Back-to-work black-and-blues

1) There's nothing like falling over really hard to remind you that snow is essentially a novelty weather condition, with a limited window of interest. It is particularly galling when you are wearing an eminently sensible pair of shoes. In a metallic, grip-free Converse, in which you routinely pretend - via your internal monologue - that you are Missy Elliott; in a flimsy ballet pump; in any kind of a heel; you must expect your coccyx to be crushed to dust beneath the combined might of gravity and your own post-Christmas bulk. But in a sturdy, ridge-soled wellington boot? Well, it is extremely hard to endure.

When I got on the tube, half an hour post-tumble, there was a man in my carriage playing with a Rubik's Cube. It made me wonder if I had hit my head when I fell and was now existing in some Ashes To Ashes-style alternate, 80s-set reality. Inevitably, I had my iPod set to Rio, which made it even harder to tell. Although obviously I was listening to an iPod, which was kind of a clue.

2) There's nothing like returning to work after a two-week break to remind you of the inhumanity of commuting.

One morning last week, when I was being Tested by the Tube, I saw a single man's shoe lying on a platform (I mean it was just one shoe, I don't know if he was married). It was a smart and shipshape kind of a shoe. Not like the fallout from someone who might be carrying all their belongings around with them at any one time. If you ask me, it had been left there, Cinders-style, when, at the stroke of 8.30am, someone stepped onto an underground train for the first time this year, leaving behind their smiling, relaxed, relational, casually dressed, Christmas holiday kind of self and turning back into their everyday, anxious, over-adrenalised working self, all dowdy suit and depressing packed lunch.

Ou est Docteur Qui?

(originally intended date of posting: January 1, 2010)

New Year in Paris.

While the Doctor is left weak and disorientated post-regeneration, the Daleks see an opportunity to seize the French capital.

In which a man named Joe Cooper does not move into the flat downstairs and, as a result, I do not end up marrying him

(Originally intended date of posting: early October 2009)

In the autumn of 2009, a man whom I had never met before did not move into the ground floor flat downstairs. His name was, and may still be, Joe Cooper.

Although Joe Cooper did not move in, he had most definitely planned to and I was excited by this news. The outgoing neighbour, Reuben, had spoken of Joe Cooper's tallness and excellent manners when he came to look around. Also, let us consider the name Joe Cooper, and how it suggests dashing youth and handsome old age, rolled up shirt sleeves and distracting forearms, thick hair and good manners and an aura of Sporty but Not In A Weird Way.

I don't know why Joe Cooper did not move in, but I know we were kept apart by a matter of a cruel few days. The evidence? A card I found on our shared doormat that said 'Dear Mr Cooper, we tried to install your Sky+ today, but you weren't in.' Even now, months later, post still drops optimistically through the communal letterbox for him.

Here are the things I do know for sure about Joe Cooper:

1) From the envelopes addressed to him, stamped with the names of wealth asset management companies, he has a certain amount of disposable income.

2) He has Sky TV.

From my perspective at least, our prospects looked excellent. But my potential future with Joe Cooper now exists entirely in the negative, thanks to some caprice of bounced deposit cheques or eccentric letting agents.

In the autumn of 2009, I did not watch furtively from behind my bedroom curtains as Joe Cooper unpacked his life from the boot of a mid-range small car and carried it into the flat below. I did not mentally judge him a little bit with every emerging possession, which included an enormous television (tick), an ugly heirloom-style coffee table (endearing), several items to indicate an enthusiasm for Manchester United (fail, crashing fail) and an enormous rucksack suggesting he'd Been Travelling (undecided). At around this time, I realised my bedroom curtains could use a wash.

Three weeks later, I did not meet him for the first time in our communal corridor, having been meaning to knock and say hello like a grown-up ever since he moved in, but always finding an excuse not to. We did not have a flustered but well-meaning conversation where we occasionally talked over each other in our attempts to be welcoming (my side) and Not Totally Odd (both sides).

At some point after this, Joe Cooper did not knock on my door and ask if he could borrow some pliers, and then, while I was foraging for them in the Cupboard Of Things Which Have No Other Home, he did not browse my DVD collection, remarking in gently disparaging terms on my fondness for fey indie romcoms and recommending instead some Acclaimed US Drama with Courtroom Slash Police Slash Military Action.

At Christmas 2009, I did not receive a courtesy invitation to a drinks party at Joe Cooper's flat, at which I decided, after considerable deliberation, that none of Joe Cooper's friends were as attractive as Joe Cooper.

