Truth be told, it's a strange blog post too when there are so many pressing issues out there, but it's taking some of us a bit longer than usual to get into this new year.
That might only happen when Blue Monday comes along on January 21st. Maybe then we'll get back to serious blogging?
Blue Monday is officially the most depressing day of the year.
It is, according to white-coated boffins who spend their time researching such things, the day when we wake up on a miserable, cold January Monday; realise we have no money because we spent it all on pointless Christmas presents; that we put on 20 stone from stuffing our faces with food and booze over the festive season; and that the prospect of a holiday away from this godforsaken kip is months distant. Assuming we still have jobs by then.
It is also a time when many of us realise we have failed in all of our new year's resolutions, and there is probably no prospect of us ever mending our ways for the better. Useless, no-good, pathetic failures, and that's the way it is always going to be. Happy new year.
To be honest, I can't wait for the 21st.
For the past week the Phoenix Park has been packed with new year's resolutioners, rigged-out in gaudy tracksuits and headbands, all newly resolved to put one foot in front of the other in 2013 on my usual strolling route. It is like Henry Street at lunch hour, congealed with people jogging or barely jogging, and walking or barely walking.
To make matters worse many of them drive to the park, and then park their MPVs on the footpaths of the narrower roads, meaning people have to either walk on the roads or squelch through thick muck to get past them. I'm kicking myself that I didn't take a photo, but I was far too engrossed in accidentally brushing against their wing mirrors, quite forcefully, to do so.
It's not surprising, I suppose, that people who don't normally walk fail to grasp that footpaths are for pedestrians. They are not places to leave a car, after it has deposited its lazy front-seat occupants and their retinue of vile, screaming, devilspawn brats into a place normally reserved for peaceful recreation.
And really, if they had to make a resolution to drive somewhere in order to walk, shouldn't they just get themselves three dozen super-sized packets of crisps, switch on one of the many dreadful cooking programmes now clogging the TV schedules, and plonk their arses on the living room sofa for the whole weekend, like they usually do? That's what's going to happen anyway.
Roll on the 21st, and a back-to-normal Phoenix Park.
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5 comments:
Hi GM, LOL here, I swim regularly before work and it's the same thing every January (about first 2 weeks) - a goddam pain, then back to normal. Seriously though, what has happened when people have to make a resolution to put one foot in front of the other, something our bodies are designed to do!
Alot of this particular Irish problem is brought about through -among other factors - learned helplessness.
"A New Year's resolution is something that goes in one year and out the other."
@ all. Never bother with 'em myself... old enough to know there's no point!
As someone who walks to work 4 miles a day and cycles 50k a week (all year round) I agree with your evaluation. People need to be aware that exercise is a daily routine and can be a real pain in the arse. It needs to be done as much as possible and not just after Christmas.
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