Sweet sweet, the memories you gave to me

What can I do but prostrate myself before you all by way of abject apology? I haven’t blogged since, well, the last time, which was absolutely ages ago. I have no excuses other than to say that nothing much has moved me enough recently to warrant it being broadcast to the four corners of the earth – not that the earth has four corners, of course, or any corners come to that, but you know what I mean. Also, I have been very busy (that might be a feeble excuse, by the way). Sometimes, something prompts me to think about something and, sure enough, a discussion in the chatroom about Sparkly’s uni offers prompted me to think about something. Just goes to show how right I can be! It revived the memory of my eldest son’s three years at Bath. I remember the wonderful time he had. I remember the unutterable sadness I felt when we took him there on his first day and then left him – in a strange place, after 19 years at home (I'll never forget the image of him in my rear-view mirror standing in the car park alone). I remembered how I thought it was stupid that they had to drink loads of vodka BEFORE they went out. I remembered the love and camaraderie they had and that I never experienced in my youth when I was too much of a tosser to realise that I shouldn’t have done what I did at grammar school. And I remembered the pride when we went to his graduation ceremony. His brother is not going to university (and I am no less proud of him because of it); he is by no means stupid, being talented in a different way. They both have the same ability to wring the humour out of a situation; I wonder if that’s all they got from me? Hopefully not - they know right from wrong, and that Manchester United are the spawn of the devil! I am very proud of them both but, regrettably, I could never say to their face that I love them – that would just embarrass all of us. But I do, of course.

A year out

Well, my first blogversary went without incident. Come to think of it, it went completely unremarked – despite being in the Calendar. In fact, I forgot about it myself! So, since the end of November 2004, you have suffered the burden of been deriving enormous pleasure from reading a variety of garbled dissertations erudite and brilliantly written treatises ranging from the unutterably sad to the, well, if I'm honest, deeply sad (that last 'sad' being the meaning of 'sad' which is different from that of the first 'sad'). I wonder what the next 12 months holds? Merry Xmas! Merry Christmas!