2010 eh? A lot has changed in my life since this time last year. At the start of 2009 I was working for the Bank of Scotland, in a boring job, with no real plans for the future. In my second ever post to this blog I wrote about my lack of any ambitions or any real plans for the future. But by the end of April I had applied to do the teacher training course which I’m now in the middle of. By this time next year I’ll have been working as a teacher for four months, and hopefully enjoying it!

The end of 2009 was a good one as far as they go. On the 30th December I got the train down to London in order to go to the London Comedy Improv Christmas party. This was one of those things that I wanted to go to, my sensible head told me it was a bit ridiculous to spend over five hours on a train each way just for one night of comedy, and then I got a bit tipsy one night and booked a train anyway. And luckily it was worth it. LCI regulars Tara Flynn and Brendan Dempsey were in charge of proceedings with guest performers Tiernan Douieb, Kirsty Newton and Briony (whose surname I’m trying to find out). Ewen Macintosh was supposed to be there too but couldn’t make it because of the weather – although I don’t know where he was trying to get there from seeing as I made it from Scotland! I’ve never been to any improv before but it was very funny and I really enjoyed it. Everything the performers do is based on suggestions from the audience, and they even used a couple of mine. Tara and Brendan were very funny, and evidently very experienced in this kind of improv comedy. (And incidentally, they were very welcoming and seemed genuinely delighted I had come all the way from Scotland to see the show). Tiernan was really good too – I’ve seen him do quite a bit of stand-up now but never anything like this and I thought he was great, and was glad to see in his blog that to do more improv is one of his aims for 2010. The highlight of the night had to be the film noir musical nativity that rounded of the show, I really have never seen anything like it, and probably never will again. After a low key Christmas it was great to have a night out with my friends and lots of laughter. It’s just a shame the regular LCI nights are mid-week and what with uni and school it’s going to be pretty impossible for me to get to another one any time soon.

I got the train back home yesterday and remarkably it was on time and uneventful. I went round to my friends’ house for our (now getting to be traditional) New Year’s Eve celebrations. Once again I was the only single person with three couples but since virtually all my friends up here are in long term relationships I’m pretty used to it by now! We had some food (and plenty of cider), played bowling and tennis on the Wii and then after some champagne at midnight we played our (also traditional) SingStar – I’d bought Claire SingStar Take That for her birthday the other week; mostly so we could play it on New Year’s Eve. We somehow managed to stay up until 4.30am and then I spent a somewhat uncomfortable night on their sofa, which some how manages to be very comfortable to sit on but incredibly uncomfortable to sleep on. It wasn’t helped by my very blocked up nose which forced me to breathe through my mouth which created a mouth drier than the surface of Mars.

The first day of this year has been spent doing nothing more strenuous than eating, sleeping and watching the second part of the Dr Who special which saw David Tennant leave the series and regenerate into Matt Smith. As I said in my post Christmas blog, for some reason I have resisted watching the new Dr Who but I’ve actually enjoyed this two part special (despite not really understanding what was happening) and I think I might be tempted to start watching properly when the new series starts.

And finally, in other news, I’ve started a new blog for the new year which you can find at http://everydayjustme.blogspot.com/ . It’s an entirely unoriginal idea but one which interests me; the plan being to take a photo of my face everyday for the whole year and see if I change at all. I’ve been writing this blog since February (admittedly a bit sporadically) and I’ll be continuing to do so. The idea is that the photo blog is just for the pictures and I wanted to keep it separate from this one.

So there we are; 2009 has been an exciting and fun filled year for me. I’ve made and met lots of new friends through a shared love of comedy (and Twitter!), I feel like I’ve laughed more than I’ve ever laughed in a year before, I’ve been on loads of comedy-watching adventures, and I’ve actually done something about getting a career and a plan for the rest of my life. I’m just hoping that it all continues into 2010. 

Thank you all for reading, I hope you stick with me in the year to come.