new year, new start?

Sorry folks. January 2nd and not a peep even to say Happy New Year! Well, your correspondent has been busy and is now feeling as jaded as - as - well, as a piece of jade. The pale kind. I've just thrown away an entire carrier bag of old, inedible food includingh loads of stuff I bought just so we would have leftovers to eat. Key word there: "we." Ah well: teenagers, eh.

Work tomorrow morning, with a big meeting at 11am, which I have to prepare for. AND the Victoria Line isn't stopping at, er, Victoria until Monday (that would be asking a bit much of them, apparently). (However, I've just been talking to a 13-year-old who has to go to school tomorrow - five days before the pampered young of N16 - in a bottle-green uniform, complete with blazer. That would take even more gearing up to, I think...)

This time last year I was writing about resolutions. Some of them are the same, which is both good - these are things one should always resolve to do - and bad, as some of them I signally failed to achieve last time round. Little did one know, writing these resolutions, why the detox diet had failed - to wit, that one was sick with something no detox diet could cure - but this year, working only on the basis of what I know, which is all one can do, I resolve most of these things again. The "spending less" one is really the important one. Whatever else happens.

Last year someone - the Political Umpire - invited me to list my seven successes of 2006. This task reminds me of something I was advised to do in the deepest, darkest days of my divorce, which was to write a list of things I was grateful for. No matter how small. I used to list things like "the scrambled eggs on toast I had for breakfast" and "I'm alive." The idea, because you had to fill a side of A4 with your list, was to show that there are always things to be grateful for, no matter how small... It's a salutary exercise at any time when things don't seem to be going right, and I think any given New Year is easily that kind of time. Someone once asked me, at a New Year's Even party, "what's your biggest fear for the coming year?" It was only hard to think which was the biggest.

Now, 2007 has turned out to be utter crap. I know several people who have had that experience, and several who say that almost everyone they know has had that experience. It looks as if we're all glad to put 2007 behind us. The inevitable finale, the crashing crescendo, and one remembers only too clearly one's hopes for that terrible year at its beginning. But wait! Was it all bad?

So, on to the task. The seven things I'm glad to take with me from 2007 into 2008. The year wasn't a complete dead loss. I also challenge you, dear readers, to post a list of your seven things in the comments.

1. My manuscript was accepted by Salt, hurrah, and yes! I am going to send it in this week. It's slated for June publication. (I hope.) There have already been changes for the good as a result of this, friendships and links forged, and other things. Salt was the first publisher I ever sent a manuscript to, so sure was I that they were the outfit I wanted to be with. I think it's a really exciting place to be.

On a smaller poetry note, I was invited to read in St Albans in the autumn, for Oxfam, and it turned out to be the Saturday after my father, le Duc de Baroque, died. I was never in two minds about doing the reading, but I was kind of wondering how I would do it - and in the event it was good, and great, and the church we were in bucked me up immeasurably, and it was a beautiful evening.

2. Well, I hated it, and was sick, and it was awful, but at least I found out what had been causing those stomach-aches and all that faintness and illness, and got it sorted out. So now I'm released from the constant effort of trying to figure out why I don't feel well, and am in fact feeling better. So it's good.

And I learned a lot about hospitals. Which isn't good but it is interesting, in an annoying way. I'm more scared of being old now. And I feel more mature from my experiences, which at my age (156) is only tantamout to saying you feel old, so we'll just leave that one there, shall we.

Also, I didn't go blind.

3. I saw a lot of great films on DVD and telly. Not that I was reading much, or would normally have not been watching nice things, but due to circumstances it was lots more than usual and it was, so far as one was capable of at the time, fun, and some of the things I saw have changed my life in some small way. Eg, I finally saw Taxi Driver. (Yes it did. Are you kidding?? Go watch it!)

4. My blog took off a bit, thanks to you lot, dear readers, so thank you each and every one! I've met interesting people and made friends through this little enterprise, and have loved some of the comments, and been surprised by some of the links, and generally been enriched by it. It's been mentioned and praised in both Time Out and The Bookaholic's Guide to Book Blogs. It's all good, even though I sometimes wonder why I write it or what it's for, or what it's even all about, Alfie.

5. The circumstances may not have been great but it was both novel and good to go home to the States twice in three months. I'm very glad I went for three whole weeks and got to spend some quality time with my father, and am equally glad that I was in a position to be able to go home for his funeral. It was wonderful to spend some time with my neices. It was wonderful to spend quite a bit of time with my Sis. It was wonderful to be in Woodstock for a precious couple of days and it was wonderful to be home in the winter. I really do think I prefer it.

6. I'm behind with almost every piece of writing I'm supposed to be doing for anyone else, but I found the other day that I've got more poems from 2007 than I thought I had, and some of them aren't bad. This is great news! I was thinking I hadn't... Twice this year - and I think this shows something of what it was all like - I've gone to look at poems on the computer and do revisions, and found a poem I have no memory of writing, and no idea what was in my head when writing it. In both cases I quite liked them, and eventually remembered the writing, but both times I only remembered after the revision. That's kind of good, if weird.

Now I must do the other writing and also send out some of the new poems.

7. This one I'm not telling.

Bonus track: Of course I am also grateful for my kids. Always. I wasn't there for them very much this year, what with being ill and feeble and ineffectual (I was about to write "and intellectual" - is it the same thing?) and then away, and I think it is telling a bit. So I guess they're my big resolution for the coming year. That, and not spending money.

I realise that most of these gratitudes come with either a "to do" list attached or a "despite everything" rider. Life, eh.