In the early spring 0f 2010, after a string of increasingly less coincidental meetings in the hallway, we did not end up watching some significant occasion of football together, thanks to his Sky Sports subscription. This, in turn, did not lead to us attending a local pub quiz together, which I would subsequently refer to as our first date, although Joe Cooper would never agree (we would later participate in nauseating play-arguments about this point of conjecture at friends' dinner parties). During the evening, Joe Cooper did not talk at length about the months he'd spent travelling (I bloody knew it), the exact period of time that seemed lost from my life expectancy after listening to him go on about it. Yet by the end of this evening, he had won a consolation-prize brewery-branded tankard, as well as the return of my previously diminishing affections, with his knowledge of historical battles and heavyweight champions of the world.

By late spring, there had not become officially a Thing.

By early summer, I had not told my friends that there was not a Thing, to which they did not respond with the following: 'I knew this would happen.' 'The one with the arms?' 'So now you can use the garden whenever you like?'

By August, I had not met his parents, thawing the initial froideur of his father with a homemade fruitcake, and successfully engaging his Dad Skills in fixing one of my lamps.

Over the next 12 months, Joe Cooper did not take me to task about my hostility to social events and general remoteness, gradually eroding them, while I attempted to do the same with his Manchester United memorabilia, to moderate success.

After some time, Joe Cooper and I did not begin attending friends' weddings together, studiously avoiding eye contact during the ceremony and performing tag-team interminable talking at anyone we met there to prevent any lull in the conversation in which they might ask us whether we 'would be next'.

Throughout these months, I was not constantly suppressing the urge to ask Joe Cooper wild-eyed, pseudo-peri-menopausal questions about whether he wanted children and how soon, how soon exactly, at some point in the next year, at some point in his 40s, when, when, when, I mean there's plenty of time and everything but WHEN.

I did not then embark on a campaign of inviting only my friends who had the most adorable and immaculately behaved children over for long Sunday lunches. I absolutely did not do this.

During this time, Joe Cooper and I did not spend interminable evenings talking about whether to move out of our upstairs-downstairs flat arrangement, in favour of one bigger flat, or whether to call in a lifestyle-magazine-style architect to create a ladder-and-hatch arrangement through the middle of both flats, before, inevitably, failing to do either and living in his (for the garden), while mine became a refuge for our joint collection of VHS tapes, unwanted family-heirloom coffee tables and only partially loved sporting memorabilia.

Eventually, Joe Cooper did not mumble a proposal during a European city break, an evening I subsequently marred by ordering a ridiculous dessert and then feeling sick. There did not follow a city wedding in which our families were polite to each other, our friends were well behaved, their children less so, and everyone toasted our long and happy future.

Joe Cooper did not move in, so we never met, so we will never know.

Tree, slain

(originally intended date of posting: December 12th, 2009)

There I was, walking to the train station, thinking about all the incredibly important and complicated things I usually think about on my regular 13-minute morning constitutional, when I saw this in front of me:


A tree, fallen, sprawling on the street.

It had not been a particularly windy night. There were no attendants in fluoroescent gilets declaring the area a hazard, no tree surgeons pondering its demise, no buzzing of chain saws or hauling of ropes, no triangular signs warning of its imminent descent and subsequent removal and apologies for any inconvenience caused.

There was just a tree lying on the pavement.

A tree that, with no evidence to the contrary, appeared to have fallen of natural causes, wrenching itself free of its foundations. Perhaps it took some kind of funny turn, botanically speaking, and swooned on to the tarmac below, clasping at the railings with its branches on the way down, in an attempt to break its fall. 'Is it hot out here? I feel a bit... ooh, look out down there!'

Since there was no prohibitive red and white tape to stop me, I walked on past the tree. I was this close to it. Something about the scale of it made me feel a bit queasy. Trees are really, really big when they're lying down. And this one looked horribly undignified, lying prostrate and vulnerable to attack from any road or pavement dweller. I am particularly thinking of the under 5s on their ill-controlled scooters in what is a very busy area for young families.

Basically, what I kept thinking was, 'Aslan.'

I was so distressed I found myself wondering whether there was a slim chance that any part of it could still be alive, and at what point a tree technically dies, but I decided that when it had been 100% severed from its roots, that point had almost certainly become history. Even I, ludicrous, twee fantasist, had to concede that it was unlikely to open a pair of barky eyes and say, 'This is terribly embarrassing but could you help me up? I feel such an old fool.'

The next morning, every trace of it had disappeared, except:

and:

What had become of it? Where had they taken it? I would never know, but if I had an open fire, I would be thinking twice about tossing a fresh log on to it.

