I think I’ve run out of year in which to do all the things that I need to do in it. And, yes, for the avoidance of doubt, I am talking about next year – 2020. We’ve just been spending the last couple of hours charging our way through calendars and diaries and suchlike, deciding what thing, what event, what project needs to go where and when, and it’s a bit of a tidal wave. There’s a lot to do. We put a restriction on ourselves that, to begin with, we’d concentrate on only the first six months of the year. Even with that, there are days that we’ve got scheduled to the hour. That’s before working out what random stuff is gonna end up happening on the day itself. This is exactly as suffocating and sweat-making as you might think it is, but curiously, it is at the same time a hell of a lot less suffocating and sweat-making than you might think it is.
But it’s not as blocked up to the walls as I’m perhaps making it out to be. We find enough time to watch films, TV, and devour books (not actually eat the books, although we have so many, we’re certainly not going to get around to actually reading them all). But I guess time is still at something of a premium. So I’ve made a little new year’s resolution to myself, which I’m reasonably sure that I’ll break before we even hit the shadow of March, but it’s still worth a shot: I’m going to try very hard not to watch any films or TV programmes, or read any books, that I’ve already watched or read. There’s far too much stuff on my shelves that’s sitting untouched, maybe in its wrapper for over ten years, that doesn’t deserve to get ignored, while I get lazy and stick on a random episode of Buffy once more.
I mean, don’t get me wrong: there may be some cheats – we’re working our way through the Doctor Who marathon – which we didn’t actually do much of in 2019, and we’re still midway through Planet Of Evil. But there’s still a healthy amount of stories from the classic era that somehow I haven’t watched yet, so I think it counts. But otherwise, 2020 might well be the year that I finally get around to those stories that I somehow haven’t consumed yet: The Godfather. P.G Wodehouse. My boxset of The Sopranos. (and yes, I think a P.G Wodehouse version of either The Godfather or The Sopranos would be a fine idea).
In a way, I’ve already started: the last couple of days, I’ve been binging on detectorists, which somehow passed me by, but I found irresistible after catching MacKenzie Crook’s sublime take on Worzel Gummidge. We’re also partway through the latest season of The Marvellous Mrs Masiel, and I’m the middle of reading Vox, which is a great, involving read, although I’m slightly startled that an element of the central hook bears a close resemblance to a play I saw at the Edinburgh Fringe a couple of years ago, called Lemons, Lemons, Lemons, Lemons, Lemons . I think I worry too much sometimes about some of my ideas being too similar to other ideas. It doesn’t matter that much, does it? It’s not the tale, but they who tell it. Probably something to ponder on in the writing blog.
OK, one more day left of this odd little year, the result of someone’s cheese dream. Like almost everyone else, I probably have a blog entry in here somewhere to commemorate 2019 – it’s been a surprisingly busy year (even for me) with a ton of new avenues and new opportunities that I frankly didn’t see coming this time last year. 2019 was going to be more of the (perfectly OK thankyou very much) same. As it turned out, 2019 turned out to be simply more.
And you know what? That may be all the blog entry I need to write. I’ve got to get started on 2020.
This is Andrew Allen 