Partially deflated and struggling against a ribbon and plastic weight, it flailed and twisted in the wind.

I watched through the window for a bit before cutting the ribbon.

Then, I watched it float away. Until it was gone.

*I’m exactly like that intense, pot-head, stalker kid in American Beauty.

His patchy beard.

Although I normally tame most of my above-the-neck hair and shave it into a funny little chinny beard (and I wear it ever so self-consciously – Ricky Gervais really hurt us), I posses the hirsute wherewithal to grow a full and manly, Grizzly Adams-type beard. As an aside, I do so every now and then, until my wife wears me down and I shave again.

This is the way things were meant to be. If you were a lady, in need of a mate, stuck on a frozen tundra somewhere, you’d pick the grizzly bloke with the small family of ground-sloths living in his whiskers and not the patchy-faced chap because the former would be far more useful stabbing pointy rocks into mammoths and at carrying a hairy elephant leg back to camp. Old Bare-But-Striking-Cheekbones there would be next to useless with mammoths and could only impress you by helping you pick berries and by listening to your interminable stories about last night’s episode of Sex And The Small Encampment Of Animal-Skin Huts. Who wants that in a mate?

But things have changed. Men no longer need to head off in the morning to kill various Proboscidea (and they call this progress). Now, men can attract a mate by having dark, piercing eyes, nice hair and a scraggy beard.

What hope for the rest of us. Or, more to the point, me.

But this is not a selfish rant. It’s bigger than that.

You see, the more that Johnny Depp’s beard is selected for, the more patchy will be the beards of future generations. In a few dozen generations, no more manly, grizzled, bewhiskered fuzzfaces will exist. All the faces of humanity will become less furry and, soon, there will be no beards at all. Is that what you want; a world without beards? ‘Cos that’s what’s definitely going to happen.

Natural selection can be a beautiful and vicious thing.

Don’t let Johnny Depp’s beard win. Don’t let Johnny Depp’s beard’s smooth genes depilate your descendants until humanity resembles some sort of bipedal dolphin. You can beat evolution, ladies. You can do it, but only if you eschew handsome men with inadequate facial hair and, instead, take as your mates, bristly, shaggy, hairy and homely blokes.

You know it makes sense.

I am desperately trying to get things back on an even keel again. Many events have conspired – in furtive, secret and conspiring ways – to prevent me doing much of the things that I like, and should be, doing.

I haven’t managed to get much done of late. Well, not much that’s creative anyway (is building walls creative?) and I’ve found myself getting that fidgety, antsy feeling that I get when this happens. Events continue to plot and machinate and take up my precious, precious time but I find myself railing against them. The summer, or what we have of a summer, is helping with this. It’s easier not to flop in front of the TV when it’s still daylight. It’s easier to get up early when the sun peeks through the curtains.

I will get things back to normal. As some sort of made-up, supreme being is my witness, I will kick the piss out of scheming events.

First, a tea though.

And I think there’s a Family Guy starting soon.

And, at the risk of sounding like one of those arses from Grumpy Old Men, I don’t really see the point.

I used to think New Year was more of a big thing. In my youth, as the old year drew to a close, I used to get either very happy or very sad – generally depending on the proximity of someone willing and kissable. I used to brave the bars and the nightclubs and the parties, squeezed together with the drunk and the really drunk and those ones that just dribbled. I used to do all of this and more.

Then I realised two things:

1. New Year is really just an arbitrary date that has gained some sort of significance in the popular psyche due, possibly, to our innate desire to mark the close of things that we don’t care for and to fool ourselves that the simple transition from one day to the next means all our woes will be magically transformed into good luck and solid gold puppies.
2. I was a twat.

Armed with this knowledge (and the knowledge I’d always had about fireworks – they’re just coloured sparks in the sky, people), I put aside new-year’s things and simply got on with stuff.

Having said that, although I won’t be venturing out to pipe-in Hogmanay, I am celebrating the new year in my own manner by forcing my wife to make me a bread and butter pudding.

Remember – as that leering, stinking inebriate tries to tongue you on the stroke of midnight – that I’ll be having bread and butter pudding.

And custard.

I do sound like one of those Grumpy Old Men people, don’t I?  At least tell me it’s not Rory McGrath.

1. My spleen has secreted excess humour – a black bile if you will – that has brought on a bout of melancholia.
2. I’m getting fed up with the Christmas experience of staying at my folks.

This leaves me with two possible courses of action:

1. It’s quite probable that a course of leeches and blood-letting will clear up the issue. Failing that, drilling a hole in my skull should allow a means of egress for any demons therein.
2. I could just go hide away from all familial interaction and read this splendid book that Santa brought.

That being the case however, it seems traditional to offer some sort of Yuletide greeting to people – even weird, internet strangers who, more than likely, are reading this naked, smeared in goose-fat while performing strange, unsavoury acts with Toblerones and turkey-basters.

So then, filthy internet-people, have yourselves a merry Christmas, Hanukkah, winterval, fourth-day-after-solistice, holly-flagellation-day or whatever you happen to celebrate.

Ho ho ho and whatnot.  I’m off to get drunk and shout at my family.

Truth be told, I got pretty fed up with the old look ages ago but just didn’t get around to doing anything about it. Finally made the time and this is the result.  I may be tweaking minor things over the next week or two so don’t worry if things seem a little transitory around here.

Also, I hope to occasionally update the script in the banner with new epic tales.  Cast an eye up there from time to time.

A thing of beauty is a joy forever; its loveliness increases.  Why, it’s like Keats anticipated my blog redesign.

What do you think?

Like now.

Two beery nights and I’m a floppy, husk of a man.  Two nights with too little sleep and too much beer and I look like the long-dead corpse of a wizened nonagenarian who died from some sort of wasting, insomniac condition and was buried in a cardboard coffin, in a bog, for one hundred and forty-six years before being reanimated by some weird, zombification process involving sucking all fluids from the body and replacing them with Nutella and dust.

I feel almost exactly like that too.

It’s a young man’s game, this beering.

Were I to do so however, I would feel it necessary to include a chapter on the downside of losing weight.

I have to go buy new trousers.

All my damn trousers are based around tubby-boy and now look ridiculous, belted tightly around my, newly-discovered, waist.  New trousers and new belts are required.  I liked some of those trousers.  To make matters worse, the event that kicked-off this flab-fighting was having to buy a new suit to go to a wedding.  Do you think that big suit’s going to fit me now?  It’ll look like clown trousers.  I could get some braces and pop a hula-hoop through the belt loops of it.

Weight-loss.  Know the risks.  Always consult your tailor.

And it’s working.  I’m losing weight.  And it’s all a mostly painless process.  I know the dieting secret, you see.  The one that those fat-cats (pun not intended) don’t want you to know.  The dark mystery of weight loss.

Stop being greedy.

That’s pretty much it.  I’ve been losing weight for a fortnight and I haven’t been any more hungry than I normally would.  I’m still eating loads but I’m just being sensible with what it is – lots of veg and whatnot.  To be honest, I’m actually quite enjoying it.  I have cut out my beer and cheese evenings (previously most evenings).  It stung for a couple of days but it’s fine now.  I do miss the cheese from time to time – especially when I open the fridge and see that I’ve still got a jar of delicious, spicy, home-made chutney left.  That calls to me occasionally.  Other than that, all’s rosy.

One slight potential hiccup looms: I’m off on a mini-break with my family.  Will be eating out every meal for the next four days.  That may be more difficult but I am a determined fatty.

I will be lean and trim again soon.

Well, leaner and trimmer, relatively speaking.

Then the beer and cheese evenings can begin again.  I’ve a lot of catching up to do.