December 23 (Thursday): You Knows It. I wake up this morning and outside the sun is blazing and all together it is a better day. This is the weather of perfection, the brightest blues skies. Today is about determination and to make it a better day than yesterday. And I realise that I have to hit the day running, so by 9AM I find myself up and out the door heading to town.

I get parked up in a primo spot on Creffield Road (probably my favourite road in Colchester). I tear into town with intent, Christmas shopping on my mind and the word closure with it.

As I wander towards HMV I pass a man leaving Mark’s And Spencer who has Travis Bickle punk (gone mad/psycho) hair in addition to the same sunglasses as our favourite taxi driver. I smile as I think to myself “it’ll be a fun Christmas somewhere”.

Back to the “one for you, one for me” Christmas present concept, to cheer me up today, I buy the Bo Selecta 3 double DVD set when I am unable to find the new weekly Prisoner DVD set in WH Smith. It’s all about the money!

Done with town, having avoided awkwardly bumping into a faces (of recognition) and in a much better frame of mind than yesterday, I find myself heading over to Asda to continue my shopping experience. The radio is fantastic, festive in so far as playing party tunes and Jo Whiley plays On A Ragga Tip by SL2. I haven’t heard this tune in years and it has never sounded better. Now on a winning streak, when I get into the store, I almost immediately discover the Prisoner DVD I had been searching for. Good times. I also look for some CDs to buy for my parents as gifts but no dice. I do however buy wrapping paper, even if I haven’t got any fucking thing to put in it. A wise lady once called this season Stressmas.

In search of CD gifts, I head over the Tesco Highwoods where the traffic is insane and people are actually waiting for parking spots. Grief. I go straight to the CDs with view to getting the best gifts for my parents. I immediately snap up the Dire Straits CD I should have got dad for his birthday back in July but I’ll be fucked if I can find a CD to buy for mum. In the end, I just buy myself a Bob Dylan compilation (spoilt only child to the end of days baby). From there I buy my Crimbo groceries: more cereal but this time with cookie and crème Pop Tarts to crumble into a bowl of Corn Flakes. Very healthy. And for the icing on the cake my favourite: Bombay mix. One day I will have the biggest heartattack but until that day, I’ll just have wind, indigestion and subtle poisoning (to go with the internal bleeding).

Finally I drive/head over to Sainsburys in search of cheap gift CDs but when I get to the store (around midday) the car park is the most insane of the bunch and here I really cannot get parked, so I just head home for some dinner.

I get home happy, lots of shopping bags equating to more gifts and a step closer to happiness and completion of Christmas. Today (I think) was/is the works Christmas do and this is one event I am gutting to be missing out on this year. I have found myself asking everyone I see how their own events go/went and I feel personally denied (not least because last year I ended up in Club Forin and the year before I ended up at my boss’s house until 5 in the morning for fear of a work colleague getting roasted). My mind is subtly is elsewhere today and I feel the pinch of being out of work during the Christmas period, feeling a bit sorry for myself and determined not to go into town for fear of accidentally crossing paths with the carnival/circus.

Checking the TV listings and I find myself saved as Gremlins is on! Good times. I call up Chris because I believe he is now back from Denmark and we talk for about an hour, causing me to miss most of Gizmo. It’s so fucking great that he and Tom will be back for Christmas, its good times guaranteed (ho ho). I have to admit though, on the phone I do most of the talking, seems I just have a bit too much to say these days (ha ha). He asks me what I am doing right now and wants to hook up immediately. Unforts I had made plans to write and sort out the crib today (in addition to hide/barricade from the world this evening) but we make plans to definitely hook up tomorrow.

I get off the phone from him and the TV afternoon turns into Father Of The Bride, which is ok as a distraction and good background noise for writing (a movie that fails to captivate you).

Bad news today though, I check the Millwall website and discover that Neil Harris has left the club permanently, going to Nottingham Forest surprisingly and not Cardiff. I really think he and Dennis Wise (and/or maybe Ray Wilkins) had a real falling out at some point because I really rate him as a player still even if the poor sod can’t play up front on his own (example being the FA Cup final). He makes comment that “I have become part of the furniture” which is harsh especially when he is still young (actually younger than me!).

As night falls, I get bored with a dose of cabin fever so I head back out to Sainsburys to see if I can get in this time (parked) and if they have any CDs I can give for gift. No dice, there is nothing. I manage to waste half an hour of my time (when really I should be having a bath) but as I drive around Zane Lowe is having his Christmas party show and playing some awesome tracks (he genuinely appears to have some good taste and passion) as on comes Welcome To The Jungle sounding better than ever but the BEST tune he drops (while I’m listening) is Bug Powder Dust by Bomb The Bass which is the utter daddy, not sounding the least bit dated, only more revolutionary than ever. As I leave the car park it is near closing time and some poor trolley boy is collecting up all trolleys (surprisingly). As he uses the crossing, he makes me have to break quickly to avoid hitting him, to let him go. And the little four eyed fucker takes his time talking to his mate about going to McDonalds when he gets off work at 9PM, so I rev my car subtly for yuks and get mouthing the words “fuck off cunt” to me, which tickles my spine more than anything. I love acting like an arsehole sometimes.

Tonight is the Shameless Christmas Special and its also good for off colour yuks. Were they really giving steaks to three legged dogs in one scene? And this is a pretty clever episode/story about people getting food poisoning from off the back of lorry turkeys sold in a pub and the army thinking everyone is going down with anthrax. And then Colchester (as a barracks town) gets a mention in it (I think). Shameless is a really clever show really, I so recognise this people as members of my own extended family and the estate (the state) they live on/in could easily be Greenstead in Colchester and doubtless a number of other estates in the country. Oh well, missed the boat with that one.

Phoebe Toronto later pops up on MSN for some more chat and tonight we discuss more at length, I find myself talking more about my woes than her as I guess I am just a bit more dramatic. Later B also pops up on MSN to wish me Merry Christmas and all the shit that goes with it. She turns out to be harder work than ever and I can’t be bothered with it, so its really really fortunate when her housemate turns up and boots her off her (or his) computer. This little conversation occurs while the second part of The Last Chancers on TV, which is kind of how I imagine all in Nottingham to be like these days.

Tonight is another rough, I think I fall asleep around midnight only to awaken once more in the early hours and disrupt all patterns. I put on Pulp Fiction to send me to sleep but three hours later, there I am still awake having seen The Wolf (my hero) do his deeds and The Gimp (Johnny from the Karate Kid movies) do his little hanging about bit. I don’t manage to get/fall asleep until around 6AM, which will equate to me being wired and insane on Christmas Eve.

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