It's the time of year for resolutions. Come to think of it, does anyone still make New Year resolutions?
Well according to the newspapers, they do because every New Year there's a double page spread, right next to the predictable 'time to detox' and 'get slim for summer' articles.
When I was a journalist I used to have to write the stuff and every year it was more hackneyed than the last as I scratched around for something new to say - diet, exercise, managing money, self improvement, relationships, all the old chestnuts were in there. Despite having to churn out several hundred words every year, I still used to make resolutions, never kept them though, naturally.
I've become rather half hearted about the whole idea in recent years because who wants to start a shiny, new year already feeling guilty and defeated? Talk about an instant downer.
I love the thought of a new year, putting the last one and all its ups and downs behind me and starting a fresh new page in my life. Some years are wonderful and it's sad to see them go but every now and then there's one that you can't wait to see the back of.
I still like the idea of making resolutions though, the concept is great, I'm all for trying to improve myself but I'm sure I'm not the only woman who on New Year's Eve, after a few glasses of something bubbly, hasn't unrealistically vowed that this is the year those jeans will fit again, that the gym will become a second home, that her bank account will stay healthily in the black, that she'll be a calm and serene mother with no shouting......
The trouble is any hardcore resolutions of mine are going to have to involve chocolate (not eating), exercising (more), working (harder), driving (slower), swearing (less), daydreaming (less), clothes (fewer).
Take chocolate for example. For most of the time I can turn my back on it but there's those few days every month when there's a very strong possibility I'd do someone a nasty injury if they stood in the way of me and a mint Aero. I once mentioned it to my (female) doctor and she suggested trying a banana instead? A banana?! Did this woman even go to med school? Has she not heard of PMT? A banana is no substitute for chocolate when those hormones are raging.
Then I realised I've been looking at this resolution lark the wrong way. It was all too negative, giving up this, not doing that. It was a recipe for disaster, the expectations were too high and the disappointment inevitable. No wonder I would hit mid January feeling guilty and despondent, as if I'd failed, having broken every blasted resolution I'd made only a couple of weeks earlier. I'd feel crap for a few days, then I'd just trundle along the same as always.
So I've decided to take a new approach. 2012 will be the year of the positive resolutions. None of that 'I'll never eat chocolate again' or 'I'll exercise every day' nonsense, nope, this year my resolutions will be all about what I will be doing not what I won't.
So as Big Ben bongs out the start of 2012 I'll be resolving to make this the year of new experiences, a year of fun and adventure and doing things I've never done before, of just going for it. Everything is possible. Well, ok, everything may be possible but no I won't be bungee jumping, doing a parachute jump or ironing, let's be realistic.
A friend recently gave me a charm engraved with the words 'follow your dreams'. Before this last year I'd probably have shoved it in a drawer dismissing it as too twee, too saccharine, but actually it says it all and that's exactly what I'm going to do in 2012.
Happy New Year.
Wednesday 28 December 2011
Thursday 22 December 2011
Just call me Santa......
The scariest night of the year is almost here. Yep, Christmas Eve, the night of the stocking filling.
As a child, there was something so magical about waking up obscenely early on Christmas Day (naturally) and feeling the weight of my stocking on my feet on the end of my bed. I would never rush to open the parcels, I just loved knowing Father Christmas had been and enjoying the excitement and anticipation. Every now and then I'd wonder how he managed to get in as we didn't have a chimney and my mother took a Fort Knox approach to security, eventually after working through all the possibilities, I decided it had to be through the cat flap....
I wanted to recreate that magic for my sons so they've always hung their Christmas sacks on their beds for Santa to fill. Now that was all well and good when they were tiny and out like a light at 7pm. I could breeze in at 10pm and quietly fill their stockings. Piece of cake.
In recent years though, it's been another matter. The days of them being asleep at a decent hour so I can sneak in and do my Ms Christmas bit are long gone. Stocking time has got later and later and become scarier. More than once I've frozen in mid stocking fill when one has turned over in his sleep or a floorboard has creaked as I've crept in. I got fed up with having to sit up into the early hours to be sure they were asleep so now I go to bed and set the alarm for 3am. How mad is that?
Those are the moments when I find myself muttering 'why the hell didn't you go for hanging the stockings on the fireplace downstairs, it would have been so much easier and you could be tucked up in bed asleep right now?'
It's daft because I know they know it's me (the older one has known for years and the little one more recently) but the traditions are maintained - the letter up the chimney, the carrot for Rudolph and mince pie and tipple for Father Christmas on the hearth....
I found out there was no Father Christmas the year my childhood friend and I decided to try to stay awake to see Santa. We managed the staying awake bit but rather than a jovial chubby man in a red suit with a big bushy white beard we got our dads, completely sozzled and giggling.....I can still remember lying stock still while they noisily and wobbily filled the stockings, then us turning to each other ashen faced when they'd gone and mouthing 'Father Christmas is our dads?!'
A friend said she discovered there was no Santa the year her dad crept into her room while she was fast asleep. Unfortunately, for both of them, he tripped on the pillowcase he was supposed to be filling with presents and fell onto her bed, landing heavily on her leg. So not only did she find out there was no Father Christmas, she ended up with a crushed leg too.
