An Internet Meme: How Original

Ah, memes.  Could there be anything more traditional in the 21st century?

1. What did you do in 2009 that you’d never done before?
Fall in love; go to church [okay, I’ve done it before, but not in a loooong time]; had Christmas without my family.

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I didn’t make any, nor will I be making any.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Beetle squeezed Ladybug out through her lady parts.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
No.

5. What countries did you visit?
Englandshire.

6. What would you like to have in 2010 that you lacked in 2009?
Stability.

7. What dates from 2009 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
January 31st / February 1st.  There was goodness involved.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
It sounds lame to say winning NaNoWriMo again, doesn’t it?  How about understanding the rules of Rock Paper Scissors Lizard Spock?  That’s just geeky, isn’t it?

9. What was your biggest failure?
Having a safe and comfortable living situation?

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Erm, yes.  I got diagnosed and treated for depression.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
Grande Skinny Extra-hot Dark Cherry Latte and Lemon and Poppy-seed muffin.  Gooood times.

12. Whose behaviour merited celebration?
The Boyf for being all kinds of awsum and putting up with me and all the stuff that happened this year.

13. Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed?
My Ex-Flatmate, his Violent Sidekick.

14. Where did most of your money go?
Nowhere specific, general day-to-day living.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
The Indelicates, yasai katsu curry, the butterflies in my tummy which arrive thirty seconds before the megabus arrives and the I see The Boyf again, MarioKart, notebooks, really little things.

16. What song will always remind you of 2009?
Amanda Palmer: Leeds United

or Tim Minchin: Not Perfect

17. Compared to this time last year, are you: a) happier or sadder? b) thinner or fatter? c) richer or poorer?
(a) Happier – without a doubt
(b) Thinner – also doubt-free
(c) About the same

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?
Dancing without a care.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?
Not making decisions

20. How will you be spending Christmas?
With The Boyf and his family.  My first Christmas without my family.

21. How will you be spending New Year’s?
With The Boyf.  It’ll probably be a snoozing-in-front-of-the-tv-job.

22. Did you fall in love in 2009?
Oh, hellz yes.

23. How many one-night stands?
None.

24. What was your favourite TV programme?
I only really watched one anything near religiously: The Big Bang Theory.

25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
Yes.  And the less said about said individual the better.  I can’t wait until I am simply apathetic towards him.  Hating is too strong and too consuming an emotion.

26. What was the best book you read?
Factually speaking: Stasiland was brilliant; blurring the line between fact and fiction The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay; in YA it was An Abundance Of Katherines for its geekiness and in kids’ books – like every other book list this year – The Graveyard Book.

27. What was your greatest musical discovery?
It’s been a fairly quiet year musically for me – for a change – I have been rather enjoying Calamateur, and I re-discovered AFP and the Dolls’ back catalogue.

28. What did you want and get?
A new job in a new city.

29. What did you want and not get?
My friend to act like it.

30. What was your favourite film of this year?
I saw so many this year; I truly believe I’ve seen more films at the cinema this year than I have in the rest of my life combined.  Therefore a top five, in no particular order: Moon, Milk, Doubt, Fantastic Mr Fox and Duplicity [What?!  It was just a good clean funny romp]. Coraline would have been in it, but we saw it in 3D, in the very front row making it difficult to see and with a theatre full of under-sevens.  It probably would’ve been top five if we’d seen it in a more conducive to film-viewing situation.

31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I was twenty-seven.  I went to the zoo, played mini-golf, got a ukulele and generally acted a bit like an excited eight year old boy.  It was awsum.

32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Year-round availability of dark cherry syrup in Starbucks.

33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2009?
Polka dot dresses and stripy socks.

34. What kept you sane?
Initially Citalopram, then Fluoxetine and now Venlafaxine.

35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
Tim Minchin.  I don’t know if it’s the looks, the funniness, the singing or any combination of the three.

36. What political issue stirred you the most?
Not that many really.  I got irate at a number of Daily-Mail-reading-racist taxi drivers because – especially in Aberdeen – those “sponging-immigrants” they are complaining about are highly qualified and doing the menial work which no one here wants to do.

