It is indeed a Happy New Year. In fact, it is New Year’s Eve, and I am sitting on the taxi rank feeling very happy.
I have got a lot of good reasons to feel happy.
The camper van has passed its MOT. We have cleaned it and re-packed it, and it is ready to go off to London next week.
This was an absolute nail biter, I can jolly well tell you. Mark chugged off in it this morning, and by the time he called to say that it was all right I had worked myself up into a stomach-churning, heart-pounding state of anxiety, the way the dogs get when they think you might not have noticed them and that you are about to eat all of your breakfast all by yourself.
When he called to say that it was all right, it was a very nice feeling indeed.
We could not collapse and drink wine even then, which was what we felt like doing. Putting it back in its parking space is a complicated affair involving shunting taxis out of the way, so instead we parked it in the alley and cleaned it thoroughly and refilled it first. I did not repack the ice skates but I did put the milk jug back. If ever we have pudding with cream I could use it then.
I am not surprised that it was pretty close to the limit. When we came back to it there was still loads of stuff left in it.
We washed everything down and hoovered. I am always astonished by the quantity of sand to be scraped out of the carpets, it must be the dogs’ fault. We hardly need to walk on the beach at all for the carpets to turn into the sort of things that you would look for in order to pile them in front of your doorstep when the river starts to rise.
In the end it was done, and we put it back.
Then Mark cleaned the taxis whilst I organised dinner. That is another thing to be pleased about. We have got beautifully clean taxis. They smell lovely and my steering wheel is no longer mince-pie sticky.
It was nice to go to work this evening. A clean taxi and a good book, the world has few greater joys.
After that we filled the suitcases for London and lugged them down the stairs. We cleaned the house so that it will be beautiful for our homecoming, and then we collapsed.
We could not drink whisky, which was what we wanted to do, because of going to work, so we had a cup of tea and a mince pie instead.
It is New Year’s Eve, and we are hoping that it will be very busy later.
It has not been busy at all so far, and I have not done a single job yet. I am not worried about this. I am using the quiet time to write to you. I do not want to be crawling home at five in the morning with a diary still unwritten.
And so we approach 2022. It looks as though our beloved leader is not going to cancel the theatre next week, which is another very joyful thing. He appears to be having too good a time being popular with the Scots and the Welsh, inviting all of them to come over to celebrate New Year. I am entirely in favour of this. We could do with some intoxicated Scotsmen to make the evening go with a swing, and indeed I can see some across the road even as I write.
They are singing, very loudly.
We will not be having our own party this evening, of course. We are going to work. Oliver is working as well, so nobody is hanging about sadly in our house, except the dogs, who do not care because I have never explained the concept of New Year to them. Some things are just too complicated for somebody who struggles to understand: what did you do with your ball?
I am looking forward to 2022, partly because I am not expecting any great things from it. The government will carry on fudging along, the banks will be as awkward and tiresome as possible. The newspapers will be sensationalist and I will not know what the BBC is doing because I have terminated that once happy relationship. The children will mill along in their own directions, occasionally waving back from a distance when they remember. Mark will carry on building inventions in the shed, and the camper van will keep chugging along in its rusty cloud, breaking down occasionally, usually at moments of desperate need.
In the middle of it I am going to finish this part of my writing course and jolly well try and sell some work. I keep entering the writing competitions that the university tells us that we should, but so far if I have had any success nobody has told me.
The first set of results do not come out until March anyway, so this is no surprise.
I am feeling entirely contented about all of it.
Let’s hope it’s a good one.
Happy New Year.
