I hate January.

Which is peculiar, because although loads of things are mildly irritating, I usually very rarely absolutely detest something.

I’m normally a pretty happy, cheerful chap that enjoys every month for it’s own particular idiosyncrasies. The bright, dewy mornings in May. Excited, friend-filled days of August, and the frosty, slightly anxious evenings in November as we count down to the big Ho-Ho-Holiday.

They all fill me with a particular warm, infectious glow.

Apart from sodding January.

There are a plethora of reasons to detest this wayward month: damp, dank and dark mornings make it impossible to get out of bed, and – if we’re being honest – my absolute hype for Christmas means I have given no thought, in any way, to getting any work for the month, so there’s usually not a lot to get up for.

  I know right… the world hates me.

Mostly, however, January is the worst month because it’s time to ‘evaluate’ last year and decide what the goals should be for this year.

ARE YOU READY?! HERE WE GO. 

January – April 

2014 started pretty well, was given my first proper radio show – if you’ve failed to miss all the flagrant self-promotion so far on this website, it’s 11-3 Saturdays and Sundays on FunKids. This led to some very cool things, I interviewed Disney Star Dove Cameron (who would totally love me if it weren’t that she makes YouTube videos with her mildly talented, slightly buff BF)

It also scored me a ticket to the premiere of the LEGO Movie, which is totally awesome. Well, I say premiere, it was actually the Gala Screening. Which is quite similar only instead of being a star-studded swanky evening bash, filled with A-Listers and glamorous journos; it’s usually on a cold, wet Sunday morning at 10am, where I stand next to sniffy, podgy paparazzi, and desperately fight to ask Justin Lee Collins what his favourite LEGO piece is.

 I know right, sometimes stuff is too hard.

At this time I also began working for BBC Radio Berkshire writing Travel Reports – which would’ve been made easier had almost every road in Berkshire not decided to take a post-christmas-holiday, and given in to the tumultuous rain. The county went crazy and I took about 10 calls a day from Kathy in Reading. KATHY THE ROADS ARE CLEAR NOW M’KAY! GET HOME TO YOUR 12 CATS AND STOP CALLING ME.

I also agreed with a friend to do the Tough Mudder challenge thing. Which was recklessly stupid as I dislike running, and mud, and toughness.

April – July

At the start of April I went to Australia for the 2nd time in 9 months, now although that is a pretty cool feat there are only a few hundred times you can look in a middle-eastern airport McDonalds and be amazed at the amount of different stuff they have on the menu. It’s like whenever I see a drive-thru Starbucks I immediately want to move to Membury Service Station.

So Australia was amazing, as it always is, I swam with a turtle and shark and really cannot be bothered to write more about it as I’ve already blogged here about it all.

June was mostly spent emulating World Cup tactics on Football Manager. I won’t bore you with the details but I got to the final with Uzbekistan.

July was a hugely hectic month, weekday holiday shows on Fun on top of the usual 4 hour Weekend gig. This meant loads of time in the radio studio, which is amazing because that’s what I’m in it for, but remember that July was the hottest month since Vesuvius erupted, so it was a tad warm in there.

I know right, I was so hot.

I also got the chance to broadcast from British Summer Time in Hyde Park, where I fulfilled a life-long dream of seeing Boyzone sing ‘Picture of You’ and an even longer held goal of interviewing the 2011 X Factor Finalist Amelia Lily.

For every spare moment of my life at this time I ran and trained for the stupid Tough Mudder thing that I had moronically agreed to do. HOW WILL I GET ON?!

 

If you’ve stuck this through to the end, then GOOD NEWS! There’s no more to read just yet, as Part 2 will be here next week for your visual pleasure.