ON THE INABILITY TO FIND A DATE

I want somebody to explain calendars to me. Not the general purpose of them, obviously. I’m not some sort or hermetically sealed reprobate mindlessly poking at the world with clammy fingers in some vain attempt to gain the merest frisson of understanding of the world about him, contrary to what some people may think. No, I “get” calendars. The problem is that I don’t get calendars. In the sense of acquisition. Of finding them. Of picking the bloody things up, cradling them like the downy feathers of the rarest tropical bird and conveying them into my house and finding an appropriate vertical surface upon which they may be affixed.

I keep finding that calendars must be bought well in advance of the year in which they are to be used. You are expected to go and obtain your date-monitoring device before the new year rolls around, because after that, all unpurchased calendars will be rounded up and sent to calendar concentration camps, never to be seen or heard from again, save for the few that manage to make it into January undetected and into to 50% off bargain box. These calendars are invariably the popular survivors of their world: month upon month of Dr. Who and Little Britain, cats in compromising positions and still life effigies of tastefully arranged flowers in frosted glass vases. All will soon wing their way onto walls and just as quickly be subsumed into the general bland mire.

Society expects all of us wishing to escape the unintentional hilarity of the Cliff Richard calendar to rush out and ensure that the next year is all planned for by the preceding September. Sadly, I seem to have missed the public notice of this decree. I wander dazed into shops looking for something nice to replace the H.R. Giger calendar that adorned my fridge for the past twelve months, only to discover that the best on offer those that cater to some highly specific and downright bizarre public whims: Waterskiing West Highland Terriers anyone?

I guess I’ll just have to battle on this year not knowing one day from another and let all my days just blur into one stream of continuity. Ought to be a new spin on things.