Tell Me Why I Don't Like The 2nd Of February?

As some of you may know the 2nd of February is Groundhog day. The day when Bill Murray's character wakes up in Punxatawny PA to find out his is living the same day over and over again in a monotonous cycle of pure hell, trapped in a small town filled with simpletons. Phil Conners finds his own hell on earth. I have a great fondness for the film and after watching it for the umpteenth time I realised why it seems so familiar to me.

I come from Punxsutawney. Punxsutawney S.Wales.

Of course my version isn't called Punxsutawney, it doesn't have the friendliness, the snow or of course the groundhog.

Phil Connors wakes up everyday to find he is living the same day over and over again and eventually does what any sane person would do and kills himself. Unfortunately for Phil he wakes up again and again and again to the sound of Sonny and Cher's 'Babe' and the cycle starts over again. My hometown has the same curse in that the residents are confronted by the same things every day, the same people, the same routine and the same outcomes. At least Punxsutawney had the groundhog!

Punxsutawny PA "The original weather capital of the world since 1887" is the bold and somewhat oxymoronic proclamation in the film for a place that has a real Christmas card feel to it, a place that does seem to represent the juvenile nature of the USA, after all the country is not yet 250 years old. My hometown, which is a lot younger seems a lot more cynical and by comparison could be said to have a 'sorry your terminally ill' card feel to it.

The willful suspension of disbelief is an essential tool that is employed and relied on by film makers in order for their films to work and be enjoyed, I sometimes lose the ability to willfully suspend my disbelief and end up looking too much into things, but bear with me.
With such eternal time on his hands Murray's character turns his hand to all kinds of things, from sculpting ice to playing the piano and eventually finds love and therefore breaks the cycle of monotony. In my town however we don't have eternal time, it just feels like it.

We also have Parkinson's Law.

This law states that "Work expands to fill the time for its completion", or in layman's terms, the longer you have to do something, the longer it takes to do it. If Conner's lived in my town and had an eternity to do all these things he would be wandering around for eternity deciding which pursuit to master first and get nothing done, ever.

Bill Murray seems to revel in these cynical, sarcastic characters. He plays them so well it seems certain that he is indeed one himself. I sympathise with Phil Connors and the other characters he plays, I really feel for them, I'm one of them. I'm bored and cynical and sarcastic and critical and I am seemingly never satisfied. That, in a stupid old useless nutshell seems to be the curse of Cwmbran.
The only way to break the curse is to leave. Go, run away and seek other things, other places, find a better life elsewhere and for God's sake don't go back. The ambition can be sucked out of you within minutes of crossing that imaginary line between the real world and the purgatory inspired, soul draining world that for so long was my home.


I did just that in August of 2006. I moved to South Korea for a year and absolutely loved it. I came back to the UK, back to Cwmbran for Christmas 2007 and quickly remembered why I had left.

I have already sorted out my return to Korea and have thought about where I want to travel when I finish my second year, where I want to live and what I want to do and Cwmbran doesn't feature heavily.

I want to live a budget flight away from home, somewhere in Europe probably. I am considering Dublin as the only English speaking capital city outside the UK, but we will see.

Time will tell what happens but the next time I watch Groundhog day I want to look back on it as if looking at how my life used to be, tedious, boring and predictable.