Posts Tagged ‘shopping’

A brand new year!

Sunday, January 9th, 2011

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!! I couldn’t even begin to tell you what day it is as they all segue neatly into one another at the moment, but I do know that we are in a new year. Which is 2011! I love the new year; so shiny and full of promise and untainted by anything. And also the fact that it means my birthday is very, very close! I shall be 29 on 21st January. This is excellent for two reasons – one because I love my birthday and getting pink, glittery things, handmade cards from my children, drinking champagne and seeing lots of friends and family, but also because it means that I don’t have to spend the whole of January off alcohol like the rest of the population are trying to do. I just have to attempt to get to the 21st of January and then I can legitimately start drinking again. I have considerate parents you see, who knew that it might be a bit of an unpleasant struggle for me each year so they decided that they kindest thing that they could do would be to ensure that my birth was in January.

So, yes, a whole brand new year spreads in front of me – so exciting! What shall I do in it, I wonder? What will happen? The first thing I shall do is tell you all about my Christmas, which was as lovely as I had predicted. We spent six nights at my mother’s house and survived very well.  Obviously we drank an oceanic amount to help us get through – I dare not add up the number of units – but it was so nice to see my sister and brothers and just spend so much time doing…..nothing. We sat around, talked, watched television, ate and drank. And I shopped; I had to take advantage of Marlow and Windsor while I could. I spent quite a long time in the Jack Wills shop in Eton as well, in the company of my brother Charles, who proved surprisingly patient. But then he needed to be because it was him who had rung the house phone at 2am the night before and woken up 8 adults and 3 children to ask for a lift home from Reading for him and his friends because the trains had been replaced by night buses and they couldn’t work them out. Charles had no sensible explanation as to why he thought this was a good idea when he was questioned the next morning by an irate household.  It was, frankly, a time of excess but this should not surprise you because we were staying in the house of excess. I came downstairs one morning to find my mother wearing a rather nice shirt.

“That’s a nice shirt,” I said to her. And I doubt any of you could correctly predict her reply, which was:

“Thank you. I have fifteen of them.” I don’t know who was more shocked, me or my long-suffering step-father. In fairness to her there did follow a long and vague justification about colours and wearing them frequently but the damage was done.

New Year was equally as lovely; we spent it at my father’s house and had an uproariously fun evening, involving – again – lots of wine and leaping over obstacles in the later part of the night I seem to recall. I cut a dignified figure in my skirt as you can imagine. And also dancing at midnight and singing Auld Lang Syne, only mildly marred by the fact that no-one knew the words.

BUT, the consequence of all this loveliness was that I didn’t get one single word written, which is bad of me. Even when I returned home I didn’t manage to write anything because a) I was recovering and b) my girls are not back at school yet and it’s difficult to be productive with both of them saying “Mummy!” 57 times a day. Once they are back I shall be disciplined and focussed and get this manuscript completed. I have thought about it a lot and I do have a clear idea of where I want to take it, it’s now just a question of getting it written down. And it will serve me well to do so because there’s a lovely agent who I particularly like waiting to read it when I’ve finished it.

I also have a book recommendation for you all, it’s a book called One Moment, One Morning by Sarah Rayner. I read it over New Year and I literally could not put it down. It’s incredibly sad and therefore not the sort of thing that I would normally choose to read, but woven into the sadness is such positivity that it rebalances the whole thing and makes a devastating story a very uplifting read. I honestly can’t recommend it highly enough. I happened to already know Sarah’s agent so I emailed her to tell her how fantastic I thought it was and she very kindly forwarded the email to Sarah who then wrote me a lovely email thanking me for my compliments and she sounds like such a nice person. One Moment, One Morning is her third book so I shall definitely be looking out for her previous ones.

So – belatedly – Happy New Year to everyone! I hope you all have a happy, peaceful and fortuitous year. I intend to, and I think I shall start by duplicating everything in my wardrobe to fifteen.