Welcome back all, and a very Happy New Year.

Those of you who have become accustomed to the various signs and notices I have placed in the window over the years will be pleased, or not (delete as applicable) that there will now be a monthly email along the same lines. It may not arrive on the same day of each month, and will rely solely on me keeping my creative juices flowing. Obvious exceptions will be references to any celebrities, or so called celebrities I have upset with these asides. You know who you are, and for legal reasons I will not name you in this, no matter how much fun it would be, or how thin skinned you might be.

The New Year is upon us, and that means a trip to Italy for Pitti Uomo (a clothing trade fair) in Florence, I know it’s work, but someone has to do it. I have given up staying in Florence where nan’s room at the back of the house is now 1500€ a night, cash, and a bowl of “authentic” Tuscan Bean soup with a glass of chianti will set you back a ransom fit for a Duca. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not the exchange rate, since when does a pint of beer in a bar cost 11€, and a double room in a hotel cost 500€. No longer will I struggle to find a restaurant where I haven’t booked six months prior, or where the prices have been hastily covered over with masking tape to cope with Pittinflation.

Like last year I’ll be staying in Bologna where the hotel offers a sensible rate, and I can eat in a friend’s restaurant, until we feel like Hansel and Gretal, with change from a thousand lire note. I cannot recommend Drogheria della Rosa highly enough. Emanuele and his family make casual eating an experience you want to coming back to time after time. By the time you have bought chocolate from Roccati you may never want to eat again.

But, January also takes us into that joyful time of year, the Sale period. Now as many of you know when this happens, I am often to be found tanning myself alongside the gentle waves of the Med., but not in January. It is a full on fun fest when the lunatics take over the asylum, an opportunity to clear out all my mistakes, not that I make any, but then not everyone has my taste in clothes. OK, I admit the year that people came in off the street just to see my Christmas outfit probably meant I had gone too far. I know Harold Pinter who will be sadly missed, would have asked me to change clothes before looking after him. If it wasn’t made in black, or cricket whites, the normal eerie pause turned into a disdainful silence. Last year we also lost an old friend in Barry Brown, never less than theatrical, we never turned down the opportunity to dine with him and Ros. His knowledge of television and theatre never ceased to amaze us, and memories Kirk St. Moritz will remain with us always.

We also lost the restaurant St. Alban. A word of warning to any restaurateurs, it had just started opening for Sunday lunch which proved a great attraction for us. Not long after this we discovered it was to close. Now, perhaps closing a restaurant is a way of sending a message, but as yet Chris and Jeremy have not barred me from The Wolseley, should my presence illicit the same fate.

Today it has snowed and temperatures struggled above freezing. As I left home in Pimlico this morning to venture north of Piccadilly I was passed by a young man wearing flip-flops, trousers and a shirt. He was muttering to himself, any one of a thousand things, but in that moment I could see the future and it’s not bright. It reminded me just how weird and wonderful the world can be, and how far wrong I appear to be going with things………………….

12 New Year’s Resolutions*

1: Not to entertain hagglers, things aren’t that bad, they’re never that bad…..

2: Give up the following; drinking, eating, smoking, drugs, sex – delete as applicable – commiserations if it’s all of them, but then 2009 must have been a very good year, if you can remember it.

3: Give up walking on the cracks in the pavement, they seem to be getting wider.

4: Only order a jug of tap water in a restaurant, next you’ll be getting the calculator out……..

5: January is the month of abstinence, not the month of absinthe.

6: Treat others with the respect they deserve, now *** off, haven’t you got something better to do.

7: Stop writing signs that clearly nobody reads, and continue writing that screenplay, now what did I do with Spielberg’s number.

8: Don’t “Go Compare”; all of a sudden I’m starting to miss those bloody Meerkats.

9: To stop street drinking, and that includes blocking the pavement outside the Elusive Camel. Elusive, elusive you can’t miss it, between that and Giraffe, Pimlico is officially a wild life conservation area.

10: Since a workman is only as good as his tools, take up one of those offers that keep clogging up my inbox.

11: Remind myself that cheap doesn’t always mean cheerful, especially when it comes to wine.

12: Have the good grace to treat everyone equally—–Sorry broken that one already

13: I’d like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony…………..everybody sing along

14: Learn to count

15: I said, learn to count. Oh, I give up. It’s an old joke, and if you’ve not been following well I’m not going back over old ground.

16: I was once sweet 16, but that was a long, long time ago……..

Copyright © 2010 Adrian Holdsworth. All Rights Reserved.