Something Fabulous

Lying in bed last night, unable to sleep for the hacking cough, but far too cold to get out of bed to try to do anything productive, I decided that what I desperately needed was to find something fun to do in winter. Something really big, something really fabulous & exciting, something to look forward to. Because this months-and-months of bleakness is getting old & tired, and making me feel old & tired. Summer has it all- non-stop festival-feeling, party-fever, the good food, the good times, sunshine, long hot nights. Christmas & New Years add an official holiday dimension, and the traditional annual trek up to Lismore is an exclamation-point of joy that gets better every year. And then- slump. Mardi Gras happens, we all come down with a sense of faint relief for a break in the fever-pitch. There's Inquisition, if you want to count the time party-to-party, followed by Sleaze (which is not such a big deal as to get too excited about), but nothing on the scale of the fun of summer. Before you know it, it's July, and life stretches bleak and bland in either direction, nothing on the horizon except the memory of last summer and the anticipation of the next.

This winter I'm stuck with playing catch-up, realising how down I am too late to do anything really fabulous to lift myself out of it. Desperate last-minute holiday plans are being scratched out not as something to look forward to but as a matter of survival (I can't cope much longer). But I can plan ahead for next year, and hopefully not get stuck so much in this stupid, sick, down, sad rut. Next year, I swear, I'm going to be planning & budgeting for Big Winter Good Times from the minute Mardi Gras winds down. I think a week or two of holiday somewhere hot ought to do it. Cairns? Darwin? Anyone else want to join me?

Gentle suggestions have been made that I ought to look forward to plans being made for September and October, but honestly- that's practically summer anyway! Those are not the months of direst need. June, July, August- these are the months of suck, the months that urgently need lightening up. If it takes giving up a whole winter of pub-going to be able to afford to carry myself off somewhere with enough sunlight to restore equilibrium, well, that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make.