The ramblings of Keane Ingram

Happy new year! December went very quickly, I hadn't realised it had been so long since my previous update. It's been a stressful month what with Christmas to prepare for, and my work situation was up in the air. That has now been sorted though thankfully!

We went to the usual pantomime at the Thameside theatre in Grays, this year it was Aladdin and my nephew joined us this year. It was his first pantomime and he absolutely loved it, as did the other kids. Nicky is now getting to an age where he's understanding more of the jokes, I did enjoy hearing him laughing at a wordplay joke that he wouldn't have understood a couple of years ago.


Christmas was a bit less hectic this year, the piles of presents for the children are now more manageable as what they want is smaller (but more expensive!) Rory's favourite present was a Mario beanie which has rarely been off his head since, Kitty's favourite was a giant unicorn which she has been carrying around everywhere, and Nicky's were some goalkeeper gloves which he has been wearing around the house(!)

Nicky and I went to the football with Anna's dad yesterday. Southend were playing Gillingham, it was not the greatest game and the standard of officiating was abysmal, it seems to get worse every game we go to! The assistant was regularly flagging for offside when it wasn't and not flagging for offside when it was. The ref sent off Robinson for a second yellow when it didn't even look like a foul, then disallowed what looked like a perfectly legitimate Gillingham goal before Southend went up the other end and scored! I've never heard the stadium go from despair to jubilation so quickly!

Thinking ahead to 2019, my resolutions are pretty similar to last year:

• Try and be more positive/optimistic. Still not particularly easy given the state of the world and events out of my control.
• Listen to new music. I don't want to be one of those old people who claims that all new music is rubbish and things were better back in my day, but that's how it seems! I'll try and find something new to enjoy.
• Practice playing the bass more. I did this reasonably well last year but things tailed off in the last few months. I was enjoying using Yousician so will start doing that again.
• Lose weight. The perennial favourite! I've put on quite a lot over Christmas which I'm sure will go soon. Even at the start of the year I weight less than I did at the start of 2018 so it's a decent base to build from. What with cycling, (attempts at) running, HIIT training and capoeira I'm sure I'll be doing enough exercise!