A Perfect Christmas - a not too serious look at the hype around the holiday season.

Browsing various websites and the glossy magazines that come with the Sunday newspapers, I came across several bits of advice for having "the perfect Christmas" and even for having "the perfect covid Christmas".

I'm afraid that my initial and not very elegant reaction was : give me a break! Who needs advice on having a perfect Christmas? What is a perfect Christmas, anyway? Women - and it's usually women - work so hard to present that crispy, golden turkey and those mouth-watering veggies, crispy roast potatoes (yum, yum) and get the right wines to accompany them and everyone turns and smiles gratefully at them as the family is seated around the perfect Christmas dining table. Angelic children put up "santa stop here" signs and go into rhapsodies over their presents. Men buy perfume for their nearest and dearest because they've seen that advertisement on television where this glamorous figure rides bareback around town. Really?

And what is the perfect "covid Christmas?" I suppose if you look on the bright side, with all the restrictions in place, Aunt Nellie won't be able to come and criticize your decorations and stare blankly at those rather gorgeous gloves you got her.

All that cheery advice - it's enough to make you want to eat your Christmas stocking.

However, help is at hand. If you completely disregard all the cozy suggestions of what food, what presents, what wine, how to do it all, and simply relax - cook a beefburger with a generous portion of French fries and tinned beans, give everyone cash instead of toiling around the shops in your mask, and just have fun. Be glad to share this special time with your loved ones and do FaceTime or Skype with those who can't make it. But above all, despite the situation we are in, let's be happy and merry. Sing those old traditional Christmas songs together, play cards or any board game that unites everybody. And let us be thankful for what we have right now.

HAPPY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!

 How Did That Happen?

I checked my fridge today and discovered that I have an almost unused jar of Dijon mustard. When did I buy that? For what? I really can't remember. I had some hotdogs for lunch and applied a very thin coating of the Dijon mustard, because this stuff is hot or is spicy the right word? Anyway, it tasted good. I must have bought it for a very specific recipe as I'm not a mustard person, more a fan of mayonnaise which goes with everything, right?

Anyway, it reminded me of the need to de-clutter cupboards and the fridge and check the "best by" dates on everything. It's amazing what you turn up. In my spices and herbs section, I found a little jar of mixed herbs which was nearly 2 years out of date. Yike! But then, I thought dried herbs lasted forever.

De-cluttering is important to our personal lives, too, though. Like the Dijon mustard, there are things I think I like, or that I liked in the past, and now I'm not so sure. 

I'll be doing a big clean before I put up my Advent decorations at the end of the month. Now that's a tradition for me and one I am not going to change. 

Speaking of Christmas, I have a lot of fun writing my Christmas romance novels. Here is the latest one, available as Kindle ebook and paperback. Here's the link if you want to have a look: Christmas Romance at Windfall lodge

 

Who will write our story?

 I am currently reading SHADOWS ON MY HEART, the Civil War diary of Lucy Rebecca Buck of Virginia. It starts Christmas 1861 when the war was almost a year old. Lucy is 18, lives at Bel Air, an estate which has eight slaves (although she does not mention them in her diaries). There are 13 children in the family. Lucy educates the younger ones at home, her two eldest brothers go off to fight for the Southern states. Lucy is not a particularly gifted diarist but she does give us an idea of life at that time. 

Several things struck me as I started to read this book. In our current culture of hardly ever writing letters, how will anyone know how we lived 200 years from now? Yes, we have podcasts and blogs and Instagram and FaceBook, but do they give an intimate view of how we lived and felt in the year 2020? In another 200 years will we be able to reproduce podcasts, etc.?  Technology is changing - I don't say advancing because quite frankly a lot of the tweaks and updates are unnecessary in my opinion - so that we can have no idea how social media, books, phones, etc are going to operate. It bears thinking about.

