Good eve­ning, mor­ning and after­noon folks. I am back at Uni­ver­sity in this fine year of 2004. Here, in my first entry for the year I will tell you my pre­dic­tions, reso­lu­tions and plans.
Pre­dic­tions: Days will pass, suns will come up and go down, peo­ple will be born and peo­ple will die. Things will carry on until Decem­ber 15th when Rus­sia acci­den­tally des­troys Aus­tra­lia which in turn cau­ses the des­truc­tion of Europe, Asia and Ame­rica in the resul­ting ons­laught. Lea­ving the happy peo­ple left in New Zea­land and Ice­land.
Reso­lu­tions: None
Plans: To sur­vive, be happy and to live hap­pily ever after until 2005.

Christ­mas was rela­ti­vely boring, not much hap­pe­ned. I had my gifts of money and tokens which I do appre­ciate although I do pre­fer to unw­rap things and have pro­per gifts that peo­ple thought about. Din­ner was lovely (as usual) and so was the nice pud­ding that shortly follo­wed. We ate Qua­lity Streets in the after­noon and dis­cus­sed how Nestlé no lon­ger have any of the nice ones and how the pac­kets are of a lower qua­lity; the cho­co­la­tes are gra­dually beco­ming tac­kier and losing their good­ness. I avoi­ded Eas­ten­ders and then watched “Christ­mas with the stars” with Par­kin­son which I found to be bri­lliant — with the excep­tion of a few per­for­ming music “artists”. Follo­wing days were spent fran­ti­cally wor­king and tid­ying up the house for my visi­tor who sta­yed over the New Year period. Time was spent pla­ying No Limit Texas Hold ‘em Poker and Con­nect 4 (the coun­ters were good for using as chips). I sip­ped Jacob’s Creek char­don­nay and ate my fine bour­sin, brie and stil­ton chee­ses whilst vie­wing the visual delights of the BBC Christ­mas movie sea­son — with the excep­tion of Bedazz­led. (Empire Records, The Break­fast Club, Loa­ded Wea­pon were all top notch enter­tain­ment). I also watched 3 of the 4 hours of Law­rence of Ara­bia and am anno­yed at mis­sing the conc­lu­sion! Currently I patiently await the arri­val of Lost in Trans­la­tion to local cine­mas, a movie I have been wai­ting to see since my des­co­very of its pro­duc­tion 12 months ago. A Coppola-Johanssen-Murray team is something that could NEVER go wrong.

Im out. (oh I should men­tion the top 100 musi­cals thing that ever­yone around here see­med to have tal­ked about at some point — Grease won — duh!)