Yang

Yin and Yang. Karma. Or just swings and roundabouts... I've always had faith in the notion that Life has a way of evening itself out. Cosmic Balance. Celestial Harmony. For every new reality TV series written by Jordan's breasts and starring Kerry Katona, there's bound to be something that balances it out. Without at least one Jamie Oliver, we might not have Larry David. For every Crunchie in a box of Cadbury's Heroes there's always a Twirl.

Yet over the course of the last few years, I've begun to think that Life is all swings, or indeed, all Crunchies. There's just far too much Yang in the world. Kerry Katona's face mocks me from the advertising hoardings as I trudge through the waking city centre each morning at dawn. Her down-the-nose sneer is the confirmation of my own hubris. Kerry gets yet another new series while 'Arrested Development', one of the best comedies to come out of America in the last decade, was cancelled part way through the third series. Chaplin is dead. So are Stan Laurel, W.C. Fields, Groucho. Hunter S. Thompson has knocked back his final whisky and P.G. Wodehouse has wore his last spat. It's dangerous having me as a fan. Look at my dear friend Stephen recently run over by a marauding manatee.

Today was another day when the swings won. Yang is laughing at me for believing that at some point, my luck will change, that I will begin to feel good about myself. But what's that you say? “Ah, Richard, don't harp on about how tough things are when the world is full of famine, illness, and people born without elbows.” And you would indeed be right. Statistics would prove that there is a worldwide shortage of elbows and that Yang laughs at other people far more often than it mocks me. But the truth is that I'm too tired to question the self-evident truth that I have really made a mess of things. Judy might land us a new deal after the Channel 4 contract runs out but in the meantime, I'm getting up at six o'clock and getting home twelve hours later after doing some anonymous voiceover work for a cracker company that's only famous in China. Today it was pointed out that I'm not very good at my job. This might well be true. How can any competent man make a mess of the line: 'it's the crazy crisp of the crunchy Chinese corn cracker'?

Tomorrow is another day. Think of me and pray for Yin.