*Announcement*

So the hard work is over. The seasonal loafing has begun in earnest. Paid work and familial duty are over for me, for now, so it is time for the WhyMissJones end-of-year clearout to begin. There will be no need to spend the night on the pavement with a flask and a sleeping bag, unless you are involved in some kind of extremely worthwhile charity work. I have attempted to engage the services of Myleene Klass to cut some kind of virtual ribbon, but the Marks & Spencer sale has started and they were a bit short-handed on the tills. Still, the fact remains that between now and January 1st, and probably a bit after as you know how these things drift on, I will be posting unpublished posts, purging my mobile phone photo folder and getting round to things I didn't previously get round to, blog-wise. Everything must go.

You are right, I am over-egging this slightly.

But essentially we are talking previously unreleased material. I accept that it is slightly less exciting than, say, Macca going up to his attic to try to find the swingball for Beatrice to play with, and coming down with some dusty old tapes of him and John throwing some ideas around. But it's all I've got for now.

You make me feel alive (alive, alive)

Sometimes when celebrities are interviewed in publications like Smash Hits and The Guardian, they are asked to describe their favourite ever Christmas present. There is no deliberation for me. It was my first ever Walkman (or the Philips FM Sky Way in sleek navy blue, if you insist on specifics). It was a chunky box of delights with a long shoulder strap, like the kind of medium-sized handbag that was probably in vogue at the time, and it had three fat, clunking buttons - until they were gradually shed in the autumn of its life.

I wish I still had it to mount in a modish, framed glass box and put on my wall, as they would probably recommend in Wallpaper* magazine (their asterisk, no smart-arse footnote implied). I don't know what happened to the Sky Way, but perhaps when my mum moved house a few years ago, it was disinterred from a cupboard boneyard of twisted leads and chargers and fossilised electrical equipment, the relics of any family home, and perhaps she decided to let it slip quietly away. This is unlikely though because, to her credit, Mrs Jones has always been incredibly charitable towards our childhood treasures, providing any and all of them with a home for as long as we felt they needed it, without a murmur of complaint. Now I am more aware than ever of how emotionally valuable this kind of ephemera is, I am increasingly appreciative. No, I can only assume that it was I who pushed my faithful friend away in favour of a newer model that actually had some working buttons. I have no defence. I was young and my head was easily turned. I know better now.

I don't remember the precise moment I peeled back the wrapping paper, but I remember putting the first tape in and pressing play and being full of shock and wonder as I was told that no one else in the room could hear what was powering into my ears loud and clear. There was much taking off and putting back on of headphones to verify that this was genuinely the case. This truly was a Christmas miracle to me, and a new and thrilling private world had opened its portal. These can be hard to come by when you're 9.

Around this time - it may even have been the same Christmas - I also got the Rio album by Duran Duran. It was one of the first proper albums I owned (I am not counting Disney, The Muppets or Danny Kaye sings Hans Christian Andersen, although those are seminal records that were played incessantly in the Jones house. In any case, I think they were technically my brother's). The two of them - Rio and the Philips FM Sky Way - are still joined in blissful union in my heart, their enduring commitment to each other forged on interminable car journeys to grandparents' houses or far-flung domestic holiday destinations. I remember the constant, plaintive call to my dad echoing around the service station forecourt as he went to pay for a tank of petrol: 'Daaaaad, can you get me some new batteries pleeeeeeeeeeeeease?'

Despite having negotiated the ages of 15, 18, 21, university, moving to London, Madchester, Britpop, the rise of dance music (and the rites of passage that came along with them) I don't think any album in its entirely means as much to me. For better or worse, it is my Sgt Pepper, my Never Mind The Bollocks, my Meat Is Murder.

Even now, I listen to it and, with the zeal of youth still courageously flickering, I think, 'Come on, seriously, this is BRILLIANT. How could anyone NOT think this is TOTALLY COOL?' I remain utterly immune to the derision that was aimed at Duran Duran then and, to a lesser extent, now. I hear the opening surge of the title track and I am eight years old again, discovering pop music for the first time, assiduously typing out all the lyrics on my mum's typewriter, not understanding a word of them, carefully administering Tipp-ex with my tongue out for concentration, filing them away with obsessive compulsion in a ring binder with the PG Tips chimps on the front (at a young age, we also owned and loved our vinyl copy of Bernard Cribbins being Mr Shifter), rendering a version of the album cover on graph paper with felt tips. I was a child who loved graph paper.

