Happy New Drear

Well here I am, start of a new year, Coughing my way out of a terrible cold, tired from being ill and a DIY project that isn't going well, and the isolation of dark old early January.

I should be painting the walls in the spare room but I wanted to write something down. 

I think January never shapes the rest of the year, either by decision or even perception. But effort put into January can often make the outcome of the year seem very bittersweet; I feel sad about the version of me in 2014 who was trying to turn things around and who got swallowed by the rest of life. The drifter in 2018 or 2020 was probably in a better spot - clueless about what would happen, but just making the most of the time of the season.

"Going For Gold" was always on after Neighbours in the late 80s. This symbolises my A-levels and that whole 6th form thing of not having to be in college if you weren't studying. 

The theme tune sounds like just having had lunch, peanut butter on toast and a yoghurt and an apple, and there being no one in the house, and being old enough to lock up and leave it to bike off to an afternoon of lessons, or just stay at home "studying" (usually reading old magazines or painting or playing guitar, everything but doing college work). 

The tune was 100% synthy and brassy but it sounded so modern and clean and 1980s, nothing nostalgic or 70's or anything, just NOW and VCRs and walkmans and the charts and perms and stonewashed denim and Ford Fiesta XR2s.

If you were there you would know, immediately, of the naff optimism of those keyboard brass sounds and the massed vocals. 

This is without even considering the programme itself - it was a sort of a sign to me of switch the telly off and get out and do something else. 

But I know this also sounds so incredibly old fashioned now, with there being people like nurses and shop managers making decisions about my life who were not even born in 1988. But just you wait, you'll start to feel old soon...