Sleep of the just

Sleepy hollow: err, something about
being tired

Brought to you by Marcus Hadfield

Well, it’s taken a whole 19 days for the darkness to kick in and finally it has. So much for yesterday’s post. All the optimism I’ve been feeling for pretty much the whole month has vanished. Gone. Black… black, etc.

I’ve never been particularly good at hiding my feelings and I really don’t want to learn how, to be honest. I like the lack of mystery. My heart looks good on my sleeve, I think. I like making it easy for people.

So when disappointment comes knocking at my door, as it often seems to do these days, it’s usually pretty simple to tell. It didn’t even bother knocking this time; just barged its way in uninvited and made itself at home.

I had thought I’d seen the last of it this year, but you can never really be rid of the fucker, can you? Always in the neighbourhood and seldom backward in coming forward. A right bloody pain in the arse and annoyingly never unexpected.

This afternoon was the work Christmas lunch. Predictably, my option was fucking risotto. Why is it always risotto? Because chefs can’t be fucking arsed putting some ruddy thought into it, that’s why. At least the cheeseboard dessert was up to scratch.

I had been due to go out afterwards with someone who makes me laugh more than anyone I’ve ever met, but she’d had a shitty week and wasn’t feeling up to it. Was going to be an interesting exercise staying relatively sober while my colleagues knocked back the cheap plonk, but on the bright side, it meant I didn’t have to. And I didn’t. But I was looking forward to laughing like a drain and grinning like an idiot instead of dribbling over my laptop keyboard and feeling decidedly nonplussed.

That came on the back of a slightly deflating change of plan for a project I’d been hugely looking forward to and that might have really given me something to which I could devote some energy. Not meant to be.

And in a way, that’s been the story of my year. Things with promise that just haven’t panned out the way I’d have liked for some reason or another. They say all things happen for a reason, but I’m buggered if I can work out what those reasons are, other than to make me feel a bit shitter than I did before.

It gets to the point where you think the only way to avoid disappointment is to completely avoid any expectation that things might work out well. I thought I’d shaken that mentality off for good earlier this year, but in keeping with the theme, that didn’t work out as planned either.

Oh well. There’s always beer. The only thing I can rely on. Today’s carries the name ‘Hibernate’, which I’ve always felt was something we could really have learned from bears. I’d love to hibernate, waking some time in the spring feeling refreshed and ready for the rest of the year.

Instead, I’ll just tuck in to the beer and achieve a similarly comatose if less prolonged state. But before I do, there’s time to publicise tomorrow’s Eventful, err, event at Rich Mix in Shoreditch. Greatcoats for Goalposts, which celebrates the centenary of the 1914 Christmas truce.

Now there’s something that is worth celebrating.

Beer: To Øl Hibernate

Strength: A sleepy, hypnotic maybe even soporific 6%

Smell: Really strong midget gems and those blue pastel lozenges that generally hang around in men's urinals.

Tasting notes: OK. I give in. I can no longer equate smell with taste. Because this is possibly the most contrary one I've had yet. I feel utterly powerless. Like it's disarmed me in an instant and is just whispering its story in my ear as if it knows I'm oh-so suggestible. And I am. I'm gazing up into its eyes like it's an angel reaching out its winged hand to save me from something I don't know I've done yet. It's gorgeous. I beam into its face like a grinning idiot that's had its brains bludgeoned out belligerently by a breezeblock of blissful, beery ignorance. Transfixed and damned to exist forever more in a permanent state of inability. That's forever, she said. And she was right.

Session factor: Veering between oh God yes and please no.

Arbitrary score: 70,714

Sponsor: Marcus Hadfield