This is essentially a complaint about a really bad year. I'll put other documents on that are a little more 'in depth' later, but for now, I'm just going to complain.

This year was, well, let's not mince words, shite. I've had a terrible summer both in terms of weather and life (aww, poor me). I quit my job and having no money is hard, although I can't really complain, as Abbot Jack will no doubt make clear in his section. I have a shit load of schoolwork to get through too and lots of pressure to do it well.

I had a somewhat unfortunate experience with the opposite sex too; this destroyed my summer without help from other problems. I won't go into this though as I expect school members to come here too and I wouldn't want to cause trouble.

I managed to get thrown out of an 18^th birthday bash in summer. Fair enough you might say, well not really because half the people I'm around at school hate me because of it. The story goes that I asked the band if I could play guitar one too many times and the guy through me out. I'd like to point out that (a) I can play well and have my own £1,000 guitar, (b) I asked in an unthreatening manner and (c) I had a perfectly innocent motive which the guitarist himself MUST have experienced. A desire to play for people. Perhaps some people/one in particular, but lets not get into that.

Of course I've had the usual parent problems this year too. As I've experimented with my image more and more my parents have gotten more and more opposed to it. All my mates do it, so why not me. I'm simply expressing myself and having fun offending fascist old ladies in the process. I now have red hair and red eyeliner (oh, you coordinated son of a bitch) and I think it looks great. At the height off this conflict we weren't talking much and my mum started giving me stress about being gay. Well I'm not.

I pissed off most of my friends at some point this year, either by being miserable or quite. One of my good friends had the same problem, which in it's self is another problem.

Those are the main issues in brief. They all pissed my off and in conjunction with the usual shit life throws at you, it's made a bad year. I know a song by the same name. It's by Iron Monkey (whom you should ALL check out www.earache.com). It's now my anthem for the year.

I'm expecting other members to make my year look like a holiday camp with their own horror stories (all of which are welcome). But note that this is my life and it's as bad as it gets and so seems terrible. So don't start you contributions with "that's nothing ………" please.

On a lighter note, things are looking up and I'm going to treat myself to a phat new year piss-up hoping it really will be a new and better year.