“So … why don’t you come home, Geoff?”. is a question that seems to get asked of me a lot by people back home.

Well ….

… because when I can have this amount of fun, in this amazing city, with this bunch of beautiful people, it makes it fucking hard to imagine leaving one day.

Yes … it’s improv show time again, and our oddly named group E is for Ediots! have got ourselves a show on Saturday week (7th March). And I decided that we needed to make a video of ourselves all fooling around to sort of, ermm … generally promote ourselves. By which I mean stick it on facebook, YouTube, and here - my blog. And besides, give me a fun idea for a video and it’s very hard to stop me making it.

So because we’re called “E!”, it inspired a Sesame Street them (Brought to you by the letter … etc .. ) and from that I dug up this remixed version of the classic TV show, and put the following together. And yes I’m in it, and yes, at one point I’m showing my arse again. I just can’t help myself.

Here’s a little fun, quick & dirty video which I’ve been meaning to knock together for a while.

When I was back in England at Christmas and New Year, I recorded a few quick shots, and it’s taken me until this week to get around to do the same here in Charleston. If you’re English - you can see the American side of life. If you’re American, you can see the English side of life … or more interestingly, all the shots in England are taken in Epsom, Surrey - which is the last place I lived in before I moved to Charleston.

[Thanks to Steven in the UK, and Amanda in the USA for your camerawork]

“FUCK YOU!”, said the normally quiet and reserved Diette to me this time last year on Thursday 14th February 2008 - Valentines day. My crime? To put out on my desk at work a bowl of Red & Pink ‘valentines coloured’ M&M’s and offer them up to people at they walked past …

I’m guessing that she may have been having relationship hassles herself that day - which I later found out to be true - and it was ok because a few days later when we made up, I even got her guilt-sympathy when I played my trump card by telling her that her day couldn’t have been any worse than mine - ‘coz that was the day that my wife decided to tell me that our marriage was officially kaput, defunct and spannered out. Happy Valentines to you too.

My morning had started in a rather more strange fashion. I’d laughed my pants off at DG’s annual link to the anti-valentines website, which made me laugh, but laugh in a certain way because it was tinged with the thought of “I find it funny, but it’s actually tragically true because I know that my life is about to collapse at any moment”.

I showed it to Leigh in an attempt to raise a smile, and unknown to me she then sent me - part joke/part serious - the one that that said “Valentine’s Day Sucks” and then tagged on her own message “But it doesn’t have to”. Because it did suck, and we both knew it.

And a point I remember in my mind is the fact I never got that ‘card’ from her that morning - well not until it was too late anyway.

So many people were hitting the website that day to serve up anti-valentines cards, that it took several HOURS for her request to be processed and drop into my inbox, whereas she may have (reasonably) gathered that I got it within moments of her sending it that morning.

So by the time I’d gone to work that day, got abused by Diette, and came home - I hadn’t checked my email and I hadn’t seen it.

Instead I walked into a conversation that had been coming - a four hour conversation with Leigh about how she was ending it, and how I - rather pathetically - begged and reasoned and argued for her not to. I didn’t find that card until later that night. And I just wonder if it might have sparked a different conversation if I’d got it that morning before I left for work.

But it’s ok … y’know? Because life is good. Life is very good. This isn’t a woe-is-me post. Nor is this a ‘fuck her!’ ramble; hell, she’s gonna be reading this! But I can’t pass up an anniversary of such stature without a little reminisce over the last 12 months of my life.

12 months … a whole year now since that all happened, and by god - what a year - and boy does it feel a whole bunch longer.

’cause i’ve been … what’s the word? Oh yeah … that’s right … busy.

Out of all the crap that came out of that week a year ago, it was - with a certain sense of irony - the same week that I finally got financially stable (which obviously helped me become more stable immensely) as that was when I finally got the money from selling my property back home - and, was also the week when I remember that for the first time here in Charleston I felt like I had finally - and properly - made some friends of my own volition, some beautiful people that I could call my own.

Up until that point, I had about five people in Charleston that I could call my friends. Dan, Janet, Michael, Melissa, J.J. - all lovely people. But once I started to make new friends, it was like a drug that I couldn’t control, and I just kept meeting new people.