I recently read somewhere that there is a current debate about prescribing reading lists for some literature courses and there is talk of not making it mandatory to read novels. Novels tell us as much about the current way we live as almost anything else and are far more entertaining than dry history records. One of the things I enjoy about Jane Austen's works, for example, is the glimpse it gives of how Jane and her contemporaries lived and thought. I also enjoy her use of expressions the meanings of which have changed over the years "nice" and "repulsive" being two of my favourites. No more Shakespeare? When I was at school we did As You Like It and for the final exam, Hamlet. In the interim we read Julius Caesar. I can't say I have ever felt that this was a waste of time. 

Letter writing is a dying if not a dead art. There is nothing more entertaining than getting a long letter from a friend or family member filling us in on what they have been doing. They were a life blood when I lived abroad.  At school we read some of the best essays (some of which I found boring, Ruskin, for example, and Edmund Burke except for his description of Marie Antoinette) but some of which are relevant to this day. Lord Chesterfield's advice to his son springs to mind, also Robert Louis Stevenson's cheerful style and Charles Lamb, especially on his two ages of man : those who borrow and those who lend. What a wealth of beautiful English phrases lies in these anthologies. 

I won't go in to poetry, although I loved it at school and still read some favourite poems over and over. Want to know which ones? Well, there is the mysterious The Listeners by Walter de la Mare with the "silence surged softly backwards when the plunging hooves were gone". Beautiful. And Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost. But I won't bore you - just have a look at the writings of both these poets some time.

Even the humble full stop has been attacked and the idea circulated that we don't need it when we write. Grammar has always been a sticky subject. Where do you put the comma? What's a semi-colon for, anyway? It's not that hard. You put a comma where you'd pause for breath or emphasis and you stick a full stop where you want to finish that sentence. Why worry about it? In my opinion, (note the comma) people are intelligent and know what they want to say, lack of practice makes them shy of writing it sometimes and this shouldn't happen.

We have already lost a great deal by our reliance on smartphones and laptops and all things electronic. I know that my writing and spelling has suffered simply because the computer can do it all so much quicker and easier. But let's keep reading books, book in paperback and hardback, books to keep on your bookshelf, by your bed, on the coffee table: but books to be read, to be picked up and glanced through or snuggled up with. Books, simply.

Saying goodbye to your characters

 I have completed my last edit of my Christmas novel CHRISTMAS ROMANCE AT WINDFALL LODGE which I have written under my "Romance Writer" name Peggy O'Mahony.  It is time to say goodbye to these characters that I have been involved with since I started some months ago. I always get attached to them, their hopes and dreams and romances.

There are novels which I read over and over again - all of Jane Austen's with the exception of Northanger Abbey, for instance, just for the sheer pleasure of meeting those characters again, even if I know the story and the dialogue by heart!

I have just finished Ali Knight's novel BEFORE I FIND YOU.  A whirlwind story - I need something lighter for my next read so have picked EXCITING TIMES by Naoise Dolan. I have to read something. However, gone are the days when I ploughed through an indifferent novel just because books were "special" and you didn't discard them lightly. With so many talented writers out there, I feel it is a waste of time to read just for the sake of it.

But I digress. What makes a character - in anyone's novel - likeable? Hard to say, isn't it? They have to resonate with you in some way, even if they are not "good". The people in my novels just show up in my head when I am working on the plot. In my last Christmas novel, one character was not planned at all - see if you can guess which one - she insisted in insinuating herself into the story!

CHRISTMAS ROMANCE AT WINDFALL LODGE will be available from Amazon in October. Here is a preview of the cover. I hope you'll like the story.

