Patches of snow and ice surround the cottage.
I hold onto branches and leaves to get me to the garage. Driving to the dry cleaners three times a week is now part of my life. In the winter its dreary and uncomfortable. The lights on my car are the opposite of glaring full beam. Even on dazzle I can’t see a thing. I concentrate on the side of the road to avoid hazards.
2026 is facing up to being the most frustrating start of any year. The shower is leaking, trying to get the insurance company to pay is like trying to push a yolk back into a cracked egg.
Arn’t we living through a confusing time when a lie is claimed to be a truth and the truth is hiding behind a sewage pipe to frightened to come out.
Christmas came and went.
The tree sparkled in the window and the turkey was the size of a small child. It lasted for turkey stirfry, turkey curry and turkey salad. The last bits went out to the foxes.
The fire has been laid everyday, the old git splits the larger logs and we sit in front of the climbing flames from about three in the afternoon, mottling our knees and getting chilblains as ‘POINTLESS’ plays out pointlessly.
The New Year was toasted in with a good bottle of Champagne whilst Jools Hollands’ guests dribbled their forced bon homie into the sitting room.
Time it was when Gordon and Jill ran the pub next door. There was a blazing fire, haggis and neeps and a real life piper with real life bagpipes breathing in the new year. Locals, plus dogs – children were not allowed – linked arms and sung Auld Lang Syne full throttle.
The new landlady has an aquarium and Sky TV. Ah! How times have changed.
We went to the pub on Christmas Day. Not a tradition in our house. But an hour with a pint of Guinness was a welcome change.
The turkey was put in the oven on a slow light while we sat down to bagels, cream cheese, smoked salmon and scrambled eggs.
I used to take the Barnett Bywater breakfast with a hot milky coffee. Now it’s a small cup of weak Redbush tea with not a hint of sugar.
Replacing old habits with the new is not a bad thing. Time it was we would noisily suck on the heads of prawns in garlic and butter. Now gout has taken the toes of the young uns, they are in their 60’s and look to us for the future.
Worra way to be older, wiser and plucking at straws.
We opened the presents and attempted a game of ‘Articulate’ a verbal game. The old mans dementia was not conducive to improvised descriptions of objects or people, geography or anything historical. oh how times have changed. The youngest member of the group didn’t know half the questions and my patience was used up by the trying to remember the rules.
That game was abandoned and nobody wanted to play tiddlywinks.
When I was in my twenties my father and assorted guests, knelt down on the carpet to tiddle the winks. My father, whose digestive system was as damaged as his psyche, farted the whole way through. One tiddle, one wink and one explosion from his Ashkenazy anus. Oh the fun we had.
This year we entered 2026 with the `BIRDCAGE’ the delectable film with Nathan Lane and Robin Williams.
I miss that man.
The days betwixt Christmas and New Year are as unedifying as stale mince pies.
Now I’m huddled in the kitchen wearing sweaters, a thick pair of socks and a fruitless two hours of phonecalls trying to get a lift to the clinic thee times a week. Driving myself is proving difficult at the moment. The Flexi bus won’t work, the Derby and Jones club doesn’t cover my area and the taxi firm wanted more money than the GDP of Malawi. Hospital transport requires a two hour window; I’d be standing in the road from 5.00a.m. to be collected if I’m lucky. So no hospital driver for me.
You don’t know what you’ve got till its gone – the mantra of the moment. Cosying up with your positivity is helpful. I just want everything to go back to what it was and be wonderful again; stuff and nonsense. The past has been and gone.
Nostalgia works for about ten seconds then its a waste of time, literally a waste of time,
I do not attribute my dismay to my age. I am old but its the world around me that is letting me down. Inside I’m no different from ten years ago but the bus service, the NHS and our leaders are failing us. That fat orange fuck can kill 53 Cubans to take over another country and the world tuts in horror. I sit and tut along with the rest of his critics, I observe what’s happening around me and feel powerless.
It’s the beginning of a new year. The everything will and must change, syndrome.
I’m too exhausted by the festive season to be bothered. I’m old and cold and disgusted by the men in charge.
By January 6th I’ll be back on the horse. I’ll be delighted by the darkness coming in at 5.15 not 4.15.
I’ll start a new year in dialysis in the knowledge that if I don’t suck it up I’ll die.
My floppy old body is the only thing I have left, as well as my imagination and my memories, as well as my unfailing life force which isn’t giving up yet.
The bulbs are sprouting, a hyacinth is on the kitchen table. a bold white flower with a distinctive scent.
Tomorrow two loads of logs are being delivered which means more stories round the fire, roaring flames and finding pictures in the burnt oak.
As long as Greenland holds onto its identity, as long as the young and fit laugh in the face of the rotten regimes, as long as the youth spit at the corrupt, as long as the disenfranchised believe in their future well so do I.
HAPPY NEW YEAR.