Something to debate another time for the fun of it, is would my marriage of lasted had I gotten out of the house sooner, made all these friends and got my happy vibe back sooner that I did. Or maybe I should not wonder about that one at all.

So instead it’s roll-call time. Because I made a list this morning. And I like lists - a lot. And so I felt like I just needed to get this all down. Even if does look like a “Aren’t I great, I made all these friends” type of post. It’s not meant to be like that. It’s the fact that at the age of 35 years in my life, my tiny little mind was blown away but sheer mass of new, wonderful people that came into my life - and would have never of done so if I hadn’t of gambled on coming across the pond.

So this is just a nod, an acknowledgment, to people who (and I still can’t get over this) I simply didn’t know this time last year, and yet they are now all an integral part of my life to some extent - big or small - and they all played a part in shaping the last weird and wonderful twelve months of my humble existence here. Unforgettable.

It started with the theatre. With a life changing (and I’m not saying that lightly by any means at all) improv class. Where I was thrown into a strange place of not really knowing what they were doing, or who anyone was. Hello Betsy, hello Meaghan, and Anne. And Michael and Stephen and Kirk.

When I carried on past my intro class and into the next level where Tommy, Jordan, Derek, Sarah, Laurie, Kathleen, Frances, Dave, Tammy and Trey all showed up.

By simply having a place to hang out and a social little world, I slowly met everyone and befriended people that were there. Hello Greg, and Brandy and Timmy. And Larry, David, Jenny, Jennifer, and John. To my now good mate Andy with his mate Chet. And Sean and Andre and David and Shon.

To another English woman Louise. To all the other cool kids there - Dana, Brian, Anna, Tim, another David, Jason, Lee, Jason, Smiddy, Camille and Coleen. To Henry, Chris, Matt, Eleanor and Jessie. Sara, Amber and Nora.

Classes carried on, and I met Chad and Heather and Gray and the delightful Eve. Hello to Alix too. Other classes joined on board, and we became like on big happy family. Hello Magdalyne, Paul and Mark. To Dolly and Hannah as well.

The devil that is Facebook spawned people that wanted to be my friend even though I didn’t really know them - but I do now! Hello Stacey. Hello Helen, Nathan and Joel, Lauren. The social whirl that is Charleston in general gave me Chuck, Brian and Jared.

In the summer of 2008, I quit my job at this god awful place (but stayed in touch with Melissa, Katy and Brian) and moved on to join this wonderful bunch of people. Hello Ken, Loul, Stella, Austin, Charlotte, Amanda, Brian, Amber, Kevin and Chrys.

To Kathleen, the unforgettable Kathleen. Through who I also met Gretchen and George.

The fun that is Spoleto introduced me to Ashley. And from there Alice and Zach. Oh, and Caitlin. A special mention to Nick ‘The Brit’ Smith also.

Hello Nikki. Yes hello you. It will be impossible for me not to be your friend for the rest of my life. Fact. And to Tori and John, and Jen and Jillian who I met through her as well.

Sarah at the Theatre introduced me to Laurel, and Katie .. oh and Megan too.

I got to do a show on CofC Radio now. So that’s Nate, Geoff, Caroline and Katie right there. And tag on Taylor, Jason, Sylvie and Marion too. I almost forgot Bridget, Paige, Abi and Anne too.

I live of course with Beverly. So hello Eric thru her too. Oh and did I mention Molly ? There, I just did.

Charleston is a college town. And whilst I’m down with many of the kids ~chuckle~ the ones that spring to mind are Caitlin, Seaton, Dallas, Becca, and Charlotte who all deserve to be on this list.

That’s quite a bunch of people. There are probably some I’ve missed out that I will remember or get people saying “Hey, what about me?” and I’ll be terribly embarrassed, slide their name in, and subtly increment the total number up there in the title of this post - sorry if that’s you. But that was the bunch of names that spewed forth from the deep synapses of my brain and into my notebook as I drove back home from somewhere earlier this morning. And I’ve just come in and typed them all up.

I’ve just done the count. It’s 117 in total. That’s a lot to get my head round. One new name to learn every three days. New conversations, new experiences and new friends made in a very short period of time.

