Wheat for the Motherland

All yours,
Babooshka, Babooshka, Babooshka-ya-ya!

So. Original thought.

Nope, still haven't had one.

I thought I was about to have one the other evening, and I muted the television and tensed up on the edge of my seat expectantly with notepad akimbo, but it turned out to be just trapped wind.

The New Year has burst out of the traps like a goldfish in a greyhound race.

One wedding fair that I was particularly looking forward to seems to have caught its flared-trouser flaps in the bicycle chain and gone apex over excuse me madam. Twas to have been in the middle of the city of Lincoln and in past incarnations has been busy and très well run. I received an email a couple of days ago advising me that my booking had been "transferred" to a fair I knew nothing about, one that is apparently being held a fortnight earlier, twenty miles south of Lincoln and in some National Trust "stately" countryside pile.

Er - no, thank you, but no. Been there, done those. Money back please.

Each year always seems to begin like this, with my dragging myself out of my pit like a mangy bear coming out of hibernation. It takes me until June to get my face on, and by then it's time to start preparing for a long winter sleep. This morning, for example, I woke with Transylvanian hair. My flowing gingery locks long ago turned from being every shade and colour under the sun to being more salty than peppery, then grey, then silver and now white. Only my back-hair has any colour remaining, which will come in handy for a transplant in years to come.

Colouring aside, there isn't a whole lot of hair left on my head either - I am left with quality rather than mere brash quantity. Ordinarily I try my best to affect a sort of "mad professor" look, but the sides just won't grow bushy enough to suggest "Oxbridge" rather than mere "Red brick". Usually, after a decent shampooing, the best that I can achieve is a "definitely deranged" and a "please put a hat on that; there are impressionable children around".

I blame modern shampoos, really I do. The correlation is absolute and direct, the evidence incontrovertible.

In my youth, when we had Fish-gut Pomade and Olden Spicing and Carbolic, I had hair and lots of it (a sleek pony tail down to my waist for many years, when I also still had a waist) - and now that we have Garnier Fructis knows what and throw tropical fruit and salts from the sea and conditioners made from manatee-sweat at our follicles, I have little to none. No further questions, Your Honour.

This morning I looked in the mirror (an ill-advised course of action at the best of times, but my guard was down) to be greeted by Gary Oldman's portayal of Dracula:

I don't know whether to poke at my hair with a crucifix dipped in holy water or just do a headstand in the blue-rinse bidet and hope for the best.

It's really rather unsatisfactory.

I may just have a(nother) bloody mary for breakfast and go back to bed until Tesco arrives in the afternoon.

Still, there is some rinky dinky news - my complimentary copy of Unique Bride Magazine has arrived complete with my featured medieval wedding slapped over pages 32, 33 and 34. I'm a spread. That's an industry term, by the way, it's like peanut butter but at my age and with hair like mine, nobody puts you on toast.

To celebrate the new year I have rather recklessly started using a new plugin on the Vintage Photographer website for SEO, it seems to do all sorts of keyword analysis and title squidging and suchlike, all very high-tech and "yoof cultcha", I feel like Thomas Cruise in Minority Report, gesturing wildly at my vast computer screens. Crank up the sonic oscillators four more points, Rodney, and smiggle the cratchett valves; we're going by hook or by crook to have a front page in 2013.

My favoured business consultant says it must be so, and so it shall be. Mind you, he hasn't seen my hair yet this morning.

Still no original thought. Not even an original sin. Very few blog posts here, for which I am sorry and contrite. I have modified my New Years Resoutions based upon the available current market data and sketched out a fresh paradigm, and I'm taking ... Action:

I'm going to run that damp crucifix through my hair and see where the day takes me. I intend to be thoroughly awake before February, or possibly early March. Before I go up the stairs to Bedfordshire tonight I'm going to put the glass as well as the Smirnoff Black, organic tomato juice, vegan Worcestershire Sauce and celery into the fridge. That way, tomorrow my entire breakfast will be chilled.

Licks bloodied knife blade, savours the taste and turns slowly back towards the market and 2013 with a big, evil grin under his "old badger's bum" hairdo and glowing red eyes ...