For those of you who are regular readers of my blog posts, I would like to confirm that I am not dead, at least not yet anyway. The fact is that this week, I have been trying to readjust my body clock to a sensible time and it is with some relief that last light I went to bed at 11.30 and slept through until 6.30 this morning; that is bordering on normality!

There are varying reasons for these fitful nights, including a heating system that does a re-enactment of the D day landings at 5.00 am every morning. However, the main reason is that I spent the two weeks of Christmas and New Year in a bizarre time zone that didn’t really have any structure; it was a period of listlessness under grey skies that sent me spiraling in to mild depression despite plying myself with mackerel in an attempt to release some happy endorphins.

This was partly my own fault by displaying admirable lethargy and not bothering to contact anyone with any real meaning to organise anything to do. However, when it is grey and wet all the time, you begin to run out of ideas and enthusiasm. Christmas, if you are associated to the construction industry, can go on for over two weeks, so next year I need to plan it better or just bugger off somewhere warm where the sun occasionally shows itself. I like the lead up to Christmas, but the event itself, now that the kids are older, is tedium personified.

So this week I am pretty tired but also relieved to be working again and getting back in to a structured routine. How people sit around week after week on the dole I just don’t know; with little money to survive on and just a packet of Lambert & Butler’s for company, it must be hideously depressing way to live. There is something of a class war being waged by the current government at the moment that is aimed towards people on benefits and goes along the line that that this section of society are living some sort of luxurious lifestyle in front of 32″ flat screen TV’s. After spending nearly two weeks playing a similar role, I’m not sure it is so much fun as it is made out to be. After all, how much Jeremy Kyle can sanity stand?

Still, during this period I have at least managed to drag myself to the gym on a regular basis and stay nicotine free since New Years Eve, resulting in the loss of four pounds, though this can also be attributed to a period of eating when hungry and not out of gluttony. I must add this was not so much out of self righteous choice but because of circumstance and a heavy cold that reduced my appetite dramatically. A chap at work said to me yesterday that he didn’t realise that I smoked and the fact is I never did that much, only socially (or unsociably, it could be argued)  but I just felt that it was becoming more common place so I ended the relationship.

So, hopefully, now I am back in the swing of things and my sleeping patterns are returning to normal, I can find something more interesting to write about than a Christmas period that, quite frankly, bored me to my soul.

I still have some Quality Street toffees and some Foxes biscuits left over if anyone wants them?