OK, you’ve got me...

I’ve been putting off writing this one. Not because of anything tragic happening.

Nothing of interest has happened at all this month! Even the much touted ‘Friends™ Reunion’ was a damp squib. Although it was nice seeing the picture of them all together again! (Wasn’t it weird though how much Matthew Perry now looks like the cast of The Big Bang Theory?).

Anyway, I shall do my best to rescue this entry. Like Chandler dropping to the floor in surprise at finding Ross and Joey right outside his door, I shall emerge victorious clutching today’s paper like it was all intentional.

“The One Where I Don’t Get Ill Enough”

First up, more evidence of the strong support the studio gave Friends™ early on with a Jay Leno cameo. Who’s that he’s interviewing? Chandlers mum?!

Maybe it’s because I’ve just seen a picture of the cast as they are now, but I really didn’t think she looked old enough to be Chandlers mum.

At first I thought it was a sad reflection of the TV industries unwillingness to cast older women... But I looked it up and the actress who played her was actually 45 so it’s completely within the realms of possibility. Looking good Mrs B! I suppose her attractiveness is, slightly, the point as Ross succumbs to drunken temptation and breaks the “bro code”. Hands up who else completely forgot that Ross once kissed Chandlers mum?!

Maybe I find it unusual because it's so different to my own situation. (I’m talking about the age range here, not the getting off with friends parents – although I haven’t done that either. Yet.) The other day we had a big dinner for my mother’s 62nd birthday. I find it interesting there's such a huge range in the age difference between parents and kids. My partner’s parents are only around fifty, whereas Rachel Number 1s dad is 70!

This factors into me and my partners VERY HYPOTHETICAL discussions about children.

Is it better to get the most out of your freedom in your youth and then settle? (As my parents did) Or have children younger and then enjoy a ‘Gilmore Girls’ lifestyle where you and your children are the best of buds? I’ve always leant to the former but must say getting drunk with my partners parents is often more entertaining than the slightly terse dinners with my own family. But perhaps that’s more a result of my family’s dysfunctions...

Either way, for now at least, I am content to avoid any extra responsibility for as long as I can.

I’m happy to say I’ve managed to maintain my non-drinking this month! All temptations have only served to reinforce my desire to not drink. The tequila shots Chandlers mum served in this episode looked far too good for me to trust myself with a drink.

I only hope everyone cutting back on drinking for January is not connected to the uneventfulness of this month....

I suspect a lot of the quietness is a side effect of the return to work. The B-Plot of this episode, with a caricatured Monica and Phoebe doting on a guy in a coma, illustrates the strange phenomenon of sitcom characters always having more free time than real people with jobs.

That’s not say it’s been all work this month as both me and my partner have been off sick at different points.

She really wasn’t happy about it. Especially when I told her I was jealous of her chest infection. I’d happily cough up blood for a bit if I could get a week off work... I was so excited at the notion of a few days off when I woke with a stomach bug!

Waking up fine the next day was a huge disappointment to rival Ross’s disappointment that Rachel is still with Paulo. But, as in the surprisingly Meta commentary of Mrs Bing on Paulo’s status as a supporting character, perhaps, as the main character of this project there’s hope for me yet...

Real Live Sitcom Moment:

The struggle to find something eventful continues...

The best I’ve got is getting my first flat tyre. A subplot hardly even worth a Two and a Half Men episode.

It did provide some amusement as I called my partners father in a panic thinking I didn’t have a jack. (Calling him over my own father wasn’t the result of any sort of preference or age discrimination, he's a mechanic).

My panic turned to embarrassment, however, when - after he rushed to my aid - we discovered I already had everything underneath my spare tyre.

And so it’s back to work.

This already upsetting time – of immediately failing to do all those new resolutions - has hit me harder than usual.

On my first day back I found out the work cat was struck down by a car over the holidays. I will miss him massively (not least because he was my one source of warmth in our freezing office). He was immensely superior to our cats as he never woke me up by banging on the cupboard for no reason, and I didn’t have to deal with his poop!

His absence has already been felt hard, after a pigeon managed to find its way into our office. At this rate it'll soon feel like I’m working in Trafalgar Square.

“The One With An Unexplained Abundance of Cream”

This week’s episode the Friends™ plan their New Year and Ross judges people for having flatmates. (It also introduces the extremely cute monkey: Marcel).

I found this doubly amusing as my partner feeling too “grown-up” for a shared house is the reason for our current abysmal living standards. (Along with a succession of governments failing to build affordable housing).

