Watch Your Back 2012, I’m Coming For You

“YEEHA-Mexican-Wave-Let’s-Smash-It-UP! It’s 2012! Year Of The Olympics! Year Of The Dragon! The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee! Let’s have it. No, seriously, I’m totally cool with this. LET. US. HAVE. IT”

So that was me on New Year’s Eve. I’d drunk enough vodka and fizzy Vimto to get over the pretty depressing fact that a) we were watching TV’s 50 Greatest Magic Tricks on a night when every other fricker we knew was at a party, having actual, proper fun that didn’t involve Debbie McGee and b) the other TV viewing alternative for such a momentous event as the beginning of a whole new year was The Cube. The bloody Cube. A show that sends shooting pains of angst through my very core. There’s just something about that spooky mask woman who demonstrates the games and the stern voiceover and the floaty graphics-in-space that Pip Schofield makes the contestants pretend they can see that leave my already frazzled nerves shot completely to shit.

Are you ready for The Cube? Not with that creepy bitch in it, Phillip, no.

Anyway. Digressing. What I’m saying here is, for a short while, largely because of alcoholic Vimto and the fact my kids had finally gone to bed, I was totally up for 2012. After what had been a pretty rotten year, I kind of welcomed the start of something new because new = exciting, yes?

Well. Yes. And no. Because new also = the unknown. And the unknown? Well, for anyone of a vaguely wobbly emotional disposition (ooh, that’s me! *eagerly puts hand up and shouts ME! ME!* *realises a wobbly emotional disposition isn’t actually such a good thing, puts had down, looks sideways to check nobody saw that*) the unknown can be a bit terrifying. One minute I’m a big fat mass of giddy motivation and positive enthusiasm – essentially, a walking, talking exclamation mark – ‘YEAH! 2012! So many goals I’m going to achieve, let’s DO THIS’. The next minute? I get the energy-crash of the ‘what ifs’. What if I my daughter doesn’t adjust to pre-school? I won’t have time to do half the things I have planned. What if I do find the time and what I then do is rubbish? What if that dirty black dog that has been known to piss on my happy parade scuppers the whole motivation thing? What if I get so tangled up in my 2012 to-do list that my brain gets overloaded, I can’t figure out what to do first so I just end up spending my childfree hours mumbling incoherently at daytime re-runs of Diagnosis Murder and Escape To The Bloody Country until its time to pick the kids up? THESE ARE ALL THINGS THAT COULD ACTUALLY HAPPEN.

Call it the sobering-up process. Call it Sandie Shaw in her hotpants on Hootenanny looking like Jessie J’s mother. Call it the sneaky side of my brain that acts like it’s trying to help me with its words of ‘advice’ but is actually just trying to screw things up (a bit like the time this girl at school suggested I’d look good with a perm when really she just wanted to get off with this boy we both liked who, it transpired, was very much not into the whole ginger-Anita-Dobson look). My mood switched. Something was trying to smack-down my zest for the oncoming year and I had to act fast.

How I imagine Hilary off Dragon's Den to look on a karaoke night down the pub

So, pissed-up, emotional and with a good two litres of full-fat Vimto-sugar coursing through me, I wrote a list. I won’t say resolutions because, let’s face it, the second you mention the R-word, people tend to roll their eyes, smirk and look at you with a smug combo of condescension and ‘bullshit!’ glinting in their eyes. Instead, it’s more of a list of stuff I intend to face up to or knuckle down and do before the year is out. 12 months to feel the fear then do it anyway. A bit like a Bucket List that doesn’t involve me dying at the end. A Fuck-It list, if you like:

Finally turn that sitcom idea I have in my head into an actual script. This will involve me a)not wetting myself with worry that it’ll be dreadful and people will laugh at me, rather than at what I write and b) in the name of research (no, HONESTLY), watching so much comedy, it seeps into my eyes, infiltrates my brain then falls out of my ears (jesus, you’d have thought I was on acid, not vodka)

Do everything I can to stop dwelling on stuff from the past, stop panicking about what could happen in the future and just go all buddhist on my outlook and live in the now (it’s ok, if that’s a bit new-age and wanky for you, the next one should sort that out)

Get someone famous to follow me on Twitter – Gino DiCampo? Barry Chuckle? One of Same Difference? I could not give a hoot who it is. I’m not picky, I just want someone who is/was once on telly once to be in my followers list. Is that too much (read: too shallow) to ask?

Get some official exercise because 1) it helps with the depression thing and 2)I’ve a bridesmaid dress to get into for my sister’s wedding in September and I want to pull a Pippa Middleton out the bag for it. Zoe – if you’re reading – that’s a joke. Everyone else – that’s so not a joke, I want to look hotter than my sister on the biggest day of her life, is that really SO wrong? Is it? Is IT? It is? Oh.
Note: Attempting to pull some BodyRockers Shufflin’ moves in front of the Viva channel on a Saturday night does not count as official exercise

Should the exercise thing not work out, wear M&S magic knickers every day and night until my body learns to stay that shape without the aid of reinforced control-lycra

Failing that, just do that diet where you chew food up then spit it in the bin because, you know, that’s healthy. I think maybe Geri Halliwell got skinny that way? Or was it Liz Hurley?

Learn to take criticism well and look at is as a positive and constructive means of improving myself. If that isn’t possible, learn to FAKE taking criticism well, whilst inside thinking ‘this person has no idea what they’re talking about. I am right, they are wrong’

Give Zumba a go. Solely to prove the point that not everyone likes it.

And finally…..(it’s quite profound this one, steady yourselves)

Accept the fact that cleaning products from the 99p shop will NEVER tackle limescale in the same way as Viakal. In the words of the great Status Quo, ‘you pay your money, you take your choice’ – never a truer word spoken when it comes to cheap bathroom cleaners

It’s not a long list by any means but hopefully that’s a good thing in the sense of making it more achievable. Of course, the 99p shop thing will be a stretch because, you know, they’re very clever. They know how to make the labels on some random bleachy stuff look like proper Cif from a distance so I’ll have to watch out for that one but otherwise, I’m feeling pretty hopeful.

Anyway, I’d love to stay and chat but I’d best crack on. I’ve got a boxset of 30 Rock to get through and a pair of control pants to wrestle my arse into. Look, you can’t argue with the Fuck-It list

@upyoursginaford

P.S. I’m not sponsored by Vimto. I’m from the north – I just really like Vimto. It’s akin to the whole Scottish/Irn Bru thing. Is that racist? I hope not. Most of my friends are Scottish. That’s not actually true, I have no Scottish friends but that’s not a conscious choice, it’s more of a geographical thing. Shall I stop talking now? Yes? Ok. Bye then…Big-up the Scots. Etc.