37. Who did you miss?
The Boyf – every single time we needed to traverse the country to see each other without the aid of google chat.

38. Who was the best new person you met?
I met a number of new people this year, the best is Ladybug because she giggles, apparently likes me and when she poops I get to give her back.

39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2009.
When the waste material hits the spinning turbine you’ll know who your real friends are.

40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.
“There will be feasting and dancing in Jerusalem next year.
I am going to make it through this year if it kills me.”
Ah… Mountain Goats.

Christmas

Forgive the sacrilegiousness, but I’m not big on Christmas. Sure when I was younger I partook in the traditional Christmas activities: I was in Sunday School Nativity plays [angel, angel, angel, Angel Gabriel, Angel Gabriel, Wise Man, Narrator [and yes I am aware that three of those were boy-roles and I am a girl]] but I never went to Santa’s Grotto and I never got particularly excited about decorating the Christmas tree [that's my little sister's domain and woe betide anyone who gets in her way].

As I’ve aged I’ve neither increased nor decreased in my festivities. I still give and receive presents [and, in complete honesty I do prefer giving than receiving: I love that feeling when you find the perfect present for someone]. I’ve even managed to get the perfect Secret Santa present for this year’s office Secret Santa draw. I don’t know why I put in the effort to Secret Santa; every single time I’ve done it I’ve put quite a bit of thought into it and bought a really appropriate present, I have never received a remotely thought-out one in return. Once I received toothpaste wrapped in a Lidl newspaper.

Even though my office is the institution’s face of internationality and we’re supposedly open to any and every religion, ethnicity and every other facet of human interchangeability [proof, should proof be needed, comes in the form of the model of a mosque sitting under the office Christmas tree. The fact that the office is overwhelmingly made up of pasty white Scottish folks is neither here nor there] we only celebrate Christian festivals. We have Protestants, a pair of Catholics and few undecided or undeclared and then there is the Militant Atheist [capital M, capital A].

The Militant Atheist is seemingly on a one-woman campaign to rid the world of all faith, belief and religion starting with our office. She takes every single opportunity to put down Christianity [I think she's too afraid of being labelled "racist" to treat all other religions to her vitriol]. One of the girls in the office is a little forgetful; she regularly puts stuff down and them immediately forgets where she’s put it, so she does what she’s always done and mutters a quick “help!” to St. Anthony. It’s an almost daily occurrence and the rest of us essentially ignore it and treat it like the ecclesiastical tic that it is. Not the Militant Atheist though. Every single time she cannot let it pass, she has to launch into one of her crusades.

Now for someone who is so Militantly Atheist one would presume that she impugns all Christian festivals, wrong. She loves Christmas, she loves it like – as the cliché goes – a fat kid loves cake. She even tried to get the afternoon off work so she could go to the university carol service. When I pointed out that it was a little strange that such a Militant Atheist wanted to go to Christian celebration, she begrudgingly changed her mind.

It does irritate me that Christmas is such a huge celebration, disproportionally so. Even though I am not a practising Christian [or perhaps because I have recently started practising church-going again] I am seeing Christmas more and more as a Christian celebration and not simply a money-spending exercise. I firmly believe that Christmas should stop being primarily about presents once you start getting presents smaller than you are.

I do understand that for some non-Christians that Christmas isn’t about the traditional Christmas, it’s just as good a time as any to spend some quality sentimental time with family that you wouldn’t otherwise see. You can get together, eat, drink and be merry; catch up on news, reminisce about times past, wear silly jumpers and debate who should be Christmas number one.

Although that last point isn’t strictly necessary as in the head-to-head race this year the only winner is going to be Sony / BMG [RATM and X-Factor winner are on the same label, Simon Cowell is the only winner in this media-hyped competition]. I’m putting my somewhat limited weight behind what is probably, alas, going to be a non-starter, but which, is seemingly the most “Christmassy” of all the songs: White Wine In The Sun. Take it away, Tim Minchin…