I have a feeling that quite a high percentage of people who consider themselves creative struggle with the festive period more than average. There are obviously plenty of people that find it a stressful or miserable time for a variety of reasons, and many of them for far better reasons than those of the artists or writers, but I can’t deny that it’s a particularly frustrating time for me. I want to see my family, I want to see my friends, I want to create some good will for all men and so on. But sometimes I want to be writing more. I hope that doesn’t make me a bad person.

Luckily I’ve not only managed to see the folks, but I’ve had a chance to hang out with a few of my favourite people recently. Here’s hoping I’ll get the chance to see the rest of them soon too. I’ve also managed to get a little bit of the old writing done, which makes me marginally less grumpy and hopefully more fun to be around in general!

The other thing that’s giving my faint pangs of guilt at the moment is the fact I just bought a shiny new laptop to replace my six-year-old-faithful-iBook. I’m gonna miss this little guy but it’s time for a MacBook Pro that can at least handle iPlayer and Youtube. Bad time of year to be splashing the cash, but I’ve been living in a constant state of terror at the thought of my laptop winking out and taking a chunk of words with it. I TRY to remember to back up regularly. I really do.

You’d think I’d have learned by now. I remember losing a story to my grandma’s ancient beast of a word processor not long after I hit double figures. I was gutted to say the least. There have been a few essays lost to the ether too. God knows how I’d hack the loss of something more substantial.

I’m getting the new laptop delivered to work next week – it’ll make the dreaded first Monday back at the desk a little less painful I reckon. Hope everyone out there is coping admirably with the exaggerations and excesses of the winter celebrations.