January

The backside dilemma

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I’ve been working on the Writers’ Guild Awards for just about a year, so I got to go to the event last Monday. I will never show you pictures because they are startlingly visible evidence that I was even more ill than I thought.

Even so, even being ill, even being there not because I was nominated for anything but because it was work – I suppose it was work – the Writers’ Guild Awards event is the place to be. It is the room to get in if you possibly can and, if anything, I thought this year’s was the best of a remarkable run.

And although it didn’t win its category, “Slow Horses” by Will Smith was nominated and I am actually proud of that. I didn’t write that excellent show, I wasn’t a judge in that category, but I was the one who entered it into the awards.

But then, it’s such a strong show and the Writers’ Guild Awards ceremony is about the best British writing, it had to be entered, it had to be considered.

Consequently that wasn’t me, that was just necessary.

And although I worked on the awards for a year, obviously so did many people. Yet when it came to the night itself, all my jobs were long done and consequently out of all the people working there, I was the sole one who could relax with nothing to do.

I did end up with the odd task but still, the actual event on the night was neither one pixel better or worse because I was there.

So I had a great time, a really tremendous time, and the night was a success. Plus so far in 2023 I can point to various things I’ve learned already, various things I’ve made happen or just plain made, I can think of people I’ve met and things I’ve done.

I suppose.

Well, more than suppose, just before you and I started talking I actually made a list for myself of what I’ve done so far.

But.

I had to write that list because it still feels like we’re only just back working after Christmas and that nothing has happened, that I’ve done nothing. For some reason I am finding 2023 murderously difficult to get going in. Today is January 20 and suddenly, this very second writing to you, what occurs to me is that it’s therefore eight weeks since I had a haircut.

That’s my January. An absence of barbershops. It’s not an accomplishment.

So here’s the thing. Without question, I need to get up off my backside and bloody do something. Except I’m a writer, so what I need to do is sit that backside right down and write.

You see the dilemma.

Born in the 1900s

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I just heard this expression last night. In exchange for telling a guy of the old “never mind the quality, feel the width” line that you don’t even remember, he told me that the new insult is to refer to someone has having been born in the 1900s.

Of course, if you were born in 1999 then you would be 23 now but you also wouldn’t be insulted by the phrase, wouldn’t take it as a dig at your age, and quite possibly wouldn’t be reading this. The unstated cut is that you’re not actually aged between 23 and a maximum 121, it’s that you are indeed 121 and that you look every pixel of your age.

There is so much I wish I’d done sooner, been able, been capable of doing sooner. And there are a handful of things I’d rather I hadn’t done yet or, indeed, at all. On balance, I should’ve done more of both.

But otherwise I’m okay with my age, okay with where I am, quite a bit more than okay, sometimes, with what I’m doing. I can cope with 2022.

I just don’t seem to be able to cope with January.

This time I’m somehow still in a fuzzy cloud post-Christmas and at exactly the same time I estimate that we are already coming up on six million days into the year.

This week, I had a Zoom chat with a friend who, when pressed, admitted that she’d had to get up early to talk to me. I am profoundly flattered that anyone would, but in that moment the idea of being able to lie in on a morning was damn appealing. I’m just not sure how I can square that with how the fact that all month I’ve been struggling to get up before 7am.

I’ve had to today, fortunately. When I send this to you, I have to drive off to a school and spend the day there as a visiting author. I did a journalism day in a school last October, but otherwise it’s been over two years since I did this and the only real surprise so far is that I’m exactly as nervous as I was last time and the time before and the time before.

There is a difference. Schools often offer me a lunch but then most of the time I forget that they have, spend the entire lunch hour gassing away with pupils and teachers, and then wonder why I’m so exceptionally hungry.

Not today. Today I’ve learned a lesson and have made sandwiches.

And then there’s also that I took a lateral flow test last night and while it was negative, while it was fine, I learned in that pregnancy-test-style wait just how there is something that makes me more nervous than going into a school. It’s the prospect of not going in when you’ve promised to.

I’m nervous enough that as much as I know I’ll enjoy it, as much as I think it’s a privilege to be asked into a school, right now I would rather make you a mug of tea and ask how you’re doing.

Let me put the kettle on.