Brand New Start
Happy
new year. I normally dread the last day of December. I’ve never gone in for
walking around the block with a lump of coal, or whatever it is you’re supposed
to do, much less dive in fountains. The fireworks in London looked impressive
on the television, but we had no desire to push our way through crowds of drunk
strangers to watch them.
I’m
never quite sure what you’re supposed to do come New Year. Originally, we weren’t
even going to wait up until midnight, we were going to go to bed early. But
then we started watching the Queen concert. So we sang a verse of Auld Lang Syne ironically. But neither
of us felt like we were going to take 2015 by the throat.
All
it’s really meant to me, over the years, is that Christmas is over, whatever
about the decorations coming down on January 6th. On January 2nd,
you’re going back to work, and it won’t be as relaxed or as cheerful as it was
on the run up to Christmas Eve.
I do
love Christmas. I know what I’m doing at Christmas. I love buying the perfect
present for my wife (I’m getting quite good at it after 20 years). I love
receiving presents- Remembrance of the
Daleks this year! I love cooking the roast dinner, even if I haven’t
mastered gravy yet. I love going to mass, either on Christmas Eve or Christmas
morning. The sun was out when we walked to our church, it was frosty but
exhilarating. The one or two people out at the time wished us a merry
Christmas. We sang carols, out of tune but with gusto. And we left feeling on
top of the world.
Mass,
for me, is Christmas. Everything
else, really, is icing on the cake. As we walked home (we walked through a park
on the way back, only to find that all the other gates were still locked, so we
had to exit from the one we entered from), we felt buoyant and optimistic. That
would have done me for the beginning of the new year. If you belong to another
religion, say Islam, Christmas might not mean the same to you, but you’ve got
Ede. I suppose committed atheists might get something out of the day, if they
spon our end the day thinking about the wonder of life. But if all Christmas
means to you is buying and receiving more and more presents and stuffing your
face, then I feel sorry for you.
A
funny thing happened to me on New Year’s Day, though. After a leisurely
breakfast, when we talked about the year we’d been through, we realized that we’d
had an awful lot to put up with. We’d been through a big legal thing in 2013,
which we still weren’t the better of. My dad’s death, in 2012, and the awful,
unnecessary and painful fallout from that, was still on our minds. 2014 became,
really, something to be got through, a stalling for time.
2015
is, I hope, going to be different. My wife and I are good in crises- just as
well, really, since we’ve had plenty of them. But that means, too, that when we
plan things, and carry through those plans, we get things done. So that’s what
we’re going to do: get some projects underway.
As
soon as I got back to work, I downloaded a list of plumbers, to see which ones
might be best for installing a washing machine.
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