I guess it's just a wave of nostalgia

For an age yet to come.

An old Buzzcocks song, if you're wondering. Actually, I rather like the Penetration version as well.

But there we are. Having said I dislike nostalgia a couple of posts back, I have been indulging in some in the last few days. It started with a reminiscing session with Paul Grunfeld and the resulting post brought contact from Helen Chase who is writing a book about one of my favourite bands of the late seventies - Magazine.

So if any of the old Manchester crowd reads this and happens to have any photos or memorabilia from that time, then get in touch and I'll pass it on to Helen - or go directly to her (her email is in her comment posted a few posts back). And if you don't know Magazine's music, then go and download I Love You You Big Dummy or The Light Pours Out of Me or Give Me Everything and whack the volume up.

Helen was asking me what my impression of Manchester was in those pre-New Order days and it brought back a lot of memories, good and bad - but that has as much to do with my age and my character as the place or the music scene. Having said that, one of my great regrets is not performing in a band. I was in a band for a short time (and had a white Les Paul copy guitar with perspex knobs on) but we never actually played (and sadly that is a vital part of the definition of a band). Ah - how different the world might have been if we had.

Or not.

But I always hated people older than me banging on about the sixties and how fantastic it was, and I was always determined that I would not be the same about the seventies, however much I enjoyed myself at the time.

And as for people who are nostalgic about the eighties - well, words fail me.

Match postponed

I drove my son into the middle of nowhere for his first football match of the New Year only to have it cancelled by the ref because the ground was frozen. All the parents were naturally very disappointed that they had to miss standing around in sub-zero temperatures.

It is actually cold! It's winter and it's cold. Who'd have thought it?

Obviously if you are reading this anywhere in the world where it gets properly cold in winter, you won't be at all impressed, but here in Cambridge, a couple of nights of frost and the shops already look like they've been looted.

Have to go. Must panic-buy some groceries before it's too late.

Vaporetto-lag

Ever since we got back from Venice I have felt like I was on a boat. We spent so much time on vaporettos that my brain seems to have decided that I am permanently shifting balance to accommodate the rocking of a boat. I am finding it hard to walk in a straight line. My wife says she feels the same. It is very odd. What would we be like if we went on a cruise?

Happy new year

So here we are at the start of another year. . .

There is always that strange mixture of excitement and melancholy - well, for me anyway. I understand that the notion that January 1st is in any way the start of something new is totally spurious as the date is arbitrary, and yet I can never stop myself from falling into that trap of thinking that I can, snake-like, shed a skin and be renewed. And I can never quite stop myself from feeling disappointed when this proves not to be the case and come July I'm still the same vaguely misanthropic malcontent with a big nose and anger issues.

Here's my New Year Payne's Grey:

My blog came to a rather sudden halt some time back in November - and I've had complaints! The reasons for this breakdown in communications are many, but I will be magically filling in the gaps with blogs I started but never published.

Enough already

I suppose I must have had the same New Year's resolutions for about thirty years - don't worry, I'm not going to bore you with them. Having failed to attend to those resolutions, I then add more, so that I am now like Marley's ghost, dragging chains of these things, each link a reminder of some perceived inadequacy or shortcoming.

The other thing that seems to have happened as I have become older is that the list of things I feel I ought to start doing on a regular basis now far outweighs the things I think I ought to stop doing. I don't so much have bad habits now as bad character traits - or at least character traits I have decided I would be better off without.

Maybe I'm too boring now. Maybe I ought to do a kind of reverse resolution list: I must be more aggressive to complete strangers. I must eat more red meat and exercise less. I must drink more and learn to juggle with knives. I must swear more. I must totally lose contact with all my friends and family. I must try and be less tolerant of other people's stupid ideas. . .

But enough already. I hereby pardon myself from all my past unresolved resolutions. In fact this year, my new New Year's resolution is not to make any New Year's resolutions.

Apart from that one.

The one about not making any.

Buone Natale!

We spent Christmas in Venice this year. My son was given the choice of the usual pile of presents or a holiday. He chose Venice.

And it was a good choice. I don't think we will ever see St Mark's Square so empty and despite the fact that the city had the worst floods for several decades in early December, there was less sign of flooding this this time than there was when we visited in October 2007. Back then there was a queue stretching out of the Doge's Palace and right round the building. This time we walked straight in.

The skies were clear and blue the whole time apart from two wonderfully atmospheric misty days. . .

Number four all over

It is 1979 and I am so desperate to look cool that I am smoking. I don't smoke anymore, I should hasten to add. It is, of course, a disgusting habit and, as this photograph clearly shows, does not so much make you look cool, as makes you look worried.

Or a little bit like an unconvincing undercover member of the vice squad.

I am modelling a borrowed leather jacket and suede shoes. The haircut is a 'number 4 all over'.