I wonder how many of these people I will still keep in touch with when I am back in England one day. I wonder who will be top of my list to visit when I am home (even though, I already damn well know, I still think about it), when I plan a visit back to Charleston from England in the future.

I wonder if what happened to me in the past will happen to me again - e.g. When I came to the USA from England, some people who I thought I would stay in touch with back home faded away and some I even fell out with. Others who were mere acquaintances before I left I somehow forged a stronger bond with, even if just over email or the odd telephone call. Will the reverse happen here? Are there people here that I think I will never lose touch with when I move away, that I will? Is there someone here now who I don’t think I’m that pally with, will suddenly become someone that I intensely stay in touch with when I move away? Head fuck time.

Because if I think about it too much, it really does hurt my head. So I try not to, and just revel in it instead. Yet if I think about all those lovely people in a positive manner it puts a smile on my face, a stride in my step, and adds pounds to my gut. And that’s brilliant.

But on the other hand? The downside … boy am I in trouble when it eventually becomes time to leave. I don’t want to think about how tough that is going to be.

“You’re, erm, enjoying life over there rather a lot at the moment, aren’t you?”, wrote my splendidly canny friend from back home - Simon - in an email to me last week.

Yes mate, I am. More than I think I’m ever going to be able to articulate to the extent that I want to. Imagining what you want to say to certain people in your head, and how the conversation will go, is completely different to how it comes out in real life. And even when I write it all out like this, one can’t but help wonder whether it sounds like complete trite or with sincere intent. But I’m damn well having a go, which is a start.

So it made me think. Love your friends people, and be grateful that they came into your life. And why not do something randomly nice for one of them one day this week, and tell them that you love them too.

‘coz valentines doesn’t always have to suck.

Being in a minority - British - in Charleston, with a unique accent, being quite tall, and generally known for being somewhat of an extravert clearly isn’t enough for me to want to stand out in this small town. And I do get spotted. A lot.

“Just passed you going the other way!”, txt’s my friend Nikki during the week, as I’m zooming down my local main highway when she spots my car … and it is extremely identifiable by its front license plate. That’s right, I’ve got the St. George’s Cross on the front of my car which makes me stand out from all the other silver Ford Focus’s that are on the roads.

Except that is … for the days when I decide to go for the full Union Jack - sorry - Union Flag, instead!

Most Americans recognise the flag of Great Britain, but don’t know about its composition from the respective nations. There’s a little lesson for you here, not forgetting of course how even WE in Britain sometimes get it wrong when it comes to displaying it.

So I have a choice of plates, which makes it look like I have two cars, and I had the idea of putting this rather fun photo together, with a little help from photoshop of course.

And for the complete multimedia experience, I thought I’d video myself doing it so that you can see how I did it, then write this blog post about it, and twitter about it too all at the same time!

This actually happened to me, yesterday.

“Oh you’re the British guy aren’t you! Hello!” smiles and giggles the very cute Cameron who introduces herself to me as I pop in for my daily-dose of Schultz Crack, prior to going out for the evening.

Now most of the staff in this particular branch know who I am - and I know them - included the manager Brian, the white-glasses wearing Andrew, and the lovely mesmerising blue-eyed-Kristen. But Cameron? For some reason, I’d never really focused on her before.

I was focusing on her now though, she was delightful.

“So how do you know who I am then?”, I say, cranking up the flirt dial a little to see where this one goes. “Well you’re they guy that spells Geoff with a ‘G’, right?”, she replies, as I sense that she’s also just turned up her own flirt dial a little, nice!

Well this is going to be pleasant - I’m not in a hurry to get anywhere just yet, so I can talk for a while and see where this one goes, except just then I sense someone stand behind me in line, so I move to one side, let Cameron take their order and serve them, and once they’re done I slide back into place to carry on our rather flirty conversation.

“I like your tie” she says, pointed at my delightful red apparal then adorns the length of my torso - I am indeed going to a masquerade party later where the instruction were ‘To dress up’ a little. For me, that means putting on a tie. “But you’ve got your shirt untucked though” she also notes, and I duly nod.

