January Blues

Well then, [Hi ho, Hi ho] it’s back to work Taps Richard goes, and once more the greater part of my journey in the morning is spent hoping that my train will derail between White Hart Lane and Bruce Grove and I’ll be left with a fractured knee and a suitably handsome scar on my brow or cheek, which will keep me from work for a few weeks and earn me the sympathy and respect of my peers.

Of course the train never does derail and along with it the last faint chance that I might ever gain the sympathy and respect of my peers.

So there I sat today on the train with all the other coughing, spluttering and snivelling commuters, watching the slate grey world slide by stop by stop and station by station, and I could only think about how rubbish my Christmas was.

It started well enough with the Taps Christmas party which I enjoyed tremendously [I rolled out of Taps at 5:30 in the morning along with Casey, Charlie and Sophie (who is no longer my sworn nemesis after we bonded over our mutual love of High Society) – and I know that Gareth was there till past 6], and then Christmas Eve was all that I expected it to be, and Boxing Day was also very nice, but then I got ill and spent the rest of the time bed ridden, shivering, aching, coughing and hallucinating, which was deeply frustrating.

As most of you know, I don’t go anywhere on holiday, but instead use my leave to go to the Taps. By now this almost certainly doesn’t come as a surprise to you and I’m quite sure that I don’t need to justify myself to you either (mainly because by now you must have such low expectations of me that it would be pointless. I could say that I like to drink from the overflow tray and nobody would be surprised). Because that’s just what I like to do. My prefect day is spending all day in the pub while the world goes on about its business. And I was really looking forward to having a week off work to do exactly that.

Now, as you know, Christmas Eve is my favourite day of the year, and I really enjoyed most of it (from about 2pm-8pm) when it was just the regulars in, but from 9 or so onwards it got horribly crowded (I genuinely don’t begrudge people going out on Christmas Eve, but when you’ve got so many people in that you can’t move because of the press, you know that something’s wrong), although it did clear out as soon as midnight came around.

Boxing Day was nice as well. It was lovely and quiet during the day (with lots of football on) and for much of the evening before it suddenly got busy around 10:30, but by then we were celebrating Laura B’s birthday (i.e. drunk), and firmly ensconced in the Regulars Corner anyway

But both Christmas Eve and Boxing Day are events days in themselves and therefore already special in their own right. While what I particularly love is to spend random days in the pub. Days which have no significance or importance to anyone else. In fact for me that’s part of the enjoyment. The knowledge that everyone else is at work or looking after the kids – or whatever, while I’m on holiday. And I’d been so looking forward to it.

But, well, that all went out the window as I was laid low by the flu and didn’t get until Sunday just gone (after not having had a drink for a week – which, by the way, is the longest I’ve spent sober for a number of years – I was completely hammered by the end of the night and don’t remember going home)

And so there I sat on the train this morning thinking, ‘well what a load of bollocks that was. Barely a proper break before going back to this endless grind’ and it was quite depressing. Going back to work after Christmas is always bad enough but going back and feeling that I didn’t get the break I deserved it even worse. So I started to think about the Taps New Years Resolution list that we were making on Sunday, and which, as far as I can remember, broadly was:

This year we [a combination of at least five regulars and members of staff] will:

1. We will go to at least one gig.
2. We will go to at least one Spurs match.
3. We will drink absinthe[1].
4. We will go to a nice restaurant.
5. We will go for a drink in London.
6. We will go to at least one museum/gallery

Now, I know that I’m the person who is most likely to derail this process, but that list shouldn’t be beyond us should it? I mean these are things that normal people do as a matter of course. And that if we could commit to doing some of them it would be something to look forward to in the post Christmas January gloom.

So lets try and be a bit normal – if only for these first grim dark months of 2011. What do you say?

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[1] I really don’t recall why this was included on the list.