Merry Christmas!
As a child, there was something so magical about waking up obscenely early on Christmas Day (naturally) and feeling the weight of my stocking on my feet on the end of my bed. I would never rush to open the parcels, I just loved knowing Father Christmas had been and enjoying the excitement and anticipation. Every now and then I'd wonder how he managed to get in as we didn't have a chimney and my mother took a Fort Knox approach to security, eventually after working through all the possibilities, I decided it had to be through the cat flap....
I wanted to recreate that magic for my sons so they've always hung their Christmas sacks on their beds for Santa to fill. Now that was all well and good when they were tiny and out like a light at 7pm. I could breeze in at 10pm and quietly fill their stockings. Piece of cake.
In recent years though, it's been another matter. The days of them being asleep at a decent hour so I can sneak in and do my Ms Christmas bit are long gone. Stocking time has got later and later and become scarier. More than once I've frozen in mid stocking fill when one has turned over in his sleep or a floorboard has creaked as I've crept in. I got fed up with having to sit up into the early hours to be sure they were asleep so now I go to bed and set the alarm for 3am. How mad is that?
Those are the moments when I find myself muttering 'why the hell didn't you go for hanging the stockings on the fireplace downstairs, it would have been so much easier and you could be tucked up in bed asleep right now?'
It's daft because I know they know it's me (the older one has known for years and the little one more recently) but the traditions are maintained - the letter up the chimney, the carrot for Rudolph and mince pie and tipple for Father Christmas on the hearth....
I found out there was no Father Christmas the year my childhood friend and I decided to try to stay awake to see Santa. We managed the staying awake bit but rather than a jovial chubby man in a red suit with a big bushy white beard we got our dads, completely sozzled and giggling.....I can still remember lying stock still while they noisily and wobbily filled the stockings, then us turning to each other ashen faced when they'd gone and mouthing 'Father Christmas is our dads?!'
A friend said she discovered there was no Santa the year her dad crept into her room while she was fast asleep. Unfortunately, for both of them, he tripped on the pillowcase he was supposed to be filling with presents and fell onto her bed, landing heavily on her leg. So not only did she find out there was no Father Christmas, she ended up with a crushed leg too.
Merry Christmas!
Friday 16 December 2011
We Three Kings.
There's nothing like a Nativity to put you in the Christmas mood. The wonky cotton wool beards, the shepherds clobbering each other with their crooks when they think no-one is watching, the music teacher pounding enthusiastically on the piano and hitting a range of notes few of which are the right ones, the pushy parents elbowing their way to the front row.
It's been a milestone year as it was the 10-year-old's last Nativity as he goes up to secondary school next September. He went out on a high as he came home the night before this week's performance to announce one of the three kings had pulled out and he'd volunteered to take his place. Even better was not only was he a king but he had lines, well, ok, five words, but hey, better than nothing.
This was a big moment as previously his best role has been innkeeper number three (no lines but a head shake at Joseph and Mary) but mostly he's just been in the choir. This has partly been because he's long been convinced that if his teachers knew his middle name was that of one of the starring roles (no, not Herod), he'd be in tinsel sparkly wings before he knew it, so he's kept quiet.
So this momentous news of major promotion was greeted with lots of 'well done you' and 'how lovely' and then followed swiftly by the panicked thought 'bloody hell, how am I going to whip up a king's costume by 6pm tomorrow?' Somehow my usual fall back position of a dressing gown and tea towel wasn't going to pass muster.
After an almost sleepless night I'd virtually resigned myself to chopping up an old but rather loved red velvet party dress and was starting to hyperventilate at the thought of creating something even vaguely passable when the little son casually announced on his way out of the door to school, 'oh I forgot to tell you, they've got costumes at school Mum so you don't have to make one'. Kids, gotta love em.
The Nativity was everything it should be. Mary held baby Jesus upside down for most of the performance, then dropped him when she realised and tried surreptitiously to turn him round, Herod's cotton wool beard was so enormous only his eyes were visible, the soloists clearly thought they were auditioning for X-factor, the pianist played 'Away in the Manger' in the wrong key and had to start again.....wonderful.
It's been a milestone year as it was the 10-year-old's last Nativity as he goes up to secondary school next September. He went out on a high as he came home the night before this week's performance to announce one of the three kings had pulled out and he'd volunteered to take his place. Even better was not only was he a king but he had lines, well, ok, five words, but hey, better than nothing.
This was a big moment as previously his best role has been innkeeper number three (no lines but a head shake at Joseph and Mary) but mostly he's just been in the choir. This has partly been because he's long been convinced that if his teachers knew his middle name was that of one of the starring roles (no, not Herod), he'd be in tinsel sparkly wings before he knew it, so he's kept quiet.
So this momentous news of major promotion was greeted with lots of 'well done you' and 'how lovely' and then followed swiftly by the panicked thought 'bloody hell, how am I going to whip up a king's costume by 6pm tomorrow?' Somehow my usual fall back position of a dressing gown and tea towel wasn't going to pass muster.
