Welcome to the Cheap Sweets

Ah, the New Year - ushered in with the usual array of post-Christmas penury, the addition of festive flab and the sheer drear of returning to work. Even when there's hardly anyone at work, and you spend the first five minutes of every encounter with a colleague exchanging information about how their holiday was. But 2011 has an added excitement - we now have to pay more VAT on everything! As if we weren't feeling bleak enough, having spent far too much on presents and in the sales, and fallen off the dietary bandwagon, gammon-faced Cameron has really stuck the boot in.

In these straightened times, one must turn to the world of cheap thrills in order to cheer oneself up. I was thinking last night of a list of free, or nearly free delights with which to start my year.

1/ The gargantuan plastic jar of sweets which my boss provided for Christmas will surely still yield a few more Dolly Mixtures. I've no idea what's in Dolly Mixtures - I'm hoping, in a Toy Story 3 style, that it's not actual dollies - but they are awesome. If you haven't had any since you were 10, then get a bag, throw away the jelly ones if there are any (urgh), and dig in. They're tiny, so you can eat fifty of them and feel like you haven't really been that bad. There's something about the slightly fudgy texture, and the constant question of, 'do the orange ones really taste different from the purple ones?' that is just as pleasing as scoffing Green and Black's Butterscotch chocolate. Albeit in a way that's a bit like reading the latest Jilly Cooper in hardback when you know you should really be reading Jonathan Frantzen.

2/ There is no snow and ice left in Edinburgh. I can't overstate the pure pleasure I felt this morning when I put on a pair of boots with a heel, instead of walking boots, and walked at a normal pace, rather than my tiny-geisha-steps-shuffle. It's a joy that's equal to the one you get when the Anadin Extra kicks in and your vicious headache finally disappears. Snow, and its ensuing dramas, was fine for the first week, and then it became a total pain in the arse. Thank you, 2011, for starting without any more of it, and for melting (nearly all) of the remainder whilst I was away for Christmas.

3/ I got given John Lewis vouchers as part of my Christmas present (a joy in and of itself; you know you're middle aged when John Lewis becomes your favourite shop. I reached that landmark about 10 years ago, truth be told. Take me on a trip to look at toasters and baking equipment in the kitchen department, and I'm happy). The vouchers were to purchase a new duvet cover and pillow cases. The ones in the flat were fine, but not really me (they're a bit... brown), so I was eyeing up some with a bit of embroidery on. I bought them. I even managed to put them on, on the actual day of purchase (surely one of my Resolutions for this year is to Stop. Bloody. Procrastinating). I snuggled under the duvet and marvelled at how great it is to cuddle up under a brand new, crispy, white cotton duvet cover. 'This is what it must be like for people quite often, who iron their duvet covers', I thought. 'Best make the most of it, then', my inner voice declared. 'Given you've only just bought an iron for the first time in 4 years, it's not likely you're going to suddenly morph into the kind of person who irons their duvet cover.'

4/ Now it's the 4th of January, we can hopefully stop reviewing 2010, and I can also stop being told what I should like/be anticipating for 2011. There's a raft of doubtless thrilling theatrical productions in London which I won't see, because I'm not there for long enough to fit in theatre visits and pub sessions with my mates. Ditto art exhibitions, although I am planning a trip to a Dior illustration exhibition when I'm in town on Thursday. Books I should be reading? I'm still planning to fit in 2009's Booker winner at some stage. New bands? To be honest, I'm still happy with the banjo stylings of Mumford and Sons. (Added benefit: for some reason, it's the only music that will persuade me to actually run on a treadmill. I have no such hopes for the XX or The Vaccines, which people in the know are indicating are this year's New Big Thing.)

5/ As everyone's got an iPad for Christmas - I've no idea if this is a fact, I'm just assuming loads of people have - people can stop asking me if I've got an iPhone and whether I know how to use it. The answers to those questions are:
Yes, and it's lovely and shiny
and
No, of course I don't, it's for work, and every time I try to make a phone call on it, it freaks me out. And that touch-screen typing thing doesn't work for me either. It's mainly useful for looking at things on eBay when you're waiting for someone and you're bored. And as a side point, having, 'sent from my iPhone' at the end of all your emails is annoying; it's like you're boasting about the fact that you've got one.

6/ Everyone seems to agree that Frankie Boyle's Tramadol Nights is quite the worst comedy thing that's ever been put on TV (other than Come Fly with Me, but as I haven't seen that, I'll just have to rely on the trailers making it look excruciating, and at least a decade past its sell-by date). I don't know why all these stand-ups have suddenly decided that they're great at doing sketch shows. Maybe it stops them using up great swathes of their stand-up material that they're still touring/trying to shift on DVD. But they're all having a crack at it, and they're all shit. Stephen K. Amos - perfectly nice fellow, I'm sure, but his show looked like a Lenny Henry series from the early '80s. Surely the BBC's comedy commissioner didn't really say, 'Ooh, you're not white, therefore you have to have quite a few sketches where you dress up as your own mum?' Channel 4's new offering is some woman called Morgana (ever heard of her? No, me neither; was slightly expecting the screechy witch from the Kevin Costner Robin Hood film trying out a Derren Brown-influenced prediction show). Her schtick seems to be funny wigs and googly glasses for each character. Because people with chronically bad eyesight and frizzy hair are always hilarious.

But Frankie really wins all the awards for this category hands down. I used to think he was deeply unpleasant but occasionally very funny on Mock the Week. Then he sacked one of my friends, who was supposed to be doing the PR for his mystifyingly popular book, on the basis of a typo in an email. Then Channel 4 give him a bucket of cash to make offensive stand-up jokes (TM the Daily Mail), interspersed with terrible sketches. The brief for which appears to have been: make them 3 times as long as they need to be, with no punchlines, and referencing TV shows and films that are at least fifteen years old. With terrible wigs. And no acting ability. Which are also offensive. In the one I saw, the sketches were based around Knight Rider and The Green Mile. It's a much debated question - what constitutes offence in comedy, and whether any subject is off-limits - but the basics for me are always, 'do I laugh, and then have a bit of a guilty intake of breath, or do I just think, "bloody hell, that's offensive, and it's not even funny".'

Let's hope one of Frankie's New Year's resolutions is to give it all up, as he keeps threatening to, and then I'll have another VAT-free pleasure to add to my list.