This is one of the low points of my year.

For a start I have to go around resetting all my clocks which is not only tedious but it means the evenings are darker. It is a complete waste of time, though paradoxically I have “gained” and extra hour. I suppose I can’t complain though as it couldn’t be as troublesome as the work they have in the Irish Museum of Time where they have hundreds of clocks to readjust?

There is also the prospect of the deterioration of the weather: the cold dark wet windy days ahead. Daughter gleefully announced that we are going to have a severe winter ahead based on the fact that my holly tree is laden down with red berries.

This is also the time when the advertisers go hell for leather with their Christmas advertising all telling us how to have the ultimate happy holiday, but only by using their tat of course. Pictures of crowded tables laden down with food and everyone being happy, happy and oh so jolly will be shoved in our faces despite the fact that it’s basically a lie. They never show Uncle George who is pissed out of his mind and embarrassing everyone with his crude jokes. They never show the family rows that frequently erupt or the fact that Mammy has just served a dry overcooked turkey which no one really likes.

On the plus side I can feel sorry for the poor bastards in Suburbia who have doubtless been suffering the relentless bangers being set off for the last few weeks. This will culminate in a frenzy of explosions this weekend that will make a Russian invasion seem quite mild by comparison. I haven’t heard a single banger so far, here in the wilds, though I might hear one or two tonight or tomorrow. There again the forecast is for pissing rain, so maybe I won’t.

As an aside, this site has just celebrated its sixteenth birthday. 1,916,904 words of misery and grouchiness [I just counted them] and somewhere around four and a half million pages read.

Not bad for a site that was never meant to happen?