Hang on a minute, 2011.

At the end of a long ten second countdown amidst general group shouting and jostled movement I took the time to observe my surroundings. The red faced old men and young brawlers of my home town swayed in and out of my peripheral vision clutching at the arms and affections of strikingly unattractive and brash women that stumble along the streets of Chepstow after darkness sets in. The thought struck me gradually, I swear I am not still supposed to be here… and I really should not have started drinking at 4pm.
Hello loyal/first time/sporadic reader and welcome to my latest blog entry. As is predictable for the current time of year this entry is my attempt to review the previous year in a highly subjective and personal manner. Before you protest, I must assure you that I am not being pretentious in thinking that my take on the year holds any importance or relevance. My only thought was "I should probably write something, it has been a while". And now I will start.
2010 held a lot of promise. It looked quite good in terms of how good numbers can look and, like most, began with a drunken resolve to make it the best year yet. Unfortunately, for me, it reached its peak during the first three months before plummeting into long term unemployment and overwhelming apathy.
The peak, of course, was India. It was fantastic. But of course I have another blog that describes it so I won't delve into that bank of reminiscence now.
What followed was some erratic volunteering that focused more on attending festivals and meeting pretty fantastic people than the important stuff. I also discovered that if you try really really hard then you just might be able to get an article in an Indian community's tabloid magazine about a topic that you know very little about. At least I can put the days of minimal effort and patchy writing sessions behind me as I start the year with a job with one of Chepstow's biggest crime families and the juxtapositional job offer for the Ministry of Justice. It will be fine as long as they just ignore all of my skeletons.
In global news, quite a lot happened. To sum it all up, the world is falling to pieces and it is all rather exciting/terrifying. Volcanoes exploded, water got in places where it wasn't wanted, it was windy, rainy, too hot and too cold and this year it will probably get to the point where we are all queuing up to go down that big lift in Chile because it will be much safer down there. Saying that, I constantly fantasise about leaving our tame woes of comfortable unemployment, indecisive voting and much-more-expensive-in-a-way-that-you-will-never-really-be-able-to-notice higher education to escape to a landscape where I am more likely to face agonising death than boredom. But then, I do so love travelling.
Also, England didn't win the World Cup, some lady put a cat in a bin and most of the TV was sickeningly bad. Oh haunting despair!
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
The end (of 2010).