Recycling

It is almost the end of 2018, and as is my habit at this auspicious time of the year, I have looked back to the diary entry that I wrote this time last year to see what I was doing and to find out how successful I have been in achieving my aims for the year.

I read the entry and clicked off it quickly.

I am sorry to admit that I have not had a single, solitary success with last year’s resolutions.

I did not even manage to find some new window cleaners.

Actually, I did find one. He was an old acquaintance who took up window-cleaning after he sold his garage in  order to get fitter and help keep his alcohol consumption to a minimum. I know about these things. They were discussed in some detail on these pages at exactly this time last year.

He cleaned the windows, grumpily, once, charged me twenty quid and then had a stroke and retired.

The windows have been dirty ever since, apart from the odd occasion when we have wished for a better view of what is going on in the neighbours’ gardens.

To add to the window-cleaning failure, we have had very little else that I could claim to have achieved. It might have been unrealistic to have aspired to become either JK Rowling or a dot com millionaire, but I could at least perhaps have managed to remember all of our dentist appointments and spend less time on Facebook.

One entirely optimistic resolution says: “Don’t ever have four glasses of wine, especially whilst talking to people I would like to impress.”

That one was a total non starter. It was written approximately a week before Ted and Mrs Ted came to dinner, and I became so intoxicated that the children had to finish writing the night’s diary entry on my behalf.

Reading through my resolutions I think I can safely say that despite a year of exciting adventure, we have still got almost exactly the same disorganised muddle of a life as we had last year. I am still round and unfit, still prone to drinking too much and squandering cash on Mark’s credit card. We still have not built a new garden or repainted the house or reconstructed the brakes on the camper van.

These work all right, mostly, just make a funny burning smell and have to be replaced after almost every trip.

I wonder if there is any point in being aspirational at all.

With that in mind, I don’t think that I need to bother making resolutions this year, since it appears that I can recycle last year’s without any trouble at all. They are as good as new, almost completely untouched, could be sold on eBay as still in their box.

Instead I shall look at what we have done instead of reforming our lives as I had planned last year.

1.  Mark has pursued his career in the telecommunications industry to the point where actually sometimes he even brings some cash home.
2. I have gone through a lengthy interviewing and vetting process, and embarked on an exciting new career.
3. Oliver has somehow managed to get himself accepted into Gordonstoun and will be starting there in September.
4. Lucy has got some offers for universities.
5. Numbers One and Two Daughters have still left home and are pursuing successful lives of their own.
6. We have utterly trashed the back garden.
7. We have got in trouble with the National Park for having three rusty trailers and a digger parked on a site of outstanding natural beauty.
8. We have resolved this by covering them with a sheet.
9. I have reached the natural conclusion to my illustrious new career and am now contemplating retirement.
10. I have lost half a stone and put it back on again.
11. I have got some nice new boots and some polyester trousers.
12. We have had a jolly good time and at this end of the year I am feeling very happy with my lot in life and am looking forward to 2019. We are solvent, well almost, healthy and in good spirits. The children are all doing well and I have got an almost unused set of resolutions to see me in to the New Year.

Everything is is just fine.

Happy New Year.