“Well I’m trying to look smart and cool at the same time”, I say “Hence the non-smart shoes as well” and raise up my leg resting it on the mound of coffee bags for sale, to show her my splendid colour-coordinated red shoes that I’m also wearing.

“Ooh, you’ve got the same pants on as me” she continues - giggling as she says it - and I look back at her and note that she is indeed wearing some near-identical light brown corduroy trousers like wot I’ve got on.

“Well they’re not exactly the same”, I retort, “For starters, I bought mine in England, and secondly … “, I pause, “And what?”, “Well you know, my trousers are man shaped ones, yours are more girl-figure-hugging”, and I can feel that flirt dial going up another notch.

Another customer ghosts in behind me, and I stand to one side again, because I really want to finish our conversation about all things girl-figure-hugging. They take their time ordering their coffee and it irks me slightly, so whilst I wait I try to calm myself by plotting my next line and turning up my flirt dial another notch.

“So .. where were we?” I say , sliding back in once they’re done, “Ah that’s right .. your curvy thighs and butt hugging pants like mine” I go with, and she’s lapping it up and even does a little thigh-slapping dance to demonstrate how indeed she does have a rather feminine figure.

A few more flirty lines bounce back and forth, and her colleage who has been dilligently preparing my latte during this time even gives me a look of “You’re such an outrageous flirt, Geoff” from behind Camerons back, but it does little to deter me.

I sense someone behind me again - more movement, a guy - I turn and look and motion as if he wants to come up and order, but he gives me an odd look and moves away again, and doesn’t seem to want to get a coffee. Nevermind, I turn back to flirt with Cameron some more.

It’s about a good whole minute later, and we’ve disected girls clothing versus mens clothing, culminating into the fact that maybe we should go to this party that I’m going to together and swap trousers with her en route - and Cameron is lapping up - when I sense again, that the guy that was lingering a moment ago is still hovering behind me.

And it’s at this point that Camerons face suddenly ceases to be girl-flirt, and says quite seriously “Oh Geoff, and this is my fiancée by the way”, and motions to the dude that was lingering behind me.

I feel the blood drain a little away from my face as I now turn and face him, and he gives me the evilest eye in the world for I am the complete bastard who has been chatting up his lovely lady for the last five minutes within his full earshot.

Shit.

I turn back to face Cameron, hoping that somehow it’s just her room mate or brother or similar, and this is just flirty joke that she’s pulling on me - but no - gleaming away on her fourth finger is indeed a nice shiny engagement ring that I’d previously failed to spot.

The next thirty seconds are a bit of a blur, but my basic tactic went along the lines of “Flirt with the other girl too, so that it doesn’t look as if you were just hitting on Cameron”, make some polite small talk, and then get the hell out of there.

I do so, talk to the other other barista about a work thing, give her my work card with my number and email on because they want to get in touch about an event that they’ve got coming up that they want me to promote, I nod a polite ‘Hello’ to Cameron’s guy who is now quite clearly trying to implant vile diseases within me via his brainwaves, and I get the hell out of there.

Why, Cameron, WHY did you not break off flirting the moment you see your dude walking into Starbucks. C’mon!

I calm down, I walk away down the road and mull it over in my head, manage to smile at it, and move on - no real harm done, right? Right. I walk on. A few minutes pass. I head on foot for my destination.

I feel my phone vibrate in my pocket as it starts to ring. It’s a 719 area code. Where is 719? No idea. Normally I don’t answer my phone if the name is not programmed in and I don’t recognize the number, but this time I decide to pick up.

“Hello”

“Hello - is this Geoff?”, says a surley sounding male voice.

I don’t like the fact that it’s surley sounding, so I instantly fake out in case it’s a conversation that I need to hang up on, and reply with “Well it’s a bad line, I can’t really hear you, hello? Who’s that?”

“This is Todd”

“Todd?” I don’t know anyone called Todd.

“Todd”

“Ok, well hello, I still can’t really hear you that well”

“Yeah, well, knock knock”.

Knock Knock? What is this? Dial-a-joke? But my improv sense kicks in, and I play along.

“Who’s there”

“FUCK YOU ASSHOLE!”

And he hangs up.

