Apocalypto ho ho.

Happy New Year Lums,

My resolution is too reek more sooty haverings up the lum in 2011 so, expect a blizzard of nonsensical bunkum from me for the next three weeks, then nothing till May or something, that's normally how the resolutions go. Or is it just me that's incapable of shaking off all the undesirable habits that have attached themselves to me in the past forty odd years, like barnacles on a ships arse, each one unwelcome, slowing me down and laying me lower in the briny sea.

I'm ill equipped to deal with the apocalypse the Mayans predicted is coming. When society falls, I'll have to come up with a plan. Its alright for people with skills. Joiners, butchers, doctors, they'll be alright, they'll be sought after. The rest of us, I guess we'll be food or fertiliser, probably both.

Now we're all in the appropriate mood, let me share with you the highlights of my Christmas break at home, if I say it started with a funeral and ended with a speeding ticket, and then remind you that I said highlights, you'll be well on the way to the conclusion that this may well have been a most miserable Christmas, and it mostly was.

Lets start with the very sad departure of My uncle Mickey McDonald after a short and sudden illness. When I was a small boy, I suppose he wasn't much older than I am now, I remember the visits to see him and auntie Cathy. Even then, I recognised the humour of the man, he always had a grin, he was always kidding you on and had an inextinguishable twinkle in his eye every time I saw him, which was always a treat, I'm sure everyone he met saw it too. Even when older, he hadn't changed, the same Mickey, having a laugh and a carry on with my dad, like they were boys again. One of the last times I talked too him at any length he told me about his time as a Royal Artillery Gunner in the Korean War, the battle of Imjin River and how he had to swim across in a freezing Spring of 1951 with a million China men chasing him. Over a thousand allied troops lost their lives in the three days of the battle, it was one of the fiercest fought since the end of WWII and my old uncle Mickey was there, a long way from the Gareloch. Anyway, well done Mickey, you were a cracking man.

Funerals are quite rightly, sombre affairs, and often the only time you see old faces from the past. The relevance of them long forgotten, but the sight of them stirs some deeply buried memory. In my case the memory is normally from old school hogmany parties at my Granparents house in a little village on a Clyde sea loch. The kind when the door gets knocked every ten minutes after midnight, with another man from the village bringing a dram and a song. No music playing, just singing the usual play list unaccompanied, Danny Boy, I'll take you home again Kathleen, There was a Soldier, that kind of thing. No fancy vodkas or anything coloured blue then, just bottles of whisky and a jug of water, and it went on and on, sometimes for days.

Anyhoo, the faces I remember from those nights, when I was just a boy, peeking around the door, or pretending to be asleep up the back of the room. A few of them were there, at the funeral, not ruddy cheeked and beaming new year smiles, belting out Jim Reeves or laughing at the Big Yins patter on Big Banana Feet, but old, worn out and hard to imagine them as they were once, but I guess that's just the way of it.

Can I order one apocalypse please, for delivery the day after I get old.

So that was Christmas Eve, Christmas day passed with the usual hilarity, first of all the gifts. What do you get the man with everything? Well, if by everything you mean aftershave, underwear and chocolate, you get him more of the same. I did get a very nice Ted Baker shirt, from the Shirley Crabtree collection. Imagine if you will, buying your wife, that you love very much, an expensive dress for Christmas, the one you spotted her eyeing up in the window, you may even have imagined her dropping you a couple of hints to buy it like " don't ever buy me clothes " or "remember to keep receipts for everything". So you buy it, and can hardly contain your self as your size ten wife eyes the fabric, the quality of the finish, especially around the size fourteen label and ultimately ten hours later on return from casualty, the stitching around your nostrils where she rammed the hanger. I, being a man, took it a little better, with a discrete, its a little long in the sleeve, maybe you could change it for the size below.

Between Christmas and New Year is like a dead zone. Like the festive period is passing through the Oort Cloud or something. It slows and becomes unimportant, the only thing keeping time is the TV schedules, but even now that's gotten a bit fuzzy with the number of repeats and catch up channels there are.

I avoided TV totally, apart from a bit of darts. I didn't mean too watch, but it sucks you in, darts. Its so quick, a game lasts a few minutes, a set maybe ten and entire match can be done in half an hour, you have no time to get bored, the commentators are entertaining and the players are a joy to behold. Just ordinary blokes with tattoos, an extraordinary skill, no punishing gym regimes, no playing since he was three or "he only wins because he has the best arrows" carry on. Just guys that picked up three darts at some time and found they could throw them quite accurately, more accurately than anyone else in the pub/town/county/country or even world.

I didn't shave for the week so I thought I'd keep it going and see what kind of beard I get. I thought I'd get one of those that looked like I've just trekked across the pack ice from the North Pole, it would make me look rugged, travelled and interesting, instead it looks like a raccoon is raping my face. Its the unwelcome grey, all around my chin which is inviting comments like "very wise" and "distinguished". I'll keep it going and see if its just a barrier that has to be crossed for the first time beard grower, but if I start looking like McGrew the Trumpton fireman, its coming right off.

As I ponder this nonsense there has been a murder, some poor girl in Bristol but the police enquiry all seems a bit odd, there are profilers, psychics and theories galore, now police are hunting a pizza and a sock, whats all that about? If they discover the pizza is a vegetarian one, is anyone else thinking they'd like to know the whereabouts of Heather Mills that night?

The other news creating a bit of a tizz is these birds falling out the sky dead in Arkansas, now been joined by a load of fish in a river from not much further away, not falling out the sky of course, that would be odd, but floating to the surface, which I suppose is the equivalent for a fish, but not as sore.

Arkansas is of course right in the good ol bible belt and these biblical style occurrences are fairly putting them all on hyper thump down there. Mind you, it is a bit strange, but before we start blaming the Wrath of God lets bullet the alternatives and randomly pick a likely cause, it seems to do the trick at work, so lets try it here.

• Aliens in their very specific wildlife bothering spaceships,almost definitely
• Secret US weapons testing, kill all the little birds and fish and the North Koreans will have nothing to eat, I bet frogs and dogs start turning up dead next
• Solar flares, cant be that, have you seen the weather.
• Magnetic disturbances at the centre of the earth, where the core has stopped spinning and we're all doomed. Don't think its that, I'm sure the Golden Gate Bridge falls apart in that movie.
• Virus being spread in the pollen of killer plants. M Night Shyamalan, nuff said.
• Racial crime, they were all blackbirds after all, but why would white supremacist doves go after fish, unless they had swum down from upstate New York to help organise some kind of blackbird civil flights rally. That would make sense
• Suicide, got to admire their coordination if that was the case
• Angry God, jeez, what eating him, mind you he seems a little less pissed off than the time he sent the tsunami. Maybe somebody bought him a new white smock two sizes too big.

Happy New Year, I hope 2011 is as long as you expect it to be and

lang may yer lum reek.