Those 2012 New Year Resolutions In Full

Drink more water.

Finish that Eggers book.

Scargill, Springfield and Status Quo

Obscure politics? - check

Eighties music? - check

Random stuff about the footie? - check

Yep, 2011 was pretty much a continuation of 2010.

Long may I cliche.

Nooks and crannies.

20 down . . . 2000 to go.

Football, It's a Minging Life! by Rick Holden (DB Publishing 2010)

Let’s end with an amusing little anecdote at Watford. One weekend when Jean was away, a few of the players and I went out on the town after the game. We ended up at a night club in Hemel called the Living Room, which was renowned as a ‘grab a granny’ venue. Somehow, we’d been split up into two pairs. Myself and Lee Richardson, whose never-to-be-forgotten domestic skills included cleaning vomit up with the vacuum cleaner, and Tony Coton and Mel Rees, two daft ’keepers. Lee and I went for a curry, and the two rocket scientists went back to my house to wait for us to return. When we returned I found a cat-sized hole in the ceiling of my conservatory and Mingan sitting next to half a dozen empty lager cans. I was convinced for months that Mingan was the culprit; being a Leeds cat he would have no problem getting stuck into the drink. It hadn’t really occurred to me that the two stooges had got bored of waiting for me to return and had broken in through my bedroom window, putting their feet through the roof as they climbed. That’s goalkeepers for you. I cleared away the lager cans and, to this day, Jean thinks the hole was made by the cat jumping off the window ledge onto the conservatory roof.

Maigret's War of Nerves by Georges Simenon (Penguin Books1931)

“He worked like a slave. His professors regarded him as their most promising pupil. He had no friends. He never spoke much, even to his fellow students.“

He was poor, but he was used to poverty. Often he went to his classes with no socks. More than once he worked in the market, unloading vegetables to earn a few centimes…“

Then came the catastrophe. His mother died. There was no more money.“

And suddenly, without any transition, he turned his back on his dream. He might have looked for work, as so many students do. But no, he didn’t lift a finger…“

Did he have a suspicion that he wasn’t quite the genius he’d imagined? Had he begun to lose confidence in himself? In any case, he did nothing. Nothing whatever. He merely loafed about in cafés, writing begging letters to distant relatives and appealing to charitable organizations. He sponged cynically on any Czechs he happened to meet in Paris, even flaunting his lack of gratitude.“

The world hadn’t understood him. So he hated the world. And he spent his time nursing his hatred. In the Montparnasse cafés he would sit among people who were rich, happy, and bursting with good health. He would sip his café crème while cocktails were being poured out by the gallon.“

Was he already toying with the idea of a crime? Perhaps… I really don’t know. But I know that twenty or thirty years ago he’d have been a militant anarchist tossing bombs at royalty. But that’s no longer fashionable these days…

Maigret and the Hundred Gibbets by Georges Simenon (Penguin Books 1931)

“By working ourselves up into a frenzy, we ended up as packs of nerves. Especially those of us who didn’t eat enough. Do you see what I mean? Little Émile Klein included. A kid who didn’t eat, but kept himself going with loads of drink.

“Naturally, we re-discovered the world. We had our own ideas about all the great problems! We scoffed at the middle-class, society, and all established truths…“

As soon as we’d gulped down a few drinks and the air was thick with smoke, we’d bandy the craziest ideas about! A mixture of Nietzsche, Karl Marx, Moses, Confucius, and Jesus Christ.“

For instance, let’s see… I can’t remember who it was who discovered that pain didn’t exist and that it was only a figment of the imagination. I was so taken with the idea that, one night, in the middle of a breathless group, I stuck the end of a penknife into the fleshy part of my arm and tried to smile…“

Then there were other things. We were an Élite, a little group of Geniuses brought together by chance. We soared above the conventional world of law and prejudice.“

A handful of gods, do you see? Gods who were sometimes starving to death, but who walked the streets proudly, dismissing the passers-by with contempt.“

We used to plan the future: Lecocq d’Arneville was to be a Tolstoy. Van Damme, who was doing a boring course at the School of Economics, was to revolutionize political economy and reverse all accepted ideas on the organization of the human race

“Each of us had his place. There were poets, painters, and future heads of state.“

All on drink! And how! In the end, we were so used to getting carried away, that we’d hardly have got here, in the light of the lamp, with the skull from which we all drank, before each of us would manage to achieve the little frenzy he wanted, on his own…“

Even the more modest of us could already see a marble plaque one day on the wall of the house: Here met the famous Companions of the Apocalypse.…“

It was a challenge to see who could bring the latest book, or come up with the most far-fetched ideas.“

It’s pure chance that we didn’t become anarchists. We used to discuss the question, solemnly. There had been an attempted assassination in Seville. We’d read the newspaper article out loud.“

I can’t remember which of us cried out: ‘True genius is destructive!’…

Morning Glory (2010)

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 (2011)

Margrave of the Marshes by John Peel and Sheila Ravenscroft (Chicago Review Press 2005)

Although they saw less of one another in the last few years before Walters' death, John remained terribly fond of him. They had a closeness that was quite touching to observe. John frequently characterised their relationship as being like that of a man and his dog, but with each plainly believing the other to be the dog. Walters came up with his own analogy, likening John to Eeyore from A. A. Milne's Winnie the Pooh stories. 'Everybody's having honey while he's in some damp corner of a field, alone and ignored, with nothing but thistles,' noted Walters. 'If I call to remind him that he has a programme on Bank Holiday, it's: "Everybody gets a holiday but me." If I say he's got the day off to make way for some sort of Radio 1 special, it's: "They're trying to get rid of me." Either way it's thistles and I suspect he finds them rather reassuring.'

Elf (2003)