Is it too late to write a post in the spirit of heralding a new year?

I haven’t done so yet because I’ve been too busy playing with the Sharpies I got for Christmas (and a few other things, like submerging back into reality following the halcyon days of the festive break; a reality consisting of diets, exercise and bills, after a week of pretending that none of these things exist.)

I’m not sure what it is about marker pens, but they just excite me.  It’s not just been the Sharpies.  I seem to recall being just as joyous about an own-brand set from Smiths I received one Christmas in the early ’90’s.  I’m pretty sure that in every home there are remnants of a set of felt pens that seem to have been around forever and that nobody has the heart to throw away even though they do sod all – the nibs far too frayed, the ink long gone.  In my home, it was the Smiths markers.  In fact it wouldn’t surprise me if they were still languishing in the depths of some old pencil case in the far corners of the attic, ruing the fact they can no longer colour in pictures and make images come to life.  A compatriot of the same pencil case, a biro with a similar lifespan, probably finds the lamenting piss annoying, as it could never colour anything in the first place.  Only write shopping lists.  Boring, boring shopping lists.

So I suppose that it was probably the inner-child in me that was partially responsible for being so excited by the latest colourful acquisition.  Twenty brand new Sharpies, of eccentric hues, ready to illuminate scribbles like the one above, greeting cards and – well – anything else in close proximity for the next couple of decades.

“If only everything in life was this exciting”  I thought to myself, as I began to experiment with all of the different colours on the paper.

Given those diets and bills, I’m not naive enough to think it could be.

But I do believe it should be.

So I’m choosing to focus on the exciting things for now.  As much as possible, at least.

Happy 2020 to anybody reading this.

Song of the Day: That Handsome Devil – Charlie’s Inferno

A Brooklyn band that basically put rock, swing, jazz, jive, funk, psychedelia and every other genre you can think of into a big, musical blender and puree it into something that sounds like this particular piece.  There’s a lot of narrative in this song and to be honest I’ve no idea what it’s about, it’s just a good tune to wash-up to.