The First Post...

...of this new year! I hope yours is off to a great start. We had a most excellent time last night - Phil made a delicious vegan "steak and sausage" pie with mash and carrots followed by brandy butter ice cream and mince pies. After that we settled down to watch "Super 8" which was really rather good. Although JJ Abrahms continues to overuse blue lights, I thought it was a great wee film with a largely unknown cast that had some great homages to movie-making, especially the scene where the army guy is shouting into a radio whilst looking round and all of the effects. It seemed to me like something Stephen King would have written years ago before he got shite.
Unlike us, still holding out with a wee telly, P&D have a rather big screen on which on Vee's suggestion we ended up watching a Lady Gaga HBO special of her gig at Madison Square Gardens. Say what you like about Mother Monster (and I for one do love her) she does put on a great show. We went into the kitchen for the bells (what we call the strike of 12 in Scotland) and amongst much hugging and smooching wished each other all the best. Dougie's brother Stuart came down at about 12.30, by which time Vee had found "Serenity" showing on TV so we saw in the New Year watching that. They say you spend the year doing what you do in the first minutes of its birth and I'd be happy to see the influence of one of my favourite movies.
We headed to bed about 2.30 ish where Gee and I slept fitfully on the sofa bed, interrupted by our Rox and P&D's Rudi having a wee territorial spat. I woke going to midday to a fantastic fried bunch - tempeh rashers and tattie scones on rolls with mushrooms and hot tea. We headed home about 4ish to laze about in our jammies.
For the first time in ages, I'm looking forward - things ARE going to get better, if not in terms of the government of this country and on a global scale, then certainly within my own wee sphere. I hope that all of us can find peace and maybe a wee bit of strength this year, if not to have our own version of an Arab Spring then to look to our own families and communities and make links there that will see us through the times to come. The Olympics are an irrelevance, the Mayan calendar is a load of mumbo-jumbo - don't live this coming twelvemonth at the dictats of others but by your own rules, your way. That's what I'm aiming for. Peace out xxx