The Beginning of the End

So it's Christmas Eve. The streets are bright with decoration and Christmas spirit. I am spending the time with my Mother, one of the only times i come up to see, i am ashamed to say. I have been here four days, and to being honest of slept most of the day as i have been chatting online with my friend. Anyway i have needed to smoke since i got here, and not being a person that really indulges in alcohol anymore, i was getting bored. Anyway today i received a call and managed to get some. Now the one thing that smoke, does for me is makes me think, and whether it is because i am feeling the effects or that's the way my brain would choose to give it to me, but it's like a cartoon light bulb going off in my head, it always makes me chuckle. Anyway on this occasion the thought came into my head not for the first time i may add but this time it felt different. I need to sop smoking!!!

So this is the first entry in my attempt to stop smoking. Now i am going to be as honest as i can about this as i can. I have been smoking for half my life. When you look back at it that disgusting. Haven't achieved half the things i could of if i wasn't smoking. So i need to be realistic, cold turkey isn't going to work, because i am a grumpy bastard and when i don't smoke i am worse, hell just check my Facebook wall, 90% of it is moaning, and the other 10% is people telling me shut up. So i need to set goals, my first goal is my birthday in mid February. But that time i want to be doing half of what i do now, and by end of summer i want to have stopped.

As i can't keep shit to myself i will write it down as i go. The Beginning of the End.

The Simple Things

There are some things that i find i cannot go without. They are all transitional things, i like them for a short period of time and then move onto something else.

Right now as the weather has changed i find myself going back to an old favourite. Rhubarb Crumble. I was taught to make it when i was younger and while i have forgotten how to make it i am quite happy to purchase it from the nearest supermarket. There is something about the crunchy crumb topping mixed with the sloppiness of the warmed up rhubarb. Add either double cream or cornish vanilla ice cream and you have heaven. Every winter i have this, it's like a staple food for winter. Messes with my waistline but that's what spring is for.

Viscount mint biscuits. Thin coat of chocolate covering a melt in the mouth mint centre. Bliss.
Cadbury's fudge, the best mainstream chocolate covering chewy fudge centre, amazing.

And this is my diet killer. Onken raspberry yogurt large pot with a large dose of double cream, it's not right but i just love the taste, the creamy taste, but it's about 500 calories, haha.

But i make this short because it is on my mind, and as always i have to share

From falling from a great height to sexual encounters, dreams keep us busy.

I have a few different dreams:

There's the dream where i feel fear, fear from a violent assault or a fear from losing something. It seems to be a recurring thing. Usually i am running away from someone or something and the dream ends when they or ir catch up to me. According to Dream Moods dictionary:

To dream that you are scared indicates that you are experiencing feelings of self-doubt, incompetence, and lack of control in your waking life. Perhaps you are having second thoughts about a decision you have made. Anger often masquerades as fear, so also consider issues about which you are angry about in your waking life. 

At 37 i suppose it is only natural, i haven't achieved what most people call a normal life. Left my home town in my early 20's never have truly settled, never truly established a meaningful relationship. Have had relationships but they always felt like they came along at the wrong time, i don't regret any of them because it made me who i am but society dictates that you should be in a meaningful relationship by my age. Dreams. The way the mind keeps you occupied in your sleep.

You should have a family and 2.4 kids. But society is broken, there are so many single parent families around, and so many lawless kids as a result of this that i just can't see myself having kids not now, not anymore. If the daydreams ever come true then i will be a millionaire bachelor travelling the world. But as i said daydreams.

Another dream is kissing, strange to me that you can actually define what kissing means in a dream. A year or so ago i was having dreams about one of my best friends, she was living in France at the time and was then living on the party isle of ibiza. She had a french boyfriend at the time and he came across as an okay guy, never showed any outward signs of being a bad person. During the course of their relationship he turned out to be a horrible person and was abusive. My friend chose not to tell me that this was going on until the end. During the time she was with her i had dreams of them kissing. A website said this is a symptom that the person believes they are too close to someone else's relationship and needs to step back. I took this advice and stepped back. But the guilt i felt when i found out has plagued me. If i was more involved i would of known what was going on and i would of been able to stop what happened. It's an irrational thought, but the guilt stays with me. Thinking as i write this she would tell me to sort it out and i don't need to think like that. But thats her she has big heart and is a beautiful person. Because i always thought that i thought it meant something different thought it meant i had feelings for her but after reading the dream site i was happy it wasn't.

Then last night, i dreamt that we were talking in my dream the way we always do, laughing and joking mixed with serious conversation, we were sat on a bench/table in a pub garden, she was sat on the table itself and i was sat n the bench bit. In the dream i said something and she leant in and kissed my cheek. The dream ends. but i do remember most of the dream, the sky was blue, she was wearing a white vest top under a white long sleeved shirt open to the middle and light blue jeans. The grass was lush and green.

When i awoke, i could hear my housemate trying to be as loud as possible sorting through his woork tools, it was 7am. For the next three hours i tossed and turned in bed trying to figure it out, hoping that is wasn't what i thought it was. After getting up i booted my computer and immediately checked what it meant.

 If you are kissing someone on the cheek or someone is kissing you on the cheek, then it signifies admiration, courtesy, reverence, friendship or respect

Once i had read what it meant i felt relief, i have always been a bit insecure about our friendship and so this dream just made me feel better, made me feel like everything was secure with us but it raises the question, what was i insecure about??

