A Long December

Last winter seemed to go on for ages. At least, way back at the end of January I remember desperately longing for summer.

And then I was made redundant, which hadn’t been on my bingo card for 2024.

Some good did come of that. I left a rather toxic environment, got a new MacBook (yay!), did some writing, worked on some infrastructure in the woods, and found a job that landed me back with some clients I knew from a previous life, working in my favourite therapy area again. The only downside, really (apart from the initial shock to the system and the stress of interviewing) was the eye-watering tax hit arising from the redundancy package. Oh well.

Summer did make an appearance, of a sorts, but it was wet, wet, wet.

It was the wettest year since records began, in fact (the records in question beginning in April 2017, when I got my weather station).

But we did have two weeks in Italy, and a weekend away in Devon (where I shot my first roe buck), and towards the end of the year even managed to see Crowded House in concert.

Which was a first for me, and finally helped me to answer that most awkward (for me) of all questions—”What’s your favourite band?”

I even managed to keep—for half the year, at least—a resolution to write a blog post ‘every couple of weeks or so’. Just don’t look too closely at the calendar.

Joshua passed his Eleven Plus (‘The Kent Test’ as they call it here).

And then the days disappeared and I was in Berlin again and then I came back and put the Christmas tree up, fighting off the fludemic as I did so, and it was dark too early but the lights brought joy to our end of the street. And we managed to fit in a quick weekend in Paris with bonus Eiffel Tower-climbing.

Christmas came, and is just ending for another season, and soon we’ll notice the days lengthening again and maybe, just maybe, I’ll stay employed but also manage to finish my novel.

Stranger things have happened.

Happy New Year, y’all.