I was talking about my devotion to Rio with my friend Mr Taylor last week (not John, Roger or Andy, although when I was 9 I probably would have counted them among my closest friends). Mr Taylor made the point (and apologies if I am misquoting him) that despite being a ludicrous pirate-shirted pop band, doubtless pastiching more edgy artists of the time, their artistic pretensions were sincere and even ambitious, which could probably not be said of their critical counterparts today. I am less concerned about that, though. The fact is, I still put that album on and find it madly exhilarating. All the albums that should define my youth and stir my heart - Stone Roses, Definitely Maybe, Different Class, Blue Lines - can only muster powerful but nonetheless isolated pangs. It all started with Rio.

You can't choose who you fall in love with.

Happy Christmas.

Strictly Come Delayed

Remember the Strictly Come Dancing final? Of course you do! The thing with the glitter and the dancing, yes? Obviously I should have been writing this three days ago, but it's Christmas and we're all busy people. And my remarkable gift for procrastination is a subject to which we will return - if I get round to it - several times between now and the end of the year, as I present to you *EXCITING HEADS UP* the Why Miss Jones Bootleg Series.

The fact is that some people had forgotten about the Strictly Come Dancing final before it had even happened. Some People - and let me say that I don't know any of them - claimed to have more important things to do on the Saturday night before Christmas. Some People think this year's is a letdown of a final, the anti-climax of a letdown of a series - and it is no longer a battle between the best dancers, but about whether someone who is plucky and popular can or should defeat someone who is their dance-skills overlord. To be honest, I see nothing wrong with this as a potential narrative. As my niece, Young Miss Jones The Younger (aged 6), said before Saturday's final: 'It's a matter of like and death.' And Might vs Minnows is exactly what made the FA Cup great.

This can surely be the only explanation for wheeling out Gray Lineker to present a sports-style stats-and-screen-gimmicks lowdown on the two contenders near the start of the show. Urgh, Lineker. If I want emotionless droning, at least rearrange the rota so I can entertain some sexy ice-maiden fantasy about the penetrating glacial glare of Alan Hanson. We are also treated to an exhaustingly over-written soundbite rumble between the contestants: 'See you later, Whittleator', 'It's The Hunk versus The Hobbit.' And brilliantly from Ola, 'We're going to set the roof on fire.'

Prior to this, Tess and Bruce have made their entrance - the former finding herself the subject of numerous comments from my viewing companions along the lines of 'Get that women to Rigby & Peller.' They are, in at least one sense, a supportive crowd.

We meet the contestants, who will retread their favourite ballroom dance for starters. I feel a bit worried about Natalie tonight. She appears to be hyperventilating already and she hasn't even started dancing yet. Despite her much (and unfairly) maligned competitiveness, I am honestly more concerned for her physical welfare if she wins than if she doesn't. An unfortunate meeting of hairstyle and dress has left Natalie looking like one of those dolls that pensioners in the 80s used to cover their toilet rolls.

Scholars and philosophers have spent recent weeks wondering What It Is About Ricky. He is an incredible dancer, he is polite, respectful, funny, hot, emotionally invested in the competition and yet... why don't The Public like him a little bit more? I have an epiphany as I watch his brilliant quickstep. He never smiles when he dances. It can't possibly be that simple, but then that's probably what they said when man first made fire.

Ricky and Natalie score a perfect 50. When Craig puts up the first 10, Natalie drops to the floor. You there, Recently Graduated Production Runner. Run down to Shepherds Bush Green and find a brown paper bag for Natalie to breathe into, can't you?

Chris and Ola, meanwhile, look like they're having the biggest laugh ever. I want to go to their party, not the one Ricky and Natalie are throwing next door where Natalie is crying in the kitchen because people are throwing the Maraschino cherries off the balcony at passing pedestrians and not using them to make the special Strictly cocktail she invented, even though she laminated the instructions and left them by the drinks table, while Ricky tells everyone to peace out.

Chris and Ola don't score as highly as Ricky and Natalie, but you won't be surprised by that.

Their next ordeal is a group lindy hop. Can you have a group of two? Of course you can. Remember Wham!? It's as fun as a dance that constantly riffs on the threat of physical violence between men and women can be. Ooh! I'm going to spank you! Bah! I'm going to kick you!

You guys! Can't we just love each other?

Chris and Ola narrowly beat Ricky and Natalie. Not physically, in terms of scoring. We wonder if the judges have been made to swot up on the Bumper BBC Book Of Psychology and are over-marking Chris and Ola just a little in order to a) validate the victory they know is coming or b) nudge Ricky and Natalie more towards underdog status in an attempt to boost their viewer votes.