We got to see how fantastic living in a shared house could be over New Years as we booked a holiday home with several Real Live Friends. These included my Rachel No. 1 and Ross No. 2/Chandler No. 1, as well as my very own David the Science Guy (handily introduced this week and played brilliantly by Simpsons™ stalwart Hank Azaria).

My David the Science Guy is a Real Live Friend I had a very particular “Bromance” with at university.

You know... the type of close male friendship where you jokingly flirt with each because there is no one else. We’ve both got girlfriends now so we’ve drifted apart slightly. This has not been helped by him working abroad in recent years (much like David having to leave for Minsk). He’s back now however, and firmly re-entrenched in our friend group after our fantastic New Years. I hope I'll be seeing him a lot more again!

Much like Chandler’s struggle to find someone to kiss at New Years (with all the other Friends™ bringing dates) only one of our remaining single Real Live Friends came along to New Years. So she gains the "honour" of being Chandler Number 2.

Her continued singlehood remains a mystery as she's both an excellent human and fabulous person to get drunk with. I was delighted when my partner experienced the latter for the first time. They both stayed up late one night “putting the world to rights”. I was less delighted when my severely confused and inebriated partner woke me up attempting to find our bed in the darkness.

Along with the second appearance of Janice (still no “Oh My God!”) this episode includes a joke about naming breasts.

We had an experience of a different sort of breast during our holiday. Upon arrival our landlady told us she would bring over some recently shot pheasants at some point. Being city folk, we laughed off her statement and were shocked the following evening when she showed up brandishing seven dead pheasants at our window - with an expression of manic glee.

After much deliberation, soul-searching, and YouTube™ surfing, we decided the best course of action was to attempt to butcher them ourselves. I’m a devoted meat eater but I struggled with the concept slightly. Seeing the un-plucked birds I realised how difficult I would find it to kill a living creature myself. Questions swarmed round my head over whether I had the right to eat meat, if I couldn’t do the deed myself, as I squeamishly watched my friends butchering the pheasants before me.

Ultimately though (with apologies to my vegetarian partner) I decided my only option was to have a go at breasting one of the birds myself. It was a very strange experience. The instant I touched the (still-warm) pheasant I felt my relationship to it change as it ceased to be a poor dead animal in front of me and became just another piece of meat that I was going to eat.

This change carried over into my next sighting of a pheasant (this time alive) when we walked down the road. Where previously thoughts of “what a beautiful bird” would have existed, now they were “I bet that tastes great, I want to eat it.”

If I'm honest, I enjoyed butchering the pheasant (but not as much as I enjoyed eating it). But I found the ease with which I slipped into the role slightly unnerving. Ultimately I'm left with the question of whether it's possible to both see an animal as a piece of meat and respect it as a beautiful living creature at the same time. I expect I'll be wrestling with this notion for some time.

Though my experience with the pheasants was not quite enough to spur me into giving up meat,I’ve decided the time is ripe for another of my month long breaks from alcohol.

It’s not quite a resolution per se (more like guidelines…). I’ve reached a nice balance now where I don’t drink as heavily as I used to, but it’s still more regularly than I would like and I’m sick of being confused all the time. I found it difficult to remember embarrassingly small figures back at work this week, largely, I suspect, as a result of drinking everyday on our holiday. If I needed any extra convincing it came on the way to work yesterday. I went to buy some milk and found myself looking at the alcohol aisle with a sense of longing.

I think it’s definitely time for a detox.

One drink in particular sticks in my mind from our holiday. The “official” ale of the Cerne Abbas giant. For those who don’t know, the Cerne Abbas giant is a spectacular giant (with an even more spectacular “member”) carved out of chalk on the side of a hill. I was disappointed to learn it may not be as ancient as people commonly think but it was still great to see such a famous and enigmatic part of our history.

Less great was our very muddy attempt to circumnavigate the hill as I managed to make it all the way round without losing my footing only to fall on my arse fifty metres from the car park.

Real Live Sitcom Moment:

I will name the organiser of our trip Monica Number 2 for his meticulous eye for detail. This ensured a trip, which could have fallen at many hurdles, went ahead without a hitch.

He also unwittingly provided a strong sitcom style joke. As I was attempting to coral him into singing Karaoke on New Years Eve he tried to get out of it with the statement “I only do Karaoke once a year and I’ve already done it this year”.

So as the clock struck 12 and ushered in the new year, I asked again "Monica, care to get in this years Karaoke early?"