Valid all year

Once upon a time, before I was wearing a beard, I was at a do and Noddy Holder came up to me and said, "I like your sideburns." This made me very happy because no-one knows sideburns better than Noddy Holder. This week I was at a do and Sir Peter Blake approached me, saying, "you look like a painter." It gave me a very similar thrill. He was a lovely gent.

It's been two years since I've been to a Christmas party. That's odd.

As Christmas approaches and the end of the year hoves into view the temptation to look back on 2005 and reflect grows ever stronger. It's been another strange year... when I started performing my Googlewhack Adventure back in early 2003 I certainly didn't imagine that I'd still be touring it nearly 3 years later. But then I don't think I could ever have imagined it having quite the international appeal it seems to have had and it's that that has kept it on tour for so long. Now, 367 shows, a book and 2 book tours later I suspect that it's finally over. I have been offered some further dates in the States but I've decided to say no and to stay put for a while. It's time for a new challenge. I don't know what yet... but I'm enjoying not knowing what.

At the start of the year I wrote something about the novelty glasses that had appeared on New Year's Eve. It seemed to me - and it still does - that these glasses are very specific to our age. The ten years from 2000 to 2009 are the first that have had the double 0 in the middle in the age of mass production and so these must be the first years in which such items have been widely available. And from the year 2010 they will disappear once more, not to return for many years. I think this means they should be celebrated while it is still possible to do so and while I saw many pairs on New Year's Eve last year I'm sad to say that I haven't see many during the year itself.


It's as if people have treated them as nothing but a one-day novelty when actually, more than any other item, they are clearly valid for the whole year. I've certainly treated my two pairs as such. They came with me to LA back in March. They came with me to Niagara Falls in April, too. I had them with me in San Francisco, Cleveland and Aurora too. They came with me to The Grand Canyon, they revisited LA and they were still with me when the tour ended in Seattle. I'm wearing them right now as I type this. But I'll discard them when the year is out... when they've served their full 365 day term and not before.

I hope you have a great Christmas/Hanukah/Kwanzaa/whatever. I wish you well for 2006, too. I don't know what the year will bring, but hopefully it will involve something I'll want to tell you about one way or another. Pip pip.