Domestic God

So, tonight’s the night of our long-overdue engagement party.

We’ve been engaged since last year, we’re getting married in just under six months, and finally, we’re getting all our family and friends together to celebrate.

We were going to do things propperly; hire about a big room and a DJ, prepare a nice big buffett and get as many people together as we could for one joyous party.

Instead, what happened was this:

We continuously forgot about it until Anna’s parents announced they’d be moving to France for good ina few weeks and we figured we’d best get our arses in gear pronto. So we called as many decent folk as we could and told them all to come to our house tonight for food and frollics.

Now, as many of you will know, when you have a social-gathering at your hosue, you want the place to look as nice and tidy as possible. Which we did. Today though, when the majority of the cleaning and tidying was to take place, Anna got put on a course and spent the whole day in Manchester, meaning I’ve been on my feet cleaning, tidying, spitting and polishing since seven this morning.

Needless to say I’m absolutly knackered now and in no way, shape or form do I want to party, all I want is a nap.

Oh the irony of it all.

Yearning For A Long Lost Youth

Growing up, it always slightly annoyed me that my Mother had a total lack of hobbies or interests.

Whilst my Dad had golf, and aeroplanes and all kinds of wonderfully masculine interests with which to spend his time and disposable income, Mum seemed to derive her only pleasures in life from doing the hoovering and watching Corrie.

I say this annoyed me but it was more that it upset me, confused me even, after all how can somebody not have something that interests them, compells them, gets them going?

For at least a good eight years of my formative years, I had a plethora of things that got me going. There was wrestling, those big burly blokes of the WWF that became an all encompassing obsession for those eight years. Then there was skateboarding, heavy metal, art, and of course, writing, the one thing that’s been a constant love of my life since I first learned how to hold a pen.

I devoured each of these things, plus others besides, as passionately and enthusiastically as a 40 year-old, fat ugly virgin devours his first prostitute. Boredom was never issue, there was always too much cool stuff to be doing, researching writing about, and it just absolutly beggared belief that somebody could have absolutely zero hobbies.

Then something bad happened, and I accidently grew up.

I’ve been sat here tonight, in this beautiful semi-detached house which I now call home, looking after my poor, sick fiance and fretting  over whether or not the Cat’s been fed, and I’ve been thinking.

Where the hell have all my hobbies gone? Wrestling? Not any more. OK, anything old-school and I’ll happily lap it up, but this is more to do with me reminiscing and pining for my childhood than anything else. I just don’t understand all this WWE shite, and besides, the missus won’t let me watch it anyway.

Heavy metal? Yeah I still got Metallica and Slayer making my ears bleed thanks to the cheap yet ultimately durable little MP3 player, but I no longer have the time to go scouring the net looking for news on when when the next Anal Cunt CD is likely to be , spending all my cash on gigs and T-shirts and bootlegs and convincing myself that I was going to be the next Zack Wylde.

Skateboarding? OK I’ve made a documentary on  the sport and occasionally get roped into writing about it, but the last time I was on a board was two years ago, and then I broke my friggin’ wrist. Truth is, I’m just too old and unhealthy for it all now.

I could go on and on about all these long lost loves which still retain a fondness in my heart but yet don’t get half as much of my attention and adulation as they once did.

In fact, very little these days manages to captivate me the way things did in my youth. Besides writing, and photography and filmmaking which all simply come as part and parcel of being me, there’s nothing outside the world of work that fires me up anymore, and it’s almost overwhelmingly sad.

I guess once you get a house that needs constant attention, a girlfriend who demands the same and bills that you have to sort out, hobbies and interests just go out the window. This probably isn’t true, but one thing that is true is that I really, really need a new hobby!