Warming Up

8432/21351

If you want to appreciate your warm home then let it stay cold for a week in the winter. Oh the things we take for granted!

If anything it was a bit too warm today. Better get the Air Conditioning on.

OK as we're in the year's taint there's not so much to write about, so with three days left of the year, let's see how I got on with this year's resolutions (as listed on 1st January), before creating another load of unachievable stuff for 2026.

We did not manage this this year. We were slated to start work on it in the first week of January 2026, but there's a lot of moving parts and we lost our Director of Photography, so we have had to postpone. In any case for 2025 FAIL

Was I nicer in 2025 than I was in 2024. I don't think so. If anything I became slightly more of a grumpy prick. Let's see how I do next year. The bar is low. FAIL

I was touring/ill for the first half of the year and then planned to be home more in the second half, but got a job that took me away for November. I think I played with them less. FAIL

I am on a screen right now. FAIL

Can I count Right Bollock's autobiography? I managed two chapters of Everything Happens For No Reason. Otherwise it was a year where I got almost no writing done. Still three days to go though. FAIL

I don't want to count my chickens, but I reckon I'm going to do this one! SUCCESS

I began the year with one testicle and again, I don't want to count my bollocks before they are dispatched, but looking good for ending 2025 with one. SUCCESS

A year of two halves on this one. I don't know what weight I started at and I am scared to weigh myself after all the chocolates at Christmas. I put on weight up to the end of August and then lost 8kg (not sure how much I put back on in the last fortnight). I think on average this one is probably almost a SUCCESS

I don't think I will quite do it. I managed to fit into a lot of jeans that I couldn't get into in August, but the wedding suite requires another half a stone to go. FAIL

N/A, though I now want to be buried in Hitchin Cemetery with maybe my heart going beneath the cairn.

SUCCESS. Thank God.

I did film two TV projects and they might be sort of prime time, but I don't think I can call them my own FAIL (though I think I knew that when I wrote it).

Damn. Still three days. FAIL.

Nope. FAIL

I reckon I moisturised about 50 times this year and washed about 300. FAIL

Not even close. Wrote about two minutes of Oh Shit I'm 60! FAIL

Managed about four months of this in total. Certainly ate less pizza and bread than usual. Did not enjoy most of it. So less joy on average for sure FAIL

I worked a little bit less than usual, but not sure if I filled those hours with more fun. I didn't drink any booze, though approaching the five year mark for being alcohol free so thinking about starting again. I either ate little sugar or fuckloads, did OK with bread and there's nothing wrong with my penis and anyone who tells you there is is lying. FAIL

Thirteen fails and four successes and one N/A. And the successes were largely the easy ones. I feel I may not have been entirely serious about some of these aims.

I am still alive almost five years after the phone call which made me think I had two months to live, my kids are healthy and happy, my wife has not asked for a divorce and we have enough money to get us to the end of 2026 even if I don't earn a thing this year (not always a given with my job). We've had no great personal disasters and I can run 5K in under 30 minutes and 10k in under an hour (maybe not directly after Christmas). My family bring me great joy and only fleeting frustration and annoyance. My focus is on them, though I haven't lost the will to attempt to be funny. The secret job I did in November has given me reason to think more kindly about myself and to think about changing some of the ways I deal with being trapped inside this awful brain. I may have failed to do some of the things I hoped I'd do this year, but as usual I've ended up doing some stuff I could never have predicted I would do and the graph of my own personal happiness continues to move steadily upwards.

There's still three days for it all to go wrong, but 2025 has been OK. It has, as the years tend to be doing these days, gone much too fast. At my age getting to the end of the year is achievement enough.

Joining me for RHLSTP at the Y Theatre Leicester on the 8th Feb is the wonderful Fatiha El-Ghorri from off of Taskmaster (and much more). Website showing only 5 tickets left, but pretty sure those balcony seats will become available. Tickets here.

Pre-orders are now available if you want to read Right Bollock's autobiography. It's only £5 (that's £1 each for every 1000 words) and all profits will go to making more podcasts. So far we've sold four. So have not covered the printing costs.