The Boy and The Coconut Tree

There are now less than 12 hours left of 2017 as I type this,  11 hours and 43 minutes in fact and I have still not decided what I am doing or where I am going tonight to spend the last few minutes of 2017 and the first hour or so of 2018, I can never decide.  I really want to stay home and as I always do what I want, unless other human beings stop me, it will be  cozy evening on the sofa planning my 2018 trip to Australia, paid for by the lovely people at Barclays who overcharged me for PPI not long after I graduated from university. They paid me enough to pay for a good flight and decent places to stay so roll on Melbourne, Sydney and perhaps Perth. 2018 will also be the year I go back to my old employer but in a different job (I did this in 2015 as well but that didn't work out so well). I am trying to review 2017 in a simply terms as I can and to sprinkle the review with some of my favourite songs of 2017 and some photos. Travel I visited Florence, Montreal, Quebec

All I want for Christmas isn't 'you' or 'them' or 'it' unless peace and quiet is considered an 'it'. Christmas seems to have been with us for weeks, certainly since Halloween.  I heard Christmas carols being played in a cafe in Paris in mid November and I thought even the French would not be impressed with this nonsense, this Americanization of Christmas.  I don't want to shop and eat and drink all of December. I want to spend a few days with my family and friends around the actual days of Christmas.  Even the Christmas work party filled me with dread and thankfully, due to a lack of places I could offer my place to a new member of staff and avoid being nice when people say things they deserve to be slapped for, all made worse thanks to a few nasty cocktails. Don't get me wrong, I am no Grinch and the girls in the office are lovely, without them my office would be a lot harder to face each day and I will be sad to not work with them anymore.