness makes you cry,
Do You Realise - that everyone you know someday will die
And instead of saying all of your goodbyes - let them know you realise that life goes fast
It's hard to make the good things last.
You realize the sun doesn't go down
It's just an illusion caused by the world spinning round.

And that's the issue. I do realise. I realise all too much. So if I see you and I don't say 'Hello', don't take offence, it's just that I don't want to have to say 'Goodbye'.