Five Things I Learned in Lockdown

Lockdown made us all pause for thought. Here are five things I learned:

1. Being over 65 means I am a vulnerable person, no matter how fit I think I am. I have to stop thinking I am invincible. I allowed myself to be helped.
2. I do not need to buy summer tops. I have more than enough. In fact, I have so many that I made a parcel out of the ones I hardly ever wear and donated them. 
3. I do not need to know the time. My watch gave up during lockdown. Only then did I realise how often I checked to see what the time was. I think I picked up this habit when I was working - have to get this finished before that meeting, musn't be late, make sure I'm on time to meet up for lunch/coffee with colleagues. Fact: I do not have to go anywhere.
4. Zoom is never going to be a satisfactory substitute for sitting and talking face to face. I will hug my family more when we can all do this safely.
5. There is nothing like having lunch out in a nice restaurant with a friend.

Know Your Tribe

I've heard the expression "your tribe" very often but have never really looked at it in relation to myself. There are so many modern and trendy expressions which disappear after they have been used or over-used.
Find your tribe we are told. What? Doesn't that just mean, know who your friends are? And who are your friends? Friends are people who are there for you in tough times, when you're in a bad place, when you've made a horse's rear end of yourself and can't laugh about it. They know you are more than the mistakes you made, the lousy relationship you're in or the super success of that promotion you got. They know you.
So if that's what finding your tribe means, it's not so mysterious or complicated. Everyone has loads of acquaintances, people they meet for dinner, for coffee, for a trip to the theatre. People they chat to when collecting the kids from school or sport, people who gossip with you at the water cooler. They are not your friends, although they could be if you got to know them better, if you wanted to get to know them better.
Have you been betrayed by people you thought were friends? I know I have, quite a few times. I discovered that someone who I thought was a close friend was going around bad-mouthing me to a neighbour - that neighbour was always so helpful that I was shocked to find out about it - so this was a double-whammy: a supposed friend and a nice neighbour who in fact couldn't say a nice word about me when they got together. I discovered it by accident because my nice neighbour couldn't resist starting to criticize my supposed good friend and when I objected she said "you should hear what she says about you" and she proceeded to tell me, making me realize that she had happily joined in!  I suppose, looking back with the clarity of hindsight, that both these women were unhappy about something in their own lives and they needed to point the finger at someone to take away their own hurt.
So, find your tribe. Be careful who you put your trust in, though. What did that song by the Eurhythmics "Sweet Dreams" say:  "some people want to use you"?
I firmly believe that most people are genuine, kind people. And I've knocked around in this old world long enough to come to that realization. Do I have a lot of close friends? No, I don't. I think that if you go through life and you end up with two people who you can speak every thought as it arises, who will tell you what they think but who won't judge you, you have hit the jackpot in the lottery of life.

Favourite Childhood Reads

My brother and I were reminiscing about our childhood books and films the other day. We loved the Bobbsey Twins and we even built a dam on a little stream near the house after reading one of their adventures. And there was Pocomoto, of course, and the boys from the T-Bar-T (I think that was the name) who I envied because they had their own horses to ride. I remember crying over Lassie Come Home and The Call of the Wild.

When I started secondary school, I read some of the Chalet School books, Little Women, Anne of Green Gables and other lesser known novels such as Jill's Gymkhana and Fiander's Horses. Fiander's Horses gave me a lot of insight into the racing world and working in a racing stables. I love horses (I love all animals) and if I ever got rich (which I never will) I would love to own a racehorse.

I remember that the owner of the local news agent once told me that I "liked boys' books" because I bought Westerns, which I think she thought odd. I read The Oxbow Incident without perhaps really understanding all the nuances of this story. Zane Grey has always been a favourite, in particular Under the Tonto Rim, a book which reminded me and still reminds me of my childhood. Many years ago, when I lived in Germany, I wanted to read this novel again but it was only available in German which would not have the same effect, I felt. I wrote to the Zane Grey people in the U.S. (pre-internet!!) and asked if I could purchase a copy direct from them. They very kindly sent me a free copy - unfortunately I have lost the very gracious letter that accompanied it - and I still have it as one of my prized possessions.

