Dan McNeil's Blog

2012 has been a funny old year - but I guess that's true of every year.  12 months is a long time, and there are bound to be a lot of things to look back on during the year.  As I've got older, it seems that every year is less interesting than the last, but I'm starting to wonder whether that's just the cynicism of age rather than life getting calmer. For every "Hello" there is a "Goodbye" and the biggest goodbye I've had to say this year was to my Grandmother .  For as long as I can remember - that's over thirty years - my family has had three strands - my Mum, my Dad and my Granny.  Every birthday I had three main presents, every Christmas I had three phone calls to make and every holiday I had three presents to buy.  That has all changed over the past few years.  Two years ago, I lost my Dad to lung failure and this year I lost my Granny.  My family life will never be the same again, and Christmas just wasn't the same this year.  Of

I hate that song. I really do.  It's been on repeat on the music channels with its truly horrible video of B-list celebrities and T4 presenters faffing around with Lionel Blair whilst all wearing Christmassy jumpers. I've touched on the subject of "home" before in here, in fact I've written a blog entry about how grumpy I get at Christmas time before, too - it's here The Christmas grump took over me again this year, too.  Everyone trying to enforce happiness on each other as if we'd all stumbled into some hideous worldwide Disney Park where being "slightly grumpy" is banned and smiles are painted on for all to see. But Christmas is pretty much over now, and we can get the "cheering at an arbitrary number going up by one" out of the way at New Year and then everyone will return to normal.  I can't wait. I'm working between Christmas and New Year this year.  Whenever you tell anyone that, they usually respond with a mixtur