My school report has come.
It is in academic Cambridge language but basically it boils down to Class Clown Could Do Better.
This made me laugh, and since there was an opportunity for a Student Observation to be added at the bottom , I have been busily composing a worthy riposte, which I feel, under the circumstances, ought to start Once Upon A Time. I have not finished it yet but it is keeping me happily occupied here on the last day of 2022 on the taxi rank.
I am not sorry that 2022 is over, and only wish that a new year could actually involve the new start that everybody thinks it should, how brilliant to go into 2023 with a new government, a new set of laws, and Twitter misfortunately wiped off the face of the planet by a small but otherwise harmless nuclear explosion. I know that I have a Twitter account. Indeed once, years ago, I set these pages up so they would automatically be transferred to Twitter whenever I composed them. I forgot all about this and was then quite astonished to discover, several years later, that not only did I have an account already, but I was contributing to it regularly. I have not looked at it since but I suppose it is still there. I don’t think anybody except Donald Trump and Meghan Markle reads Twitter really, but if I had a wish for 2023 its demise would probably help to bring about the generic desire for World Peace that everybody expresses at this time of year.
Other than that my wishes for the New Year are much the same as they always are, to earn more cash, whilst spending more time loafing about. Since I am not currently supported by a union I think it unlikely that I will achieve these aims, and I do not have the smallest intention of coming up with any more New Year’s Resolutions. It was a stupid New Year’s Resolution that has landed me with the hideous start to the day of cleaning the bathroom every single morning, before I have even had coffee. I am now at the stage where I can’t give this up, because I like having a clean bathroom very much, and I can’t shirk out of the task without remembering the horror of blackened, hair-stuffed plugholes, and a greasy ring around the bath. We will not discuss the unmentionableness of the loo.
Hence I am not going to resolve to do anything as brainless as taking more exercise or dusting the top of the wardrobe, because such things are tiresomely dull, and I know myself quite well enough to know that in no time at all I will be stuck with it.
Indeed, if I kept it up, in about five years time I could have a life which filled every minute with the dullest most virtuous activities imaginable, drinking water with dinner instead of red wine, going for a quick jog after I have finished cleaning the bathroom, and having yoghurt and spinach for breakfast instead of cheese on toast and a glass of single malt. I could occupy my thoughts with remembering to de-flea the dogs and to pay the Autoparts bill instead of vaguely wondering what it is about iron, exactly, that repels fairies, or whether, if aliens looked like octopuses, they would have spaceships that were a bit like fish tanks, and how they could be made aerodynamic.
What an exciting 2023 I would have.
In consequence, I have not made any New Year’s Resolutions. If anybody thinks of anything that I could improve, you would be welcome to suggest it and I would be happy to consider it, although it is unlikely that I would do much about it. I quite like my life as it is, except for the bathroom cleaning bit.
Something nice happened today, which I must just tell you before I sign off. We were organising our lives ready for work when the doorbell rang, and it was neither the police nor the bailiffs, but our friends Kate and Kevin with a bottle of wine as a Happy New Year present.
Guess what it was.
My cup of happiness for the New Year is full.
Full of Sancerre, in fact.
Happy New Year to you all.