That i guess is for another dream.

Christmas the Good and Bad

“Christmas time, Mistletoe and Wine, Children sing in Christian Rhyme.” -  Cliff Richard

I dislike Christmas, I have to admit. When your are young the excitement begins towards the end of November. For me it was the Toys ‘R’ Us advert, where Geoffrey the Giraffe in cartoon form leads the children to the local store like a cartoon Pied Piper. Over the coming month, the Coca-Cola advert comes on with seasonal music and a friendly Santa waves at a child as the big truck tears through some overly lit village. A town made to look like a Santa’s Grotto.

Then you get people who have a desire to cover the front of their houses with Christmas lights. Trying to be the best in the area, trying to prove something like a Bamboon showing bright red ass. Christmas trees in windows, Santa stop here signs. When you look at it, it’s ridiculous. What significance do bright sparkly lights have to do with the birth of a religious Messiah. Do Muslims throw up bright lights to celebrate the birth of Mohammed. No they don’t. To show their appreciation they travel to Mecca, they prey multiple times a day, yet Christians go to Church one day a week or one day a year, on Christmas day to celebrate Jesus. And if you don’t give one third of what you earn you’re a bad Christian. Now who the hell thought of that? That had to be a King wanting more money, a scam to try and get the poor to give more than they had. God will not love you if you don’t give your share. When you live like shit the afterlife is all you have to look forward to.

But I digress. These are just rambling thoughts. Christmas isn’t enjoyable anymore when you hit mid teens. The previous year’s you feel like you are being spoilt. The latest consoles, the latest toys, for me it was Transformers and a Playstation one. But after you leave school, it’s like your parents mindset changes. Your in the real world now, your in the workforce so what do you need with childish things, they think. So what do they get you? Pants and socks, a jumper, clothes generally. Now one of the first things you try to do when you get a job and start living in the real world, is you buy your own clothes. You try to nuture your own style, be your own person. But your parents buy you clothes, and you smile but deep inside you think, that your parents don’t understand you, they don’t get you. They are cramping your style. Your relatives give you cheques for 5 pounds, and more socks, or God forbid the dreaded Christmas Jumper, overly thick and ghastly to the sight, normally depicting reindeers and or Santa.

Then on Christmas day, you wake up not as as early as you used to, because lets be honest you know what your going to get and the programmes on telly that early are all very very childish and beneath you. So you wake up about 9-10ish and wander downstairs in your Christmas pyjamas because you don’t want to offend the family. And shock horror, either family are around or they have invited someone from the neighbourhood around for Christmas morning. And you are embarrassed, thanks Mum. While you hear the neighbour and your Mother sniggering at your pyjamas you open your first card. Happy Christmas Nephew, Auntie and Uncle Blah Blah with the obligatory 5 pound cheque inside or even worse and book voucher. What the fuck? I can’t buy a drink with a book voucher, shit I can’t even buy a bloody comic with a book voucher, what use is it to me. At that age a book voucher is a reminder of school and your past that now, your better then that you have moved on mentally. More cards more money/vouchers. The first present is chocolate in the shape of a fat Santa. The second is a pair a novelty socks. None of which you want. The best present you can hope for is a razor with multiple spare blades and the obligatory aftershave balm and soap on a rope. You spend the rest of the morning bemoaning your gifts in your head, not letting the family know you are disappointed. Until you your Mum tells you to go and get something from the freezer in the garage and you see it. The bike you have wanted for a few months, wrapped in a little bow. Your excitement overwhelms you, you almost start to cry. Christmas has been saved.

Two hours later after you have freezed your ass off riding around on it it time for dinner. A big fat turkey with all the trimmings. Enough to feed a small village in the Third World. Your belly is rumbling, the only down side is you see brussel sprouts on the plate. The Gary Glitters of the vegetable world. Look like big balls of snot and taste like rotting garbage. An hour later, after finishing everything on the plate, under threat of not getting the desert that you so desire. But you have to concede defeat, and undo the button on your jeans. And wait until the food has settled and you have farted out the noxious gas that comes with a plate of sprouts.

You sit in front of the television watching the Christmas specials of comedians that stopped being funny before you were born. The only highlights being the Only Fools and Horses Christmas special and the network premiere of the latest Bond film. By early evening your bored senseless and decide to meet up with friends and hang around on a street corner until it time to be in because it better to be cold then bored with the family.

Over the years this pattern continues until your old enough to drive and you decide to go raving on Christmas and Boxing Day. Your parents don’t really see you till New Years day when you look like shit and can barely put two words together in a cohesive sentence.

Then years later something changes. You have children or someone in the family has children and then your attitude changes. For me it was when my cousin gave birth to her Daughter. She was born in early December and I met her on Christmas Eve. For three hours I held her in my arms and we bonded. She grabbed my little finger and didn’t let go. I fell in love with her that day. The following Christmas’s were spent trying to find the perfect gift for her in her age range. Whenever we were in the same room she would come and find me, insist on sitting next to me. By the time she reached four years old she was walking and talking. Grateful for the presents she had been giving. Showing her appreciation with a hug and an “I Love you”. And all of a sudden Christmas gets back it’s meaning. It’s not about Jesus, it’s not about the crass commercialization, the Hallmark moments, it’s about the children, the look on their faces. The love they give and you give back.

Christmas is about family and love.