Rant-wank for 2013.

It has to be said upfront, if the title of this essay didn’t convince, that your generally gentle and hopefully genial correspondent is not enjoying his 2013 so far. This time last year I wrote an article that expressed my fears for the future of HMV. It was hardly the most adroit piece of prophecy, but the news of past weeks still arrived with a degree of shock and suddenness; finally, this most eminent and estimable of music retail institutions is going into administration, its outcome uncertain. My main fear, voiced last year as now, is that without worthy shopping establishments and the opportunities they afford people to venture out into the Big Wide World and Deal With Other People (Possibly Strangers), we will find instead that the West End — the very heart of London for many — will become a deader place to inhabit. Sure, they could always open another restaurant on the site, but that’s all it will be — another restaurant.  

I’m reminded of a sketch Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie performed on their supreme Nineties TV show A Bit Of Fry & Laurie which involved a discussion about the then-burgeoning broadcast deregulation legislation that inaugurated the Satellite television era: the fear expressed was that while the acquisition of dozens more channels would offer more choice, and a break from the perceived ‘tyranny’ of the UK’s terrestrial televisual tetralogy (BBCs 1&2, ITV and Channel 4. We only had four channels on telly in those days. Yep, four. All terrestrial) we would be getting less quality overall as the new channels would be full of shit, to put it… er, much as it turned out. The corollary, as Fry & Laurie imagined, would be analogous to asking a waiter in a posh restaurant to exchange a single, dirty, solid silver spoon for a bin filled to the brim with thin plastic coffee stirrers. They may be all crap, so the punchline went, but at least you’ve got choice, haven’t you?

Sigh.

If truth be told, I wasn’t enjoying 2013 even before it had arrived. It’s strictly personal, not stuff I’m prepared to discuss, I’m afraid, as much as I suspect it would unburden me to do so. Please take my assurance that I have resolved, beside my New Year Resolutions, not to wallow in past problems and try to take this year as I find it.

As to the matter of those pesky Resolutions, I confess I did not make it easy for myself this year. Two this time around: no messing, no philosophy, both tangible and publicly achievable ventures. The first was simple in its unambiguity: Drink No Alcohol Throughout January. You may appreciate that the weeks leading up to and including Christmas involved a prodigious amount of jovial cavorting and carousing, to the extent that I presume my liver never caught so much as a whiff of a day of unqualified cleanness and sobriety throughout. All this Bacchic revelry ended, not with a bang but with a bit of a pop, on the evening of January 1st 2013, with the last of the inaugural bubbles and a valedictory cup of mead.

But now — it’s February and I have completed my task. Only on one day over the whole of the previous month did I imbibe, and since this was due to a friend’s birthday celebration — a day I had predetermined I would allow before I even embarked on this crazy venture — I can consider myself clean and sober for just over five weeks. Boy, were they long weeks. During the first fortnight on the wagon I would have told you that out of all my attempts at a health drive, this one was a right fucker and no mistake. Richard Harris once memorably referred in interview to the ‘fourteen boring years’ he spent on the Temperance Train and in some small way, I received an insight into how that felt. That sinking feeling that descended each and every time I realised that a particularly bad day at work could not be mitigated with a pint at lunchtime or several afterwards. The prospect of a sociable lubricant on a congenial Friday or Saturday night with friends — gone. I found myself spending more evenings in at home in January than I probably spent in the previous three months put together — and with that, a comcomitant insularity. Fortunately, I had Mrs M as my guardo camino, my co-traveller on the road to purity. I have to say that she seemed to operate as evenly and as sweetly-natured as ever she did, with none of my fuss and mithering — for which I was not only grateful, but quietly impressed. She is evidently a tougher cookie than I am, and a better person for all that too.

As for any physiological effects, well, I admit I did look forward with a morbid — albeit undeniably excited — trepidation to the prospect that I may wake shaking in tremulous delirium of a morning several days in. This has not happened. There have been two notable changes in my bodily function. First off, I have visibly lost some weight, mainly in my face, hands and about four inches off my waist. My double chin has receded to the point where I appear to have a discernible jawline. This has been a few years in remission, so it was a strange feeling, upon trimming my beard, to notice parts of my face that go in where previously they went out. I have knucklebones instead of dimples on my hands, and my fingers closely resemble those of my octogenarian mother, a detail pointed out to me by Mrs M and one I find delightful and reassuring.

The second change has been in my sleeping pattern. Whereas I used to be a strict 7am riser irrespective of workdays or weekends, I have found that I lie in dozing much as I last did as a teenager, and if left unchecked of a Saturday morning will awake some time after 9am. On more than one occasion I’ve not set foot on bedroom carpet before 10.30am, and frankly this appalls me. There aren’t enough hours in my spare time as it is. However, it has shown me that my main motivation in getting up was mostly dictated by hangover — and that’s not a good reason to spring out of bed prematurely. I do like my sleep, in its place.  

Anyway, while this hasn’t exactly been the most exciting thing in my life at the moment, I thought it would prove to be quite a useful thing to chronicle, given that it’s not been lost on me these past weeks that my announcement to undertake a month off the sauce was greeted in most camps with incredulity and a distinct whiff of scepticism. Before I took this on, I wouldn’t class myself as pathologically addicted to drink. Well, now I know for certain that I am not. It seems I have simply not tried hard enough in my alcoholic efforts. Well, good-oh for that.

Oh, my second New Year Resolution: learn to read and write music. It may come as a surprise to some of you that I have about as much technical aptitude in music as a spoon knows the taste of soup. As a child I remember learning the road signs depicted in The Highway Code. The colours and graphics fascinated me, but clearly not so much as to make me take up driving. Well, it’s time I learned how to navigate the High Cs, if you’ll forgive me. I’ve been crotchety of late, but now I’m positively quavering with anticipation. I used to stop at the pub and now I’m going to rest at the end of a bar. You’re not paying extra for these tortuous musical puns, you know.

Thank you, you’ve been kind. I’ll go now. 

But first, a drink.

PM

Now listening:

Lots of Radio 3. Like, lots of Radio 3.

Khovanshchina by Modest Mussorgsky (1839-1881). Exotically orchestrated Russian opera, written by a gifted man frustrated by his day job and consequently driven to drink. Well, aren’t we all?

Now watching:

Doctor Who: The Reign Of Terror (BBC, 1964) — The magical, mercurial William Hartnell as the original Time Lord, in a story set in Revolutionary France and featuring two episodes restored with stylish animation.

Doctor Who: Legacy Boxset (BBC 1979, 1993) — A fascinating odds-and-sods collection of documentaries and all extant footage of the ‘legendary’ unfinished Who story, 1979’s Shada, with the magnificent and unmatchable Tom Baker as the Doctor.

Life On Mars: series one and two (BBC 2006/2007): splendidly pungent and frequently hilarious 1970s procedural cop/time travel drama, with Philip Glenister’s immense portrayal of non-PC DCI Gene Hunt a standout creation.

Ashes To Ashes: series one (BBC 2008): the not-as-good but still-worthy sequel to Life On Mars.

Dirty Harry, Magnum Force, The Enforcer, Sudden Impact and The Dead Pool (1971-1988): Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry canon. Seemed appropriate after all that Gene Hunt.