Taking the willpower out of New Year's resolutions
Appropriately enough, the year turns on the darkest day, the 21st of December. So the hope and resolution of January 1st have been ten days in the cooking. This year the darkest day was on a Wednesday, my usual day to review the progress, or otherwise, of my writing, and to write a ‘could do’ list for the week ahead. So that day I sat quietly with A and the children in the Red Room, warmed by the smokeless fuel fire and the added warmth of belonging that comes from us being together, to review the whole year and make plans for the next. And my diary turned out to be a list of the things that I meant to do but forgot. And the other things that I didn't plan but found myself doing over and over and over. Life is indeed what happens when you’re planning other things. … Happy I woke from a dream that I was talking to a guy I used to know in Florence. It being a dream he was also the blond man with a smile who invited me to his twenty-first birthday party in Hertfordshire after only k...