So it’s that time of year again – the end of it.

My body’s in decline as we inch toward the shank of the party season and the rejuvenation that January promises. Just one more day, just one more day. This December has been particularly taxing. After spending last December in the sunny clime of an Australian summer, I’m back in Europe, and the cold, dark top of it to boot.

The shortest day of the year (December 21st-ish) in Helsinki has just passed – a day when the sun poked it’s head up at about 10.30, lazily arced across the horizon for a few hours and disappeared sometime just before 3. It’s playing havoc with my sleep patterns. Some nights I’m still racking up eleven hours. I’m yet to determine whether it’s a good or bad thing. I’m just praying that come June, there’s not some sort of weird calender-based compensation which sees me having to get by on 3 hours a night!

So on a personal note 2008 was a bit of a hoot – it started off with a mad, visa-renewing dash with Heidi to China, Hong Kong and Macau and ended with a freighter trip from Australia to Italy (past our friendly machine-gun totting, tanker stealing, Somalian friends in the Gulf of Aden – I slept pretty well in the Red Sea after that little episode, just let me tell ya) and an overland jaunt via Eastern Europe to Finland. All good fun, though I think on the travel side things have got to slow down a touch in ’09. Just like Roger Murtaugh in Lethal Weapon, I’m getting too old for this shit.

So, 2009 huh. We should be brimming with optimism right? I was optimistic this time last year and now look what’s happened! World markets in free-fall, big business bailouts (I’m crap at business too, where’s my billions?), violence on the streets of Lhasa, Mumbai in flames, cyclones in Burma and earthquakes in Sichuan. As I type, Gaza is being bombed back to the Stone Age and over in Iraq, the war that ended back in ’03 mysteriously rolls on.

But there’s been some positives – our man Obama heading for the big house (yes he can), that li’l prick Johny Howard finally ousted from power down under (ok, technically that was December 2006 but for the sake of flow) and small indications that, following some minor hiccups, David and Victoria Beckham have finally settled into the LA lifestyle. You little ripper!

So on to 2009. Well for starters, it’s going to be shorter than 2008 by a whole second – a leap-second – but that’s about as far as I’m willing to take it on the prophecy front. As for brash predictions on a world scale, I’m steering well clear. Based on years past, I got no idea. But it can’t be a step backwards from ’08, can it? I’ll start with a touch of optimism again and we can take it from there.

Whatever happens, I wish you all a happy new year for 2009 and hope you’ll drop by from time to time, sign up to my feed, leave a comment or 2 and help me get this Astray Buffet thing off the ground.

Remember, party hard but respect the fish!

Cartwright P. Moocjheenie

So I’m back in Helsinki. What can I say, I like the place. Christmas always seems more natural when you’re inadvertently gliding on black ice or dodging slabs of melting snow that had grown bored of life on the rooftops. Glögi is a fine, fine thing and if you believe the rumours, even Santa Claus hails from these parts. If it’s good enough for the fat man, its good enough for me.

So Saturday just gone was Finnish Independence Day, in itself no bad thing. But instead of being celebrated like any of the other 2,500+ national Finnish celebrations – where you might light three candles and spin twice, balance a slew of berries on one shoulder or answer the door to a torrent of song from young girls in pinafores – Finnish Independence Day sets aside a very special form of torture.

Yes, at 7pm sharp on the 6th December, life as we know it – in Helsinki at least – takes a drastic turn for the worse. For the next three hours any Finn of any note ever forms a black tie line-up to meet and greet the President. And I’m talking any Finn, of any note, ever! Weather girls, lowly politicos, pop idol contestants, Eurovision also-rans, the list is long and nauseating. The action repetitive and self-indulgent.

And far from presenting itself as a sound reason to leave the house or at the very least, change the channel, the majority of Finns I know sit glued to this spectacle. They actually look forward to it and plan little events around it.

Still, you can leave the room, I hear you cry! Normally, without question, but on this occasion I was at one of these little events – a house-warming – where all the action took place in a tight-knit semi-circle around the tele. I was doomed to one hundred and eighty minutes of hellish teev, that is, until I was introduced to the Criminally Bad Elf.

The Criminally Bad Elf was a not a kleptomaniacal escapee from Santa’s Grotto as the name implies, but rather a British barleywine weighing in a hefty 10.5% alcoholic volume. And after a pint of it’s berry flavoured loveliness I could have been the President for all I knew.

So my advice to you when next you’re confronted with a night of local customs that you’d rather flee than endure, invite the Elf and get updates from a friend the following day. It worked for me.