One of the enormous pleasures of keeping a diary is being able to look behind oneself and to remember past adventures.
It is a quiet evening on the taxi rank, and I have just passed a very contented hour reading about previous Christmases, none of which, it turns out, were materially different to this one. You can find them on the Home page if you press the Days Gone By key.
I have been startled to note how very similar our activities are, year after year. Today has been exactly like this time of every year. Mark has cleaned the taxis ready for New Year, I have cleaned the shocking post-Christmas grime from everywhere, and the children have curled up in their bedrooms watching things on their computers.
There was a lot of post-Christmas grime. The bathroom was the worst, but the bedroom was a close second. I dragged something off the top of the wardrobe the other day to be surprised by a snow-storm of soft grey fluff, which floated everywhere, and settled in small drifts on the carpet. I just ignored these because I was in a rush.
Today I dragged the stool out and hoovered it all up.
I scrubbed the black mould off the bath and washed away a few small but noticeable patches around the loo where Ritalin Boy might not have been entirely concentrating on the matter in hand.
I bleached the shower curtain and replaced the soap.
It all looked very much better when I had finished.
Lucy has been watching some film or other about Mary Queen of Scots. She had a short break from this when they came down to refill their sausages and yoghurt.
I made pancakes whilst she told me about it.
I was not encouraged to discover that neither child could tell me what was going to happen in the end, despite being the beneficiaries of some of the most expensive education in the known universe, some of which is actually in Scotland. Lucy said that of course she died, since it was hundreds of years ago, but more than that she had not the faintest idea.
I left it as a surprise.
Oliver spent his afternoon reorganising his bedroom, and actually came downstairs to request the hoover. His New Year’s Resolution appears to be to become taller. I hope he doesn’t succeed, the school uniform is horribly expensive.
I have been considering my own New Year’s Resolutions with a quietly resigned sense of failure made rather more acute by just having re-read my aspirations from previous years.
This seems to have been yet another year when I have not managed to become a fit, thin, bestselling novelist.
I have not been to the gym or written anything at all.
I don’t suppose you are exactly surprised by this revelation.
The thing is that all these things seem wonderfully possible in January, when there is nothing desperately urgent to do. It is an eternity until next Christmas, and possibilities for all of that blissfully empty time are dazzling and endless. Then suddenly we are halfway through September and somehow it has all just leaked away.
I expect this year will be different. This year might actually be the year when J make it all happen.
You just watch this space.
