Thoughts while sitting next to a wet pug…

New Year’s day 2023 and I’m sitting next to a wet pug, while a sodden beagle and slightly damp kelpie snore on the slate floor. We’ve all been down to the creek where the horseflies swarm and the dogs paddle through the cascading rills and the snakes shrink under their rocks and nurse their new year’s eve hangovers…

And my boy isn’t here, which hurts as much as ever (although NYE with Felix was always, for one reason or another, awkward). There was the eve we spent with my ex-boyfriend scowling on the couch because my son had his arm around me…and the one just at the beginning of what everyone calls The Fires (‘Where were you in The Fires?’ we all ask one another) when my son was afraid the house would burn down, and the one where I went to a barbecue and he stayed home alone…in fact, I was never very good at New Year’s Eve.

However, I am good at resolutions. I generally make more than I need, and keep most of them. It’s a way of holding the reins together as this muddled chariot lurches forward…I may not have anywhere to go on NYE but by NYD I definitely do, at least on paper. Two books, passable Greek, hens, being able to plink out something on my electronic piano keyboard, and a monthly dose of intellectual adventure, that’s the Plan for 2023. If I were a more altruistic person this list would include stuff like volunteering at homeless shelters, but I’m not, and it doesn’t. That said, three dogs and one kitten are the better for my existence, so god or whoever, take note.

I’ve learned a few things about myself this year. One is, I’m contrary. I always want the thing that’s over the other side of the fence. Whatever you think, I don’t. Whoever I hook up with, I’d rather have the other one. And Two? I’m never going to be able to write Stephen King’s IT. Or anything that long! I just don’t have that much to say, let alone the observational skills to be able to render a small dysfunctional US town into ghastly reality. In fact increasingly, the only thing I’ve got to say is ‘I disagree!’ Help me out here, give me something to disagree with or I’ll just wither away…

My daughter wishes to go to the US, but I’m convinced all dreadful things begin and end there. You only have to look at the cultural products of the place to know what it’s like. Where do Stephen King’s monsters decide to set up house? Where does the zombie apocalypse always start? No Country for Old Men? The Colour Purple? Eight Mile? Police Academy III. Any song by Bruce Springsteen. That’s right, North America. And I haven’t even got to Marjorie Taylor-Greene yet! Thank God I live in a country where all we’ve got to worry about is snakes and spiders!

Small achievements in the garden motivate me and occupy my dreams. Things like putting cardboard down under the fruit trees so worms can frolic, and growing pumpkins from seed in a heap of grass clippings, and cleaning the gutters. Small challenges keep me groping ahead – the pull cord on the tank pump just broke. My dog’s questing snout in the morning is a rare source of delight…how I do love thee, oh Darcy the yap machine.

Here is a poem about it… Life, that is. Not you, Darcy.

This is how it was

Young, so full of being, bright, wild, I’d feel it pushing at my skin

Like light contained, an atom yet unsplit

Waiting for a word.

This is how it is

In fits and starts like a loose wire, life goes on, small pleasures please still

Until memory sends its barbed arrow

Deep into the heart

Also, here are some discounted vampires, including the inimitable Lady Charlotte.