New year, same me

At the end of the working day, when he could be sitting watching the tennis (ahahahaaaaa I’m laughing myself silly – he’s into cricket), the Old Boy has been doing mystical techie stuff on my website. The upshot is that very soon you will be seeing a brand new website: new banner, new layout, pictures of my books and where to buy them and so on. So far, I can tell you that it’s looking good. Now all I have to do is figure out how to do the blogs.

“It’ll be easy”, my resident techie said. “You’ll just have to learn how to use a new template.”

“Ahahahaaaa”, I said, laughing myself silly. “What’s a template?”

So … watch this space.

Meanwhile, I’ve been playing nurse and physiotherapist for the Wonder Dog. Just before Christmas he snapped the cruciate ligament in his right knee. It’s a problem a lot of footballers experience; usually it means the end of their footy season. Luckily, the Wonder Dog’s football is just a hobby. The surgery cost slightly less than it would for a human to have it done, without the waiting time if you’re on public health. (I told our nephew, who is waiting to have his knee repaired, that he ought to go to the vet.) Anyhoo, the little furry lad should be back to relatively normal by Easter.

Talking about Easter (known in the trade as a “segue”), here’s my input on Hot Cross Buns and Easter Eggs being available in supermarkets on Boxing Day. It’s another three months until Easter. No one, who buys these products now, will be storing them up for Easter. They’ll be eating them now. I can understand that: yummy fruit buns and delicious chocolate. The thing is, that then reduces them to simply buns and chocolate. So, just call them that. Sell the buns without the T and call them “fruit buns”. Make the chocolates into shapes that have no connection with the Christian faith: e.g. a rabbit, or a bilby, or Postman Pat, or a shoe … and call them chocolate shapes.

It’s their connection to Easter – their symbolism (the cross on the bun, and the egg, a symbol of new life) – that traditionally gives them significance. By selling them at least three months before, the moguls of commerce are taking away their spiritual significance, the thing that makes them special, and are reducing them to the ordinary, all to make a few bucks. That is a shame. Of course, I certainly don’t think it’s worth being outraged and consumed with anger about it. I merely share my two cents worth.

So how’s the new year treating you so far? Is it just me, or does it – so far – feel pretty much the same as the last one?