Happy New Year

They say (whoever they are) you should start the new year as you mean to carry on.

Not long after midnight I retired to bed with Reacher and a glass of bubbly. (Thank you, loved one, who sent me the new Lee Child for Christmas. Thanks, also to the one who sent me the new Michael Connelly. Hoovered up most of Bosch on Boxing Day.) Not a bad start to 2020.

Reading until 3:30am was not part of the plan, but you know Reacher. (If you don’t, you should.) Thus I did not get up at nine o’clock (or even ten), so first resolution broken on day one. Must try harder.

So far, so good on resolution number two: writing every day. In the absence of a play or novel or short story or magazine article to prove to myself that I am still a writer, I really do need to be writing something – anything, no matter how banal or introverted. I have been told (more than once actually) that I have such a great turn of phrase it doesn’t matter what the subject (assuming there is one) is. In the immortal words of Jean Luc Picard, “Make it so.”

Speaking of whom, here’s a little present for anyone who hasn’t already seen it.

I have friends coming over for dinner tonight. Not as many as I’d hoped, but that’s fine. It will be lovely and help get me over the hump of missing the company of my Christmas visitor.

Socialising is important. I remember this from my first depression diagnosis. I can’t have people round for dinner every night, but at least I’m starting the new year right.

I can hear the black dog yapping. Too many games of stupid fucking spider solitaire recently for me not to feel him looming. For today at least he can just fuck off. We’ll be facing off regularly until the spring when I can get back to sitting on the deck with the hummingbirds or the summer when I can get back onto the garden swing with a book.

Today the sun is shining, Drumbeg is calling and I have friends coming over for dinner.

And, because I got up, thanks to Reacher, at 11:30, not 9am, I need to shake a leg.

Happy New Year.