Next is the moment that all Strictly fans have been waiting for. Not the Showdances. Not Bruce's number, although lord knows that is three minutes that's making us all delirious with anticipation. It's Jade and Ian's tango! Jade is neither limping or crying, which for me is a result from the start. They are brilliant, but we can't talk about that as it will remind us what we could have had, and tonight is all about keeping a stiff upper lip and pretending that the Strictly final is EXCITING and IMPORTANT and UNPREDICTABLE, whatever those others say.

Listen up, fans of age-inappropriate romantic duets, and turn down Somethin' Stupid on the stereo. Now Bruce and Alesha are going to sing together. According to the tabs, Alesha wanted to have her moment in the singing spotlight, just as Cheryl did on The X Factor, but I'm not convinced this is exactly what she had in mind. Cheryl had a smoke machine, a laser show and her troupe of sexy military-style dancers. Alesha has a rictus grin and Brucie.

This more or less marks the end of the first show, so we stop and eat some dinner, which is perfect timing since we've just lost the day's previous meals at the sight of Bruce Forsythe, 81, rotating his dessicated pelvis in the direction of Alesha Dixon, 31.

By the start of the second show, Tess has had a costume change. She has essentially given some GCSE fashion students a roll of bin bags and told them to let their imaginations run wild.

Ricky and Chris re-perform their favourite dances that aren't ballroom dances. For Chris and Ola it's the Charleston. Kristina Rihanoff is caught on camera rolling her eyes when they score 50. If only they'd had the Charleston on Strictly last season, eh Kristina? That really could have been John Sergeant's dance. Showbusiness is SO UNFAIR.

As Ricky does his cha-cha I speculate on whether it is a calculated decision that Ricky is dancing in the coveted save-the-best-till-last spot. Even if it is, all this is powerless in the face of the secret weapon Chris and Ola reveal as we get to the show dances. It is not Chris's revolving hips or an impressive crotch lift. It is this: Ola is wearing BLUE SEQUINNED JEGGINGS, and the fight is all but over.

You will not be surprised to learn that Natalie and Ricky's showdance is less fun and more sexy than Chris and Ola's cute-fest. Why change a winning formula, right? Erm... Anyway, there is a lot of touchy-touchy going on. Lovelorn Natalie is clearly giving Ricky one last shot. 'Yes, Ricky, now rub your hands all over me and let me grind up against you. You have to do it, it's FOR THE DANCING.'

At one point Ricky appears to be lifting Natalie using just his neck, which is not only incredible but, I believe, illegal in this country.

Afterwards, in Tess's room, Natalie tells Ricky he's her soulmate. Erm... Natalie? You said that out loud that time.

Lately I've been hearing a lot of the expression 'hot mess' and I think that is the best way to describe what happens next. There is a professional showdance featuring two of last year's finalists, Lisa Snowdon and Rachel Stevens. Stevens is tiny and imperious. Snowdon is, according to several members of my party, drunk. Also, she is doing that hairstyle called Large Mound Of Curly Hair Nestling At The Side Of Your Neck Like 80s Roadkill. Jessica Ennis was working the same look on Sports Personality Of The Year the previous weekend, hair-trend fans.

At the end of the dance, Lisa lurches over to Bruce, throws her arms around him and shouts 'We missed you, Brucie!' like she has just rediscovered her lost friends at the end of a very long works night out in a Yates's Wine Lodge. Then she makes the pawing animal hands at him, like, 'Grrr!' Oh God.

I love Lisa, and for this reason only I must point out that it is cruel in the extreme to make her stand next to Rachel, as I find myself not thinking: 'Isn't Lisa tall and strikingly beautiful?' but 'I wonder if they're showing Tootsie this Christmas.'

Tess is sitting dancefloor-side, chatting to the audience. She introduces Tom Chambers to the crowd. (Why isn't he dancing? Did Camilla make him wear some kind of dancing promise ring?) Almost immediately, she turns her back on him like Russell Harty did to Grace Jones, swishing her princessy ponytail in his face, to talk to renowned dancing authority and boxer David Hayes and Chris sodding Moyles.

Anyway, all this is a laboured preamble to the results. Incredibly, the winners are... Chris and Ola. Was it ever in doubt? Ola bursts into tears. Chris looks slightly sheepish, and is very articulate and composed, as though he is the only one staying sober at the party and now he's got to try and get Lisa Snowdon down off that table and into a cab. Good luck, Chris! And congratulations...