Don't Look Back In Anger

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I hope that you had a great festive couple of weeks, didn’t kill any family members, got the socks you wanted, ate yourself silly, embarrassed yourself at the neighbours’ party and tripped over your Sales bags in the High Street spilling coffee all over some poor innocent bystander. At least that way I won’t feel alone.

So now things are more or less back to normal and we should all feel ready to face the new year and whatever it will throw at us. If you have time, and go to the BBC news web site, you’ll see that they’ve asked people to comment on what they fear most about 2009, and it makes for very sober reading with around half the readers fearing economic meltdown and the other half fearing for Gordon Brown’s health.

To be more accurate they fear that he has probably got great health and will still be around later in the year to muck things up even further although, to be fair to our Prime Minister, it is slightly less than half who wish him ill as one guy said the thing he feared most of all was cheese being made illegal and there being a pickle shortage.

It may be me trying too hard to be arty and literate, or perhaps I’ve been inhaling too much Marks and Spencer Christmas pot pourri, but I’ve always thought of the upcoming new year as a kind of vaguely familiar person from my past who I can see in the shadows getting ready to throw me a present. As I catch the box I never know whether it’s a great gift or not, and I take around twelve months to unwrap it and work things out.

On reflection, having read the last paragraph again, you’re right. It must be the pot pourri.

The vaguely familiar person that was called 2008 threw me a great present which was full of things that made me happy and grateful and led to a fantastic year, but I fear that the shadowy figure that is 2009 is not getting ready to throw me a parcel but to throw up all over me, and indeed all of us. The year ahead looks tougher than Jonathan Ross’s chances of a knighthood, but that wasn’t going to stop me from my annual, year end, tidying up of drawers and old photos, ready to welcome in the new year.

I won’t bore you with the memories that came flooding back as I found half torn, fading, family photo groups and memories of Christmases past, though one particular polaroid of me lying across a sofa after a few drinks at a festive Top Of The Pops party brought a smile. If I remember correctly Julian Lennon and I had just bonded but, with the flow of wine, I thought his dad was still alive and kept asking when he was going to bring out another record. Julian will always be tops in my book for his patience, or perhaps he was simply as well oiled as I was.

But, the one photo that rekindled most memories during my end of year office tidy was my old university matriculation card.

I’ve written before about one of these cards where I wore a beard, but this one predated even that, and was very scary. I looked exactly like an Iraqi wanted poster, the image of a militant student who wanted to change the world, defeat capitalism and pick a fight with every grown up before giving his washing to Mum and settling down to a packet of chocolate digestives in front of Coronation Street. If I was as hard as nails then the nails must have been made of wet tissue paper.

I probably would have saved the world if I could have got myself out of bed in the morning but I settled, instead, for the humiliation of explaining to my Maths teacher why I’d missed his dawn lecture, a daily dressing down on my way to the student restaurant and the heaven of pies and beans.

I must admit that the mean, moody, would be terrorist look on my card is somewhat spoiled by a huge spot on the end of my nose, a centre parting in my hair that Moses could have led the Israelites through, and an attempt at designer stubble that looks like I’d glued iron filings on my chin and then had most of them blown away in a gust of wind. The diagonal, striped, brown pullover completes the underprivileged, charity shop look, and I looked very much dressed for the part of a fan club member standing with other disadvantaged souls outside a Cliff Richard concert. But, at the time, I thought I was cooler than a polar bear sitting on a glacier, eating ice cream in a snow storm.

It was around this time I decided on my career after a local radio DJ came to play records at our student disco. I had just started as the DJ there and was asked to keep putting the records on while the celebrity gave his patter over the microphone and gave away some prizes. It seemed he had an easy life and, as I watched him getting paid in bundles of cash, I knew that this must be a more fun way to earn a living than being a scientist. Watching the girls gather round him for autographs I knew it had better perks too.

Each day when I present my show on Smooth Radio, whatever that half familiar dark stranger called 2009 throws at me, I’m going to remember back to that day and the enthusiasm I had, even if I hadn’t quite sorted out the clothing or haircut yet.

A new year is a time to look forward but, sometimes, you have to look back first. It stops you taking yourself too seriously.