So 2009

A year of portents, problems, and frippery. Our apologies in advance for the brevity of the text: we just cannot afford another hefty word count. Plus our printer is on the blink, smudging awfully and producing somewhat unprofessional documents.

With finances as they are, we’ve resorted to getting drunk as often as possible and eating fried food late at night in our underpants. Clover has been replaced with Utterly Butterly, meat with offal, fresh vegetables with their tinned and nutritionally suspect counterparts. The wine flows as normal, due to some excellent closing down sales at the local Threshers.

Tony has rounded off another unemployed year with a short and unwelcome stint at Asda as a temporary replenishment officer. The night work hasn’t suited him at all, playing havoc with his alcoholism and his weekly appointments at the hospital’s renal unit.

Mike has failed to keep his latest relationship going, is in debt up to his eyeballs, and still exists on charity and cheap tobacco. His recent signing-on has deeply disturbed him, he can’t stop drinking once he starts, and has formed an unholy addiction to chocolate biscuits and home-grown cannabis.

Carlton, the patriarch, as ever an avid onion eater and thrilled to be near an open bottle of red, is almost coping. The teaching goes well, one smelly student unfortunately and what’s more a foreigner. Romantically, there are few ships on a horizon still blemished by Sandy’s grizzled paddleboat. He lives in a state of mild fear, waking often in the night from dreams of her performing a soapy tit-wank on him.

Ramona is mucky-eyed and vomiting from time to time, though it doesn’t seem to have affected her usual arrogance and mistrust in all she surveys. In fact, she’s probably more successful than the rest of us, having single-handedly caught, mauled, and eaten a Christmas robin. Well done Ramona!

Which pretty much rounds off our year to date. We remain optimistic and upbeat, in between bouts of depression of course, and are looking forward to Christmas and the merriment it promises. No doubt we’ll all go over the top and pay for weeks, but sure as shit we’ll laugh along the way.

Glad tidings all

The Morlock household