This post is for *you* I can never think of subject lines. Dimitra picked this one for me. She spotted it in an art gallery in Sheffield, on a board explaining vision and shape and form and sight, trying to explain to everybody that artists can see the world in different ways to everyone else. I'm not sure if they can really. I mean: I'm not sure if they are *different* to everyone else; they are just better trained. More practised. We are having a Sinister Christmas this year. Greek Dimitra is visiting, from Greece, and we have taken over the stereo and made my parents listen to all sorts of music they have never heard before. "A lot of these songs seem to be about cigarettes," said my mother, listening to the Tindersticks. Dimitra arrived in Britain a long long time ago now. It was over a fortnight ago, in fact. I met her off of the train, and we went to the pub. I told her lots of exciting things, and showed her the large variety of fried food which can be obtained in a Scottish chip shop. "Don't you die if you eat all that stuff?" she said. On Christmas Eve I went out to dinner with some old friends. We ate and drank, and went into the town centre. I realised that last year, I did the very same thing and came home and posted about it. Looking back, it feels like *that* was the start of the last year, and Christmas Day last week was the start of the new year, not tonight. Time to tear up all the calendars and start writing in the new ones. Before Christmas, I went to Dundee for the weekend to visit Dimitra and Rachel and Danny. Rachel was feeling bossy, and arranged a weekend of "educational fun" for all of us. We went to the cinema, made our own CD, and cooked some rather spicy food. Belle the Kissing Dog was very licky, and kept barking at the hamster when the rest of us were trying to concentrate. If you want to reread the post I wrote last Christmas, you could go and look it up in the archives. I would tell you the address, but the archives don't seem to like me right now, so I can't find it. The same happened this Christmas as the last one, except that this year I sat talking to a girl I used to be in love with. We didn't talk about much important. But we talked, and that was nice. She looked like anyone else from that town does. Me and Dimitra looked like Sinister people, rather out of place. We weren't comfortable in the noisy, hot, cramped bars; but I stayed and talked anyhow. I did lots of other things with Dimitra whilst she was here. We went to a Belle and Sebastian gig, which was good, and then I stayed up all night with Danny and Matt and Calumn and Ken in an expensive-but-cosy cafe. The cafe had a bathtub in it, filled with water and with fish swimming around. Midway through the night, a group of men came in. One by one, they walked up to the bathtub and dipped the tops of their heads in it before being shown out by the doorman. I'm not sure what they were doing, or why. I hope the fish aren't poisoned now by cheap hair gel. They didn't look too healthy to start with. Also, I took Dimitra to the beach and she spun round in circles. We went to Sheffield and met John from Leicester. We sat around in my parents' house and drank vodka. On Christmas night, when all was dark, we sat leant back in my parents' big leather armchairs, listening to B&S on the stereo, and I told Dimitra about the girl she had just met. Who she was in my life story. I fetched down from my bedroom the box of letters I keep from her, from when I was younger, and we read through some of them. They touched me, greatly. If this is the new year, then I should start making resolutions. I resolve to change things this year. I resolve to change myself. All the changes I've made in the past year were on the inside, hidden under my clothes. Well, some of them were hidden out in the open, but they were still hidden. This year I want to change the things on the outside. Maybe I should wear my hair in pigtails more often, and be proud of it. Maybe I should change my voice. I've never liked the sound of my voice. I want to get back in touch with the girl I wrote letters to back when I was in school. [in case you haven't been to the archives, I loved this girl. we wrote letters to each other every week even though we saw each other every day but hardly spoke. then she got a boyfriend and stopped.] I want to get in touch with her just because I want to know what she is doing and thinking now, and I want her to know what I am thinking now. I told her nearly everything about myself back then. Maybe if I write to her again, I can tell her the rest of it. Tonight I am going to go out, and tomorrow I am going to rest. The day after, I want to go out and buy a notebook, so I can start writing things down. If I start writing things down, I will get better at putting things into words. If I start putting things into words, I might be able to explain things a little better. If I can do that, I will be able to do anything. Maybe even have plaited hair in public a bit more often. lots of love to all of you. it's wintertime, so stand round a bonfire, look up at the stars, and hug each other whilst thinking how far away and beautiful they are. xxxxx will -- Will Salt ICQ 66321009 http://www.btinternet.com/~wpsalt/ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. 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