I'm an average nobody. I get to live the rest of my life like a schnook.

So 12 months of being very hot, very cold, very wet, very tired, very lost or very full is over. Is it really the case that from now on there will be nothing? No more feeling obliged to damage my body in an attempt to haul it up to a level of mediocrity that allows me to do something that is totally superfluous to existence. No more cheap hotels next to sex shops or trawling the Internet for discount flights. No more writing excessively long blogs for my own amusement. Is it time to start living a life that flows rather than stutters from one underprepared episode to the next? And if so how do I wrap up my journal of the year? Ending is difficult. Far greater works than this have been ruined by a duff, clumsy or clichéd ending.

I suppose this post should be about what I have learnt from the year. So, what have I learnt from the year? Nothing. Take that life – I defy your attempts to force little lessons on people. You’re no educator, if you were then there would be no life for 6 weeks in the summer and any time it snowed. Mind you, I have realised, discovered and ascertained quite a lot. None of it could be called a universal truth, or even a local truth. And anyway I’m not going to list every development here. For the first time this year I am going to use judgment when writing a post and not bang on about something completely irrelevant. No incessant prevaricating, no sir, direct and to the point, like an arrow fired by Robin Hood. No getting sidetracked on a wild flight of fancy or getting into an aside that means I never make my main point - stick to the path Dorothy. The last post has to leave people with a good memory of this blog – it is likely to be the only one they ever read. So no wasting bandwidth on a number of points that have no relevance to the rest of the post. No. I will name just one thing that I know now that I barely knew before: when it comes to the meaningless stuff it turns out I like stuttering. I like new experiences. I like meeting the people involved in them, especially those with a passion for activities that are so often and so rightly seen as quirky, stupid or pointless. I don’t want to get bogged down in one thing that I’ll never be good at; I want to get bogged down in a whole bunch of things I'll never be good at. Embrace, devour and move on. I am an experience locust. That accursed gaoler known as life is going to prevent me from pursuing these things with the same obsession but I don’t think I can stop. Well I can, but I’m not going to (yet) – I have enjoyed myself too much. Maybe a Fourth Decade of Challenges. If you have an unfulfilled ambition and nobody will accompany you on it get in touch. I still want to write a sitcom, learn to tap-dance, star in a Chekhov play and take part in the Wacky Races. Only recently someone mentioned the paper, scissors, stone World Championship in Las Vegas – why not? And I’ll only be 34 at the next Olympics, that's a whole festival of nonsense.

Maybe I’ll write about it but not on this blog*. This blog was one year only. This is an ex-blog. If you have been involved in the year in any way, thank you. If you have donated, thank you. If you have ploughed through this and any of my other bleating, thank you.

And they all lived happily ever after/And then I woke up/The End….? [repeat to fade out]



*Actually I have found that I enjoy writing this junk so much that I am in the development stage of a new and altogether more rounded blog. If you want to know when it is up and running drop me an email.