So - inadvertantly hitting on other people’s fiancées - it’s my new thing, apparantly.

So it was this week last year, that I took my first ever improv class - all part of twelve insane unforgettable months of my life that will be extremely hard to beat.

One of the main things that they try and teach you (aside from “Agree with your scene partner”, and “Never ask questions”) is just to ‘go with it’ when you have a gut feeling about something that you want to make a move on.

Like in real life, you’ll sometimes get put on the spot when you’re asked a question and you have an initial answer pop into your head, but then almost immediately you over think it, doubt yourself, and wonder if that first right answer was right or not - when often, in so many cases it is.

Well in improv, it’s the same. I have lost count (seriously) of the amount of times that I have not had the guts to go through with a move that I thought of, and I always beat myself up about it afterwards, and think “Shit, why didn’t I just DO IT?”, because whilst it’s easy to sit on the side (or in the audience, even) and think “It would be funny if …”, to actually get up and do it is a completely different thing.

Well, last night, I just DID IT. Chet is on stage with Laurie, she’s about to give birth, and well … play the video for a funny moment that makes me think I might have just fucked the fear and cracked it.

I hadn’t even finished thinking through the sentence “I know, what i’ll do is …” before I could feel my legs getting ahead of me and running up on stage to just get on with it. It was wonderful. And although I know it’s just one tiny little move, in a big big game, it made me sooo happy.

And happy, is a good place to be. More please.

On the plane ride back to England from Charleston just before Christmas, I had an extreme case of OCD - if that’s what you could call it.

I was sat in Row B of cattle - right up the front - which was close enough so that when the head stewardess made her general announcement over the P.A. I could hear her mainly in person rather than through the speakers.

And she did that thing which they all do - hold the phone about three inches away from their mouth AND ear, because they’ve learnt that it will distort the audio if held right to the face like a normal telephone.

She made her announcement, hung up the phone in the cradle, and went about her business of checking that everyone had their seat belts on. But I had a problem, an extreme problem, than I could do nothing about for the next twenty minutes.

When she’d hung up the phone/PA, my attention was drawn to the little coiled up cord that attached the cradle to the phone set, and it now dangled below to the left and right as the plane moved slightly, scraping along the ledge of a protruding part of the planes fixtures that was about six inches below it.

And it got my attention. REALLY got my attention, the point where I could do nothing else but look at the little dangling coil of wire, and obsess about it, to the point where I wanted to get up and move it … because I didn’t like the fact that it was dangling, scraping against the edge of the ledge, instead … i wanted to move it and tuck it up on the ledge.

Every time the plane rocked from side to side the cable would move, and in my head a scraping sound would go off, shooting a nagging pain in my head, and an irresistible urge to unbuckle my belt, get up and go and adjust it.

Twenty agonising minutes I head to wait until the plane had taken off, and the ‘no seatbelt’ light came on, and I was the first up, out of my seat, heading for the toilet, pretending to yawn and stretch as I went, and with my outstretched arm, tucked the cable up onto the ledge where in my mind where it belonged, and only then, could I be at peace for the journey.

I used to be bad with things like this - e.g. when sat at my computer, the coffee cup had to be on the left, to ‘balance out’ the mouse that I was using on the right, but I think it’s getting worse. And google as much as I can, I can’t find anyone else out their with symptoms like this for me to be able to say “Yes! Yes, that’s what I do”, it’s more akin to OCPD, which I read just this morning, that is common for people that have this to never be able to finish what they wanted to do in the first place, which leads me nicely to my own diagnose of a condition that I’ve decide that I have: OPD.

Obessive Project Disorder! Often lamely labeled as ‘Silly Boy Projects’, it’s the fact that one can never be happy, unless there’s some kind of project, goal, or target in ones head to give them something to focus on and attempt to achieve in the future.

And I’m happy to report that over the holiday period back in England, I came up with my new OPD for 2009, and am now heavily in the throws or organising it and putting it together.

It’s strange. It feels almost as if when I have something to concentrate on, the little things which might otherwise bother me, don’t - because I have a focus. But when life is just ambling on day to day in its regular dreariness, it bothers me because I have no goal.

I joked to people in Charleston before I took the trip home that “I might not come back!”, but I knew in the back of my head that this wasn’t the case.