I hear a lot about people discovering reading during covid-19 quarantine. That has to be one of the good things to emerge from this crisis. My mother used to say that even if you only read a "penny dreadful" as those cheap magazines were called, you still learned something. There is nothing quite like settling down with a book written by a favourite author.
What am I reading right now? One False Move, a Harlan Coben thriller published in 1998 which I picked up in a local store.

Stormy Weather

I love the Spring colours along the river bank. Today is cold with the wind getting stronger. There is a storm forecast for later on. The tide is coming in fast, that water looks very dark and menacing, not the blue, sparkling stuff of yesterday. And yet, I love stormy weather best. I love to watch the white topped waves racing each other to the beach. And the seagulls letting themselves drift on the wind. What a feeling of freedom!
I took this picture a few weeks ago when the river bank had not yet let go of winter. Now when I walk along here, I can see the swallows darting about and if I'm lucky catch a glimpse of the stonechats.
Spring is definitely here with all the delights of long summer days ahead of us.

Lockdown Week Seven (I think)

I'm cocooning and hoping to emerge as a butterfly but until the hairdressers are back, I resemble a scarecrow left out in a stormy wind.
My heart goes out to all those who have lost loved ones to this horrible virus. And, like everyone else, I am deeply grateful to the people on the front line who are risking their lives. It is a humbling experience.

What have I been doing? Do you really want to know?
Week One: I cleaned the windows and the bathroom from top to bottom. Then I worked on my Christmas novel. Did some zooming with my children and grandchildren, got a lot of calls from friends who I hadn't seen for a while. Did all my washing and ironing. Avidly watched the updates from our Chief Medical Officer and the question and answer session with journalists afterwards. Watched a few panel programmes on the corona virus. Caught up on European news via France24 and Euronews. Read a couple of books, watched a ton of quiz programmes and the film Girl with a Dragon Tattoo.

Week Two: Rinse and repeat, except the film I watched was  In the Heat of the Night .
I finished all three Len Deighton books in the Berlin Game, Mexico Set and London Match series from the 1980's. Deighton started a whole new kind of spy story, as opposed to the James Bond style character. I really enjoyed his early novels.

Week Three:  I didn't do any cleaning - there was nothing left to clean! No need to do any washing or ironing. I got sick of hearing journalists ask the same questions every night, so I just watched the CMO's update and looked at the news. I watched Casablanca. Read a Harlan Coben novel Caught.


Week Four: Only watched the news headlines to see if any really "new" news on the virus. Avoided all those panel discussions where some expert or other tells us that we are economically ruined (in more elegant words, of course) and names a sum like 500 billion or trillion Euros or whatever, which the normal mortal can't comprehend. It's getting depressing having zoom conferences when conversation is a bit limited to "how are you?", "coping all right?" etc etc. I re-wrote the beginning of my novel twice and took out two characters and put in another two. Watched Berlin Express a black and white film from the 1950's. I found it interesting because some of it was set in post-war Frankfurt (with permission of the Occupation Forces of the USA, Great Britain and Russia, according to the credits). Years ago I met a woman in Frankfurt who was a child when the war ended. Her mother brought her into the city centre every day because she had a job somewhere there and this woman told me she used to play among the ruins, there were so many places to play hide and seek she said.

Week Five: see Week Four, except the film was The Magnificent Seven - my favourite line being the Eli Wallach one: "if God didn't want them sheared, he wouldn't have made them sheep". Wallach is the magnificent one in this film. Finally got into my Christmas novel and don't plan on changing much.

Week Six: More or less the same. I didn't watch a film this week. Finally did a bit of housework but not as thorough a clean as before and decided not to clean the windows. I've started dreaming about what I am going to do when all this nightmare is over. Apart from the obvious plans of meeting up with family, I'd love to go to Paris and London again. But even getting on the bus and going to Cork city will be a big adventure! Imagine eating out with friends again.

