2009

New Year's resolutions:

• No more photos with drinks in hand; all drinks will lurk just out of frame.
• Gracefully accept leaving my mid twenties.
• Gain official recognition for the fact that Aberystwyth smells of chips.

2009 has got off to a flying start. I was flying (or fleeing) from Aber as fast as a very slow train could carry me on New Year's Eve. The boiler broke. Which was fine. It wasn't like I had a guest visiting; it wasn't like I'd been scrubbing the floor and fluffing up the towels, or racking my brains to find fun things to do when all of Aber seems to shut down between Christmas Eve and the 2nd of January; the sum total of this racking proved to be practising how to say Pontrhydfendigaid in order to catch buses to a certain stupidly named village near-ish to Strata Florida Abbey. Even the organic food shops were shut as the lazy hippies settled themselves down for their winter feast of pine needles and phallic mushrooms.

I left Aber around half three having been driven to despair by the landlady's inadequate handyman and his bungling, or rather in this case his inability to turn up and fix anything, though all would be handymen should take note; promising various times of arrival and/or perpetually carrying around a tube of Pollyfiller does not make you a DIY god. A mere five hours later when the planned New Year's festivities should have been about to start (meaning Casablanca and wine) I arrived in my guest's flat; there was no food because I'd not been expected, the towels were starchy because he's a bloke, but most importantly, just like my flat, there wasn't a drop of hot water to be found: boiler number two had also given up the ghost.

Mean anything to you?

We went to bed by half eleven, and drank our champagne from silvered goblets the next morning whilst we pined for showers. I then broke one of said silvered goblets which weren't so much metal as foil covered glass.

Happy New Year.