In reality, going home for a fortnight put America into perspective, and having distance from a place which has been very intensely fused to my heart forever for the last twelve months (well more than that in total, but the last 12 months have been my best here), made it very obvious to me what I should do in 2009, and I’m very much going to do it.

I sat in row D on the way back. Still very much in full view of the offending dangling cable. It didn’t bother me once.

Someone suggested to me over Christmas when I was back in England that I should/could serve up my Review of the Year through my podcast feed, which I haven’t used for ages.

When I checked, I realised that when I upgraded Wordpress a while back it broke all my catagories, I no longer have the original feed, so I’ve had to create a brand new one.

So here is the whole of my Review of the Year 2008 in podcast form, a sizable MP3 file I admit, but it’ll keep one person I know happy at any rate.

You can subscribe to the feed again here, or cut & paste that into iTunes or whatever you use, and who knows? I might start podcasting again …

Hello, my name is Geoff. It is now 2009. And I have some resolutions:

• I am going to have a bedder year than I did with the last one.
• I am going do be more healthy and cut out budder from my diet.
• I am going to drink more wader, from a boddle.
• I am going to take more phodos.
• I will learn new skills on my compuder.
• I shall expect to be treaded bedder by certain people.
• I shall pick up lidder that I see dropped on the ground.
• I shall stop wasting my money playing the loddery.
• I shall clear up the cludder that is in my closet.
• And obviously I will make more tea than ever using my new electric keddle.

But most of all … I am going to really try to get my Bridish accent back, as all my T’s seems to have turned to D’s - most worrying.

Christmas itself: Presents, turkey, beer, too much Quality Street, playing Scrabble (and winning!) against my mum, going for a brisk walk and doing a geocache or two, watching Xmas Top of the Pops & Doctor Who on the telly, watching more telly (Kirsty Kount : 9 times, yay!) sitting on my arse on the sofa reading my book, taking a nap, waking up, feeling like I’m being fed tea intravenously by my mum. i.e. all the standard things you’ve come to love and expect and make you feel totally at home. Marvelous.

And everything else? Well - there’s a shock. It appears that England is still here, and managing just fine on its own thank you very much, and no we haven’t missed you at all. It’s a bit like when you dump someone and you check in with them a few months later to discover that they’ve been getting on just fine without you thanks. Oh.

There are lots of accents here. I must be in London then. I get a certain pleasure from hearing at least three different European languages in the space of ten minutes when out shopping. And it’s doing all the ’small’ things where it hits you the most - queuing up at the cash machine, pressing the button whilst waiting to cross the road, and the woman in front of you at the ticket machine at the train station.

People certainly look British. But then I torment myself continually for a while trying to work out what that thought actually means to me. Downtrodden? Not tanned? Just not … ‘American Looking’. I’m not sure I could even tell you what American looking is, but I know that if you sat me in a room with ten people from Charleston I didn’t know, and ten people from London I didn’t know I could identify them all within seconds without knowing anything about them. There’s just a look. Trust me.

England of course is notorious for having bad teeth and bad service. Well at least those are the stereotypes that my delightful American chums take great delight in telling me - even the non traveled ones. Well I’ll give you the first one, but I’m going to have to take exception to the second, because I’ve figured out that it’s all about making an effort.

I try it first on the girl in WHSmith [Americans equivalent: Er, none] in my mums local town. Yes … if I don’t make an effort, then there’s no way she’s going to talk to me. But the moment I crank the flirt-dial up to maximum level and chat away, there’s no stopping her. I find out her name (no name tag, have to ask), what time she’s finishing tonight, where she’s going with her mates for a drink and what she hopes her boyfriend bought her for Christmas.

Just for a bit of equality, a few days later I pop into Waterstones [American equivalent: Barnes & Noble] and asked for a book that I couldn’t find. Not only did the assistant happily look it up for me, they also walked over and showed me where on the shelf I could find it. No customer service? Bollocks. This England place is quite good. So it was a split choice between them and the person next to them at the tills when I went to pay, and so I did that “You’re better looking than the other, I’ll get served by them, thanks” gag, and made my choice. And yes - they were both guys. I am shameless.

