HAPPY NEW YEAR EFERRYONE!!

Eferryone. A really tenuous pun to begin 2013 with. Well, start as I mean to go on!

2013, that’s mental isn’t it?! Although I say it every year, it doesn’t seem to be getting any less mental as we head deeper and further into the 21^st Century. It is the 21^st Century right? If it isn’t, don’t correct me. I am happy in my ignorance.

I’m going to be honest now. I think I’m still drunk. I had enough coconut gin on New Years to drown Jamaica in and I woke up clutching a stick. Not a walking stick. That would be somewhat more forgivable. An actual stick that had fallen from a tree.

This is the story of the stick and I, it’s not too dissimilar to the King and I, but with less children and more foliage. My friends and I (the sequel to the Stick and I), decided that for this New Year we would infiltrate East London and head to London Fields Brewery -a really cool venue under some rogue railway arches which, if I was slightly more sober I would have felt too uncool to be in, but as it happened the quantities of the aforementioned coconut gin ensured that I thought I was THE COOLEST PERSON ON THE PLANET, so it was fine.

ANYWAY, we danced the night away, we sang Auld Langs Eye, (I never know how to spell this and I am not googling it either. So there.) I did a fair bit of crying, telling everyone how much I loved them and then it was time to go. And then I met the stick.

It was as we were waiting for the first of our many night buses of the evening (I got home at 7am. I don’t know whether to be proud or horrified. Let’s go proud.) and it was lying at the bottom of a tree, naturally, and I picked it up.

I don’t know whether it was the sheer fact that it resembled a wand or the coconut gin but this stick suddenly imbued me with the power to tell the truth. We’ll call it the Truth Stick from now on.  We got on the bus, a man gets on wearing a shiny suit. I point at him and say quite calmly but louder than is strictly necessary, ‘Shiny Suit’.

Two scantily clad girls walk by, I point at them and again with unnecessary volume say ‘Put more clothes on.’ A man gets on the bus having a horrible argument on the phone to his girlfriend; I look at him, point the stick and say ever so nicely, ‘Shut up.’

THE FACT THAT I AM ALIVE TODAY IS A MIRACLE.

However, not only does the Truth Stick encourage truth, it also is very conscious of safety. For example, after the bus ride, we ventured onto the tube. People were nearing the yellow line and we all know to STAND BEHIND THE YELLOW LINE. So I quite simply, pointed and told them. I may have also used the stick to press the information button on the big buzzers on the platform but the less said about that the better.

We then stopped off to have a standard cheeky kebab (very much regretted the next day) and I must have been so distracted by the lamby goodness that I left the Truth Stick in the kebab shop. We got to the bus stop to take us on the final leg of our journey and I was about to point at the driver to tell him some valuable information when I realised I did not have my stick to point!

I then RAN, yes RAN back to the kebab shop for my stick and woke up clutching it lovingly in my arms this morning. I don't know why all this happened. But it did. Or so I am told...

My resolution for this year: Let sleeping sticks lie. Unless they are Truth Sticks. In which case pick them up and tell everyone EVERYTHING. Screw the year of the Tiger. This is the year of the Stick.

*Disclaimer to the General Public- COCONUT GIN MAKES YOU BEFRIEND FOLIAGE. STEER CLEAR.