Jolly

2014 set out its stall on day one: more dark and dismal at noon that during the midnight celebrations. The Cat I Don't Own has been bored silly: punctuating periods of mad tear-arsing up and down the stairs with moody longueurs at the doorstep. When I suggest that she may want to go outside for a romp in the garden (or at least a crap) she gives me a look, mutters something about it pissing down then goes to have a kip on the pile of books on the spare bed. (There's a pile of books on the spare bed because the bookcase in the living room fell to pieces again, irreparably this time, due to overloading.)

Strangely enough, it's been mild enough outside for there still to be some bumblebees floating round the garden. There's thin pickings at the moment: just the Mahonia and a few primroses. The cyclamen finished a couple of weeks ago and the snowdrops are only just above ground level. I keep meaning to do something about the Winter flowering in the garden. If 2014 pans out the way I'm hoping it will I should have slightly more time for sorting these things out.

Hope

Happy 2014. Hopefully it won't be as shitty as 2013.

Consequences of an overdose of The Beano Book

I so wanted this to be a cover of the Bay City Rollers number.

Chrimbo singalong

It's been a rough old year for many of us.

Pull up a glass of sherry and pour yourself some turkey gravy as we sing along to those carols we loved as children.

Season's greetings to you and yours. Play nice and stay safe.

Spoor

I had a slight gardening mishap. Nothing too bad: I'd just jabbed myself with a garden implement. Unfortunately it was in one of those places where the amount of blood pouring out is entirely out of proportion to the size of the wound. I thought I'd managed to patch myself up without spilling any on anything that couldn't be wiped clean, but apparently not. A couple of hours later I heard a shout from the bathroom:

"Eeeww... Is this your blood on the bog roll?"

I don't know what she imagines I get up to while she's out having her hair done.

Archaeology

The Small Object of Desire is at a Time Team Adulation Society meeting tonight

She'll be the one stood at the back, with a bottle of vodka, shouting: "Tony! Tony love! Is that a bit of Samian ware or are you just pleased to see us?"

Tuesday singalong

Music for pleasure

We really do have conversations like this while we're cleaning our teeth...

"Did I dream this or did Max Bygraves die recently?"

"I don't know. Are you sure it was Max Bygraves?"

"No, that's why I was asking."

"Was it the other bloke, the one with the jumper?"

"Val Doonican?" 

"No. The Christmas one."

"Perry Como?"

"No. The other one."

"What other one?" 

"Is Val Doonican dead then?" 

"I don't know. I'll have to look it up on the 'net." 

Pumpkins to you, too, madam

Well-heeled couple and their unruly children mooching round St Ann's Square. Children accosting strangers in the dark and yelling: "Trick or treat!" I explain, gently, to one child that it isn't Halloween yet. "You're nine days early," I say.

Yummy-Mummy-manquée looks daggers at me. "Don't deprive them of their childhood! They should have something more than just a skinny frappucino with pistachio syrup and a harlequinade of gaily-coloured crushed macaroons! Look at Rosy-Chi-Chi's creative wearing of an off-the-peg Halloween urchin costume straight from Guardianista Pre-Loved Tat. Give them some money you unfeeling swine!"

Fuck off lady, I can't be doing with it.

I gave a pound to a beggar at the bottom of Deansgate.

New term

In a fruitless effort to find the pruning saw (it was in the kitchen, under the cat treats) I discovered that we've had a nice little crop of damsons this year. I've had more fruitful years but they've always included a large percentage of wastage. This year I got down a few pounds of nice, show-quality damsons so I'll have to have a bit of a worry about doing something useful with them (I'm thinking perhaps a damson cobbler).

A few weeks ago I cut back all the dead bits off the old flowering currant at the bottom of the garden, revealing that the old currant's gone the way of the great wardrobe spider and that a couple of layered shoots have taken nicely just in front of the original. This has them competing a bit with the damson and a couple of self-sown Cotoneaster. I'll grub out the Cotoneaster as they're not bringing a lot to the party, not even very much in the way of berries. Once I've done that I'll put a heavy mulch over most of the area, taking a bit of care around the hellebores' evergreen leaves and a bit less care where the hardy geraniums will have died down for the winter.

The pruning saw was for the first stage in my "tidying up that hazel tree," The Small Object of Desire's way of saying: "Chop most of that down." I'd already decided that it was time to do a bit of coppicing; I'd last done it five years ago. And I'm not so worried about losing a year's crop of hazels as the squirrel only left the one on the bush (and a huge pile of hazel shells in the back border). So I've taken down the first couple of dozen two-year-old pea sticks and a couple of four-year-old trunks. This involved finding new homes for some red admiral chrysalises (chrysalides?) which puzzles me rather as the nearest nettles are a couple of hundred yards away.

Cutting back the hazel is just one component of this summer's effort at resurrecting the patio. I've cleared out most of the old pots, which had become a bit tatty and haphazardly-supplied with various species of willowherbs, dismantled the relict rose trellis and tidied up most of the paving. I've decided that the marjoram, lemon balm and self-sown black violets can stay but the flag irises (I know, I know) will have to go (I have a home planned for them) and some of the more thuggish elements of the hardy geraniums will need curbing quite a bit. All this will please The Small Object no end as she has a dream of being able to sit on the patio playing tennis with The Cat I Do Not Have.

I've not told her yet that I'm planning on a buying splurge on new plants for the bottom of the garden...

Stock romance

"Do you think I should colour my hair?" I asked.

"There's not enough Bisto left in the world to do it," replied The Small Object of Desire.

Prevarication

Reviewing a customer request with a manager:

• My response was: "No."
• The manager's response was: "Fuck, no."

We won't be bothering the man from Del Monte for a third opinion.

Don't mock: it could be one of your own

How bitterly disappointing: the lads at work tell me that Talbot Rothwell didn't write "Game of Thrones."

Siren calls from the potting shed

It's taken me an age but I've finally got the answer to a question that's been bugging me for weeks.

The new siren on our local police cars and ambulances is the music they used to play over the credits on "Gardeners' World," back when it was with Percy Thrower and Arthur from Clack's Farm.

Cold hard reality

I was being principled and professional in the workplace concerning a piece of work involving my working a couple of evenings so that somebody could butter up a high-up in the proceedings.

"Just be careful you don't get the wrong people on your case about this," said my manager.

"I'm 52, what's left of my career has nowhere to go and I've seen more bigwigs come and go than I'd care to count. I'll try to do the right thing," I replied.

It's amazing the change of perspective you get when you hear yourself saying something like that.

I'm like the cockroach, me. Through no particular merit or skill, save the merest accident, I tend to survive the more Spectacular Talents.