And on the train to this game on boxing day with my dad and my cousin, it would have seemed almost rude not to flirt outrageously with the pretty girl sitting opposite us. I then discovered (or just … remembered?) that the flirt gene is naturally inherited, and an alpha-male game between me and my family sparked up to see who could make her giggle the hardest. I think you’ll find I won.

I’m sat in a Starbucks right now (What, like you’re shocked at that?) typing this up on their wireless service. Charleston Barista to London Barista? Seamless. It’s nice to know that my skills are transferable. Then I remember that I used to do it all the time with the girls in the local coffee shop around the corner from where I worked almost ten years ago. So really, nothing had changed - except my perspective.

I’m also apparently ‘more lively’ than anytime before on any other trip. “You could tell you were getting happier, ’cause your emails got slowly chirpier” notes one extremely astute person. Figures.

So everyone is here. Everything is great. I’ve slipped back into the old routine, but this time with skills and experiences learned over there, which I’m happy to report are extremely transferable on my travels and equally applicable here. That’s going to make 2009 even easier than I thought.

My impatience often gets the better of me - I admit.

So when I posted this video a few weeks back, I could see that it was incomplete as it didn’t really tell a whole story, and someone even pointed out in the comments that it didn’t make sense because one moment my car was there, and the next it wasn’t.

So today I’m republishing an updated version. Take 2. The Directors cut. It’s … another one of these mornings.

Whatever you want to call it, that’s fine … as mainly I’ve added in a shower scene (Which to me sounds like a promotional line off of bad 1970’s porn movie!), and made sense of the fact that my car is no longer there.

It’s relevant though, because today I fly home to England for two week, and people here (USA) keeping asking me how long I’m there (UK) for, and when I’m coming back, and I keep joking by saying that I’ll not be coming back.

But I’m coming back. (Which reminds me of a Captain Jack line out of a Doctor Who epsiode). No really. The plan is to come back. See you in 2009.

It’s that time of year again …

When I was about 13 or 14 in High School, I was obsessed by the Top 40 music charts, and used to listen to them religiously, write them down, track the progress of a favourite song of mine, and generally became a ‘chart geek’. A friend of mine and I used to also compile our own charts by asking our school friends what their favourite songs at the time were and making a weekly Top 10 of our own, based on our classroom.

When I was 17 years old, at the end of 1989 as we were about to go into a new decade (The 90’s) I remember that Capital Radio (as it was then), broadcast on New Years Eve an amazing two-hour programme called “The Eighties” which took all the popular songs from the past ten years in chronological order, and mixed them in with news clips from the last decade too. I loved that programme and to this day still have it to listen to on cassette tape.

In 1997, I decided it would be fun to get a ‘chart’ of peoples favourite songs from all of my group of friends, and sent round a mass email to everyone that I knew asking for what their favourite Top 5 songs of the year were. I did this for a couple of years, but didn’t get a great response mainly because people struggled to remember what songs had been hits that year.

So in 2000 - when digital production on a home PC finally because easy and affordable (I bought my first CD-R burner in 1999), I made up a compilation CD of all the top hits from that year, with me talking inbetween presenting it radio style - and again I asked people to vote for their favourite tunes - a reminder of which they could hear on my CD. It was my first proper Review of the Year.

Over the last nine years, this has morphed slowly into what you can now download today. I first introduced news clips in 2003 - an idea directly taken from that Captial Radio programme. In 2006 I stopped bothering to ask people to vote for their favourite songs. I just liked the fact that over the course of the year, I would slowly make this programme to give out to all my friends and family at the end of the year.

Then last year in 2007, I got so much webspace from my host provider, and I could finally stop making CD’s, just upload the tracks (and in fact, all the previous years tracks) to my website, and let people download it.

So that’s what you have today - A twelve track, over one hour ‘programme’ which I’ve spent a lot of time making this year for you to listen to. People currently know me as being ‘Mr Video’ as that’s my current job and hobby. But the truth is editing audio is possibly more fun, and I’ve been doing it a lot longer.

So enjoy : Geoff’s UK Music & News Review of the Year for 2008.

And have a Merry Christmas.