I do not usually write on Saturdays, but I think probably I will not write tomorrow since it is going to be a busy evening, and so I thought I would drop you a line whilst I had a quiet moment.
It is extraordinarily difficult to find a way of casually dropping the sentence: Oh, by the way, my daughter got an MBE in the New Year Honours List, into a conversation, and believe me I am doing my best. In the end I have been reduced to saying to people, Please just shut up and listen, my news is far more exciting than anything you have to say. They all nod and smile politely, but certainly the other taxi drivers, especially the foreign ones, don’t really have much of a clue what I am going on about.
Some of the customers do, though, mostly the ones who are not staying at Aphrodite’s Lodge, and they are making courteously admiring noises, so I can keep telling them about it for a few minutes until they get bored and start trying to change the subject.
It most certainly is a magnificent note upon which to conclude 2023, the last of my offspring passing his driving test, and Number One Daughter gaining formal admission to the middle classes. I think it is hard to argue that somebody is not middle class if they have got an Empire medal, like accusing a nuclear physicist of performing poorly at their multiplication tables. I intend to write to the King and ask if inheritance also works the other way round in this particular area, and whether or not you might be able to pass middle-classness back up the line to your parents.
Just incidentally, by the way, it means that Ritalin Boy can get married in St. Paul’s Cathedral if he wants to. I do hope he does, especially if somebody else is paying for it. He would have to marry somebody with a wealthy father, so he had better go to Milton Abbey School next year, they will have plenty of candidates.
Anyway, it has ended the outgoing year with rather a splendid pop. I am feeling very pleased with what I am allowing myself to consider my newly middle-class-once-removed status, and with my successfully adventuring children. Lucy has started her new job. Oliver can be loosed upon the motorways, and Number Two Daughter is going to start her own business. I am especially interested in the last outcome. Elspeth has made a bet that Number Two Daughter will be the first one of them to make a million, and I am sure she is right. Certainly I hope so because that will resolve one or two of my more niggling concerns about my old age.
So, my look ahead at 2024. I do not, as you know, do resolutions any more, not since I landed myself with the wretched daily bathroom-cleaning chore that I can’t now abandon. Still, here are my wishes for its desirable events. Some of them are not going to be my responsibility. Some will involve nagging Mark.
1) Obviously all children successfully getting on with their lives and careers. Lucy in her new job and house. Oliver in his new career. Number One Daughter in her about-to-be-purchased house. Number Two Daughter taking over the Canadian gas fitting industry. All that stuff.
2) Some more cash. I have suggested to Mark that he earns us some more money, although I would really be quite happy to earn some myself, as long as I didn’t have to work too horribly hard.
3) Writing my Dissertation. Finishing it. Passing the Master’s’s’s.
4) Fixing the poor collapsing camper van. Poor crumbling thing.
5) Tidying the yard.
6) Painting the bathroom ceiling.
7) Starting the Advent Calendars in May. Last year I started in June and it was still a last minute rush. Buying some decent acrylic paints.
8) More cash. Oh, I said that.
Happy New Year.
See you on the other side.
