Way back in the time of black-and-white film, indoor pipe smoking and the unironic wearing of knitted jumpers, the Earth’s climate wasn’t quite as fucked up as it is now and it was common occurrence for snow to fall in December. To confirm this, a knitted jumper wearing, pipe smoking, black-and-white filmed man named Bing recorded a song called White Christmas about the surrounding environment being white at Christmas.
By today’s standards, the occurrence of a White Christmas is a just massive uncertainty, like the existence of Rudolph or whether Bing was just that old fella’s stage name or not. And so, snow at Christmas time has become one of those things we humans like to think of as a potential possibility, even though it appears towards the bottom end of the likeliness ladder.
Thinking that one might manage to force out a rambling stream of consciousness once a week – whilst it lasted for a couple of years there – became just another of those things that’s a nice idea in preliminary stages, but ultimately never really comes to fruition.
Did that actually make any sense? I mean it’s a bit of a tenuous link to jump from the unfulfilled expectation of December snow to the unfulfilled expectation of a weekly blog. What’s worse is that I did it in so many superfluous words that all meaning got lost somewhere around the word “consciousness”. I suppose the thing you’d have to bear in mind here is that this post is the second one I’ve made in the whole of 2015. That makes fifty other weeks unaccounted for, plus a bunch of missed occasions throughout 2014 too.
In an attempt to get me actually writing this shit a bit more often, I’ve taken this thing away from its rent-free home on Blogger and set it up in a nice new pad, with its own domain name and bit of magical tech space on a server somewhere in Birmingham or Slough or wherever GoDaddy’s headquarters may be. Like any new home, the place looks a bit bland and could do with a spot of redecorating to give it some personality. But these things take time, of course. Expecting a fully furnished place right away is nice inside the brain but not an idea that reality would necessarily agree with.
The fact of the matter, though, is that I’ve paid – using, like, real money – three years’ rent upfront, and I’d be very disappointed with this blog if it didn’t make the most of its own place. The only thing worse than spending money is wasting money.That’s why I’m not really fan of normal things like Christmas shopping, rail fares or sticking banknotes in bonfires.
I’m slowly coming around to the idea of spending money in large quantities though, which I’ll need to keep up in the New Year as my car-driving tutorial days (hopefully) come to a close and my car-driving solo days (hopefully) begin. In order for life to progress down that avenue, I’ll require a second-hand tin bucket on wheels and an insurance policy that’ll amount to approximately eleven times what I’ll have spent on the car.
Still, it’s a necessity to keep myself sane and – in theory – as far away from that state of depression I’ve found my mentality flirting with for some 18 months. Things like simplifying the daily commute, being able to make spontaneous outings and ultimately visiting friends is faraway places should be good for me. But then again, maybe that’s just a nice thought that reality will end up shitting all over when the time comes.
Much like Bing’s seasonal sentiments, I’m dreaming of a cheap Hyundai, that I’ll actually be authorised to operate without supervision. Until then, I’ll make do with writing about it and moaning about the unknown, obscene amounts of money it will take to theoretically drive myself away from loneliness and boredom.
By then, it could be June and the snow might actually come.
Jamie Walsh 
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