December 31 (New Year’s Eve Friday): Wooh Hooo Woo Hoo Hooo. I wake up feeling like shit. And my cure for this is apparently watching King Of Queens (fucking dickhead). Nope, I officially am no longer able to sleep rough.

Today I should be writing (at least I was hoping to) but instead I find myself once more watching The Wrestling Channel on Sky. Sucker.

Early doors and Dad begins to make moves to going into Clacton. I was planning on going into “town” also, so I tell him and we head out to Clacton in the same car. I drive and this is good times, we have another “adult” conversation/experience as we discuss/mull our predicaments. We talk about our futures and express our concerns as Dad renews his car RFL and I find myself having to take money out on my credit card and bank it into my bank in order to pay my mortgage, car loan and council tax amongst other things. This is reckless financing in desperate times.

We pick up a newspaper in WH Smith and Dad bumps into some guy who he used to work with and I used to get on with despite the only things I can remember about the bloke being his name is “John”, he supports Arsenal and he spent some time in prison. I used to think he looked like the footballer Neil Webb but now he is all grey haired and barely recognisable. Ouch. It appears to cheer Dad immensely to see the guy and talk bollocks. However when discussion gets onto the topic of the Tsunami in Asia, it appears the resigning philosophy is, to grab some positivity from it, “at least it would have taken out a load of paedophiles”. You can’t make this stuff up.

After stopping by at the chemist for Dad to get his medication, we return home with the morning kind of wasted to Return Of The Jedi on TV. I actually kind of like this film, I actually kind of liked the Ewoks and I seem to be the only person that actually does (above the age of 12). Are they really so hated?

Eventually I get into some writing but it is with half the day in effect wasted. I begin texting Azmei to see how things are. It occurs to me that we were supposed to meet up for lunch while she was back but I have to admit that I really could not be bothered. And when she replies, she feels likewise, expressing a real desire to get back to her new home, away from Colchester (“full of bad memories”).

My phone rings and it is Ross on the phone wishing me Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. We talk about the Peter Cook thing and he tells me how he is stranded looking around shops while his other half is getting her hair done. Ross is one of those cool long lost friends that a person does not keep in touch with enough and that Christmas gives a good reason to getting in touch. And he got the Sopranos boxsets for Christmas, so we could probably talk for hours now about that. He mentions that Jon Spencer Blues Explosion are supporting the Hives in the New Year and that they are playing his neck of the woods (Cambridge), so it gets suggested that we go to that.

In late afternoon I find myself fixated by VH-1. There is this show called the Surreal Life on and it is car crash TV of the highest order. Basically it is Big Brother crossed with MTVs Real World featuring six washed up celebrities, some not even being has beens, they are never weres. The main two figures in the show are Flavor Flav and Brigitte Nielsen. He looks totally messed up in the head (but still nice/friendly with it) and she just looks scaly and permanently drunk. And then they begin to hit it off, almost get it on. Doesn’t Flavor already have about eight kids? What’s an extra one, even if it is half hood, half Danish. The remaining participants are a New Kid On The Block looking like Donny Osmond, a character from that cheesy sick eighties comedy Full House (birthplace of the Olsen twins), a the US female equivalent of Will Young (I think) and some Hispanic singer who used to be on the Love Boat in the US but looks like a female WWF wrestler. And I can’t take my eyes away from it, only for one thing.

And the one thing turns out to be dinner, as mum cooks a full roast in celebration of my visit. Oh man am I special needs.

A conscious decision is made by me NOT to spend the New Years with my parents. This year very few people appear to have made any plans whatsoever, it is either total extravagance (going to France) or it is absolutely nothing at all. And the latter prevails. I leave my parents at 6.30, them looking at me worried as if to say “he really should be going out”.

Tonight turns out to be the ultimate Friday night comedy night on TV. I have many times expounded my theory that TV shows comedy after comedy on a Friday night in order to make the unpopular, no-lifes feel better about themselves and circumstances. And tonight, while none of the TV stations really appeared to have bothered either with their programming, Channel Four pulls out all stops and schedules the ultimate Friday night with a full night of final episodes and documentaries on Fraiser, Friends and Sex And The City. I wonder however if this morale making plan might backfire because last episodes of series are surely bittersweet downers. Lack of foresight there methinks.

Having had two really good New Years on the bounce, I decide to opt out of celebrations this year which means I am at home and on the other end of MSN. Richard pops up and begins to MSN asking me what I am doing. I try to justify my decision without sounding like a friendless loser and I think I manage to pull of convincing the pair of us until Acton (who is staying in with his housemates avoiding a hell like London) clearly gets bored and goes downstairs to “drink a bottle of Jim Beam”. In the words of Milhouse’s dad in the Simpsons: “can I borrow a feeling?” (ha ha).

I soldier on with the Friday night TV, severely distracted by the joys of the internet. I watch the two hour documentary on Friends and it’s a weird show, painting the show in a whole new light for me. This show was really the antidote to Generation X? And it was the spawn of the guy who did the infinitely better Dream On? Wow.

Naturally Friends sends me to sleep, the last ever episode was something of a semi stinker and spookily I find myself waking up just as someone on some channel is counting down the new year with about 40 seconds to spare.

It happens! New Year! And on the very dot of 12.00 midnight, B hits me on MSN with “Happy New Year!”. It is precise and crisp; exactly on the dot it is frightening. I take the gesture the wrong way, what on earth is she doing on MSN at this time and why contacting me of all people? I take a relatively nice and innocent gesture and add a ton of baggage to it, souring it in the process. I leave it, making a conscious decision not to answer to avoid being arsey and a bastard. My new year begins jagged.

On the stroke of midnight, the quality of TV is disputable but I do find myself captivated as I watch the fireworks in London, appearing to do their very best to ignite/explode the London eye. Even watching the fireworks on TV is breathtaking, so only imagine how great the would have been/looked/seen in person. And they last for about seven minutes.

The remainder of TV is freaky. Covering the midnight period, ITV shows The Wicker Man. What connotations does this movie have to New Years? I don’t know but all I remember is that in 2001, Channel Four showed in New Years night also. I watch it and it freaks me out somewhat, this is more sinister and camp than Batman (and I mean both the TV series and the gothic movie version).

I fall asleep.

np: Red Snapper – The Sleepless