After an almost sleepless night I'd virtually resigned myself to chopping up an old but rather loved red velvet party dress and was starting to hyperventilate at the thought of creating something even vaguely passable when the little son casually announced on his way out of the door to school, 'oh I forgot to tell you, they've got costumes at school Mum so you don't have to make one'. Kids, gotta love em.
The Nativity was everything it should be. Mary held baby Jesus upside down for most of the performance, then dropped him when she realised and tried surreptitiously to turn him round, Herod's cotton wool beard was so enormous only his eyes were visible, the soloists clearly thought they were auditioning for X-factor, the pianist played 'Away in the Manger' in the wrong key and had to start again.....wonderful.
Sunday 4 December 2011
O Christmas tree......
It's that time again, the time to choose a Christmas tree. I'm a self confessed Christmas fan, I've always loved it and enjoy creating my own traditions and carrying on those from when I was a child.
One tradition that I've been happy to leave well behind though is the way my dad would 'find' our annual Christmas tree. My mum always insisted on a real tree but Dad would leave it so late that all that would be left would be the straggly ones, the lopsided ones and the ones with massive gaps between the branches. So, ever resourceful, he'd head off to the heathland that ran for miles behind our village.
As a youngster I never questioned why we always went to get our Christmas tree in the dark, why he took a saw with him and why I had to hold the torch and stand lookout. It was just one of our family traditions and it was fun. Naturally Mum knew exactly where the tree had come from and every Christmas Eve she'd go around muttering about why couldn't he just be like everyone else and get a nice one from the garden centre? It was a sad day for Dad when the authorities cottoned on to the fact that each December they ended the month with fewer trees than they started with, put up locked gates and signs warning anyone caught tree rustling would be prosecuted.
My mother's desire for the ideal tree seems to have passed down to me and I can spend ages choosing my 8ft non drop beauty. I had a brief flirtation with a fake one when the boys were little but there's nothing in my book like the smell and look of a real one.
Much as I love the whole tree shebang I certainly don't take it as seriously as the friend of one of my mates. She's a real perfectionist, so much so that she had her tree delivered, decorated it, stood back to admire it, took all the decorations off again, picked up the phone and called the tree company to tell them to take it away and bring her another one as it just wasn't right. Wowzer, now I like my tree to look pretty but that's hardcore.
Just how tree focused she is came to light when she threw a Christmas party and two male friends swapped some of the baubles around while she was out of the room. One of the guys recounted the story to me in virtual awe, apparently she walked back into the room, glanced at the tree, walked over and, without a word, put the offending baubles back into their original place!
So, in a few days I'll head off by myself to the local farm where I'll spend absolutely ages choosing my tree, naturally I'll look at dozens and end up buying the first one I saw because that's one of my traditions. After 10 minutes of helping to decorate it the boys will get bored and wander off, half the lights won't work and it'll take three attempts before they look right, the little son will reappear and get stroppy when I refuse to replace the angel on top of the tree with a wrestling figure....and finally, it'll be done.
One tradition that I've been happy to leave well behind though is the way my dad would 'find' our annual Christmas tree. My mum always insisted on a real tree but Dad would leave it so late that all that would be left would be the straggly ones, the lopsided ones and the ones with massive gaps between the branches. So, ever resourceful, he'd head off to the heathland that ran for miles behind our village.
As a youngster I never questioned why we always went to get our Christmas tree in the dark, why he took a saw with him and why I had to hold the torch and stand lookout. It was just one of our family traditions and it was fun. Naturally Mum knew exactly where the tree had come from and every Christmas Eve she'd go around muttering about why couldn't he just be like everyone else and get a nice one from the garden centre? It was a sad day for Dad when the authorities cottoned on to the fact that each December they ended the month with fewer trees than they started with, put up locked gates and signs warning anyone caught tree rustling would be prosecuted.
My mother's desire for the ideal tree seems to have passed down to me and I can spend ages choosing my 8ft non drop beauty. I had a brief flirtation with a fake one when the boys were little but there's nothing in my book like the smell and look of a real one.
Much as I love the whole tree shebang I certainly don't take it as seriously as the friend of one of my mates. She's a real perfectionist, so much so that she had her tree delivered, decorated it, stood back to admire it, took all the decorations off again, picked up the phone and called the tree company to tell them to take it away and bring her another one as it just wasn't right. Wowzer, now I like my tree to look pretty but that's hardcore.
Just how tree focused she is came to light when she threw a Christmas party and two male friends swapped some of the baubles around while she was out of the room. One of the guys recounted the story to me in virtual awe, apparently she walked back into the room, glanced at the tree, walked over and, without a word, put the offending baubles back into their original place!
So, in a few days I'll head off by myself to the local farm where I'll spend absolutely ages choosing my tree, naturally I'll look at dozens and end up buying the first one I saw because that's one of my traditions. After 10 minutes of helping to decorate it the boys will get bored and wander off, half the lights won't work and it'll take three attempts before they look right, the little son will reappear and get stroppy when I refuse to replace the angel on top of the tree with a wrestling figure....and finally, it'll be done.
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| Last year's tree. |
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