Bare Ingredients

In an annoying development I have come back to work to find myself responsible for not one but two unwieldy projects, both of which show signs of careering out of control at the first opportunity should I neglect to pay them appropriately detailed attention for the merest moment.  This state of affairs - which would be challenging enough at the best of times- is rendered near to impossible by the fact that my brain has been comprehensively addled by two weeks' worth of passive couchbound consumption of sweet sherry, strong lager, Black Magic and the BBC light entertainment schedule as advertised in the Festive Edition of the Radio Times.  It's all I can do to get through marathon project meetings without surrendering to the temptation to make a headlong dash for the Fire Exit, and late this afternoon I came close to being reduced to tears by a particularly sociopathic spreadsheet. 

All of which means that by the time I get home my powers of concentration have more or less deserted me and the very prospect of attempting to splice together three written sentences into a passably cohesive paragraph leaves me exhausted.  So I'm afraid I can't offer you a proper post with sentences, punctuation or a narrative.  The best I can do in the circumstances is lay before you the bare ingredients of a post, with which maybe you can cobble something together yourselves (which you can probably all do better than me by now, after all you've been reading long enough).  

Here we go then.  Four Things I Would Tell You About Properly If The Sweet Sherry and the Excel Spreadsheets Hadn't Finished Me Off:

1.  Not For Profit Company X's works do, which was held in a very posh city centre hotel under the theme of Hollywood, and which I attended dressed as Jean-Paul Belmondo in Au Bout de Souffle, complete with battered trilby.  Which now that I come to think of it isn't a Hollywood film at all, it is a Nouvelle Vague film, but I think a little artistic licence was allowed for.

2.  My Christmas presents- including a hat knitted by my mother (stop laughing at the back, it's bottle green and actually quite fetching I'll have you know).  Also a festive sausage from the Christmas markets and a book by Alain de Botton called (I think) The Pleasures of Work, which I have been immersing myself in during lunch- hour in the office canteen in a vain effort to dissuade my work colleagues from engaging me in conversation. 

3.  Our New Year in Tyneside, some of which was spent helping my sister, left alone due to a Stateside family bereavement, to look after two small children (read: cooking myself a large meal consisting almost entirely of sardines, doing online Guardian crosswords while under the influence of intoxicating licquor, becoming addicted to watching consecutive episodes of Upstairs Downstairs on I-player and nearly missing Big Ben's midnight chimes as a result, playing with wooden zoo animals and New York tube trains on the floor while nursing an industrial-grade hangover)

4.  The alarming incident today when while proceeding on my scooter through Manchester's leafy Westside I spotted a parked Fiat Punto which on closer inspection proved to be none other than Pietro the Punto, our beloved family car as featured in numerous Crinklybee posts up to September 2007.  I experienced a wave of longing and nostalgia which came close to sending me toppling sideways from my two-wheeled conveyance, and was tempted to knock on the door and enquire of the owners (who aren't the same people we sold the car to; they lived miles away, in Todmorden, as I am sure you recall) whether I could climb in and have a quick drive round the block, just for old times' sake. Of course they would probably have called the Police. 

There you are then.  Make what you will of that lot.  Normal service will resume shortly when I am slightly less sleep-deprived, which will hopefully be next week.  Please do not adjust your sets.  And while we're at it, Happy New Year to one and all.       

Comments

[looby]

Oh dear, sounds like 2011 has arrived with something of a bang. Well done for stepping into the breach up north over New Year.

Just on a minor technical point, and I'm not sure whether you've done it deliberately or you knocked some arcane set of keys all at once after the fourth sherry of the day, but it's a lot easier to read now. The print seems darker and it's more widely spaced. These things start to matter when you reach the age when you do hair loss audits every morning.

Did many people correctly get Belmondo or the film?

[Jonathan]

Your second guess re the cause of the change of font size is nearer the mark Looby but as a special service to a loyal commenter I will try to remember what key it was I pressed and press it again next time. And next time there's a quiet afternoon at Crinklybee Towers I'll get one of the boys onto a cure for baldness. No, don't thank me, it's the least I can do.

I meant to say in the post but no-one guessed who I was dressed as- there were plenty of wide of the mark suggestions, including Columbo and 'the Stretford Flasher' (who I am not sure is technically a Hollywwod character, it was the raincoat you see). Fortunately I had guessed a cue of some kind might be in order so had tucked away in by breast pocket a small black and white postcard featuring a still from Au bout de souffle, which I brandished by way of explanation at increasingly regular intervals as the evening wore on.

[abby]

eeee, I want to hear about the sardines even though I was there in person! And I wonder if there is a name for people who stalk their old cars. It sounds like something de Botton would have a chapter on.