Week Seven:  Cocooners are allowed out for short walks. Liberation! It has rained ever since, though, so I haven't been out much. I am currently reading Just Take my Heart by Mary Higgins Clark. It's a bit formulaic but she has always written a good thriller and it's not too taxing, so I am really enjoying it. Next week, depending on how the virus is doing, we might be allowed to meet with up to four people, social distancing of course.

Things will get better, of that I am convinced.
 

The ex-pat syndrome or how to feel at home

There is nothing like being confined to home to make me sort through those books I picked up at various charity shops. I decided that Len Deighton's spy trilogy, Berlin Game, Mexico Set and London Match would keep me amused for a bit and I wasn't wrong. They were written around 1985 or so when the Berlin Wall was still up and Bonn was the capital of West Germany. I visited Berlin around then and saw the wall for myself and as I stayed with a German who grew up there, I was able to get into the atmosphere of all things berlinerisch. In addition, I had always loved hearing stories from my in-laws, whose exploits during and after the Second World War were hair-raising to put it mildly.
I found Mexico Set the least entertaining of the three books. I particularly enjoyed London Match, though. There was one paragraph of the book, towards the end, which resonated with me. The characters are talking about being Berliners and Samson is waiting for them to say that he, too, is German, because he grew up there. "Berlin was my town", he thinks. London was where his friends lived and his children were born but he was a German. But the others don't see him as a Berliner like themselves. He is still a foreigner.
Isn't this a bit like what every ex-pat feels? I have lived most of my life in Germany, before that I spent six or more years in London and before that a couple of years in Dublin. I never felt I belonged anywhere, I still feel like that. I love London and when I am there on a visit, I feel I could slip back into that life. I still have a great deal of interest in Germany and although I never felt that I belonged, I can identify with the mentality. I now live in Ireland but I don't think I will ever be 100% Irish. I've been away too long. Somebody (during my time in Germany) called me "a citizen of the world." Maybe that's not such a bad thing.

Spring in the Time of Self-isolation

 Being of that most romantic age, namely senior, 70+, I am staying at home, literally not venturing out at all.
Before that, I went for two walks per day and limited my shopping to once a week or twice if I ran out of milk/bread (they seem to have very short shelf lives, or is it just me?).
On my walks along by the river I could see that Spring was starting to making itself felt despite all the gloom and doom and the soothsayers and see-it-all-positives.  I took this picture near the quays a couple of days ago.


Spring Flowers

The birds are very busy right now, twittering all over the place. (I was going to say tweeting, but that might give the impression that I think our feathered songsters are adepts on their mobiles). I managed a shot of this blackbird who is a regular in the garden. We get robins, too but they are so quick to take off that I haven't been able to get a good picture - not that this one of the blackbird is going to win me any prizes. I've seen blue tits and I've seen a bullfinch twice. They make me feel good every time I see them hopping about.

Wish I could go walking. Stay safe wherever you are.

Coping with things

Seems like this has been going on now for a hundred years!  I checked in my diary and saw that the last time I was in any kind of gathering was only two weeks ago. Incredible! It's not that I was out partying every night, I live alone so am used to silence. But I didn't realize how much I actually went out until I stopped. I am a member of a few clubs, there's a book club I go to once a month, I meet up with friends to go to the cinema or just for a chat. I'm involved in a community centre. And when the mood takes me, I like to hop on the bus and visit the big city for a walk around the shops. That's all gone for now and I miss the freedom.

Being a "senior", I am washing my hands, keeping my distance, not visiting or receiving visitors, shopping once a week and going for walks every day. I think I would add one more thing to that list, namely, stop reading the rumours on social media. For some people, bless their happy hearts, no news can bad enough so they invent worse scenarios - I sometimes think they should just binge watch catastrophe movies on television.

The weather is sunny here and I have the sea on my doorstep, something you pay a lot of money to experience.
I met a few acquaintances on my walk this morning and we were all so pleased to see each other and exchange experiences, keeping our distance of course.

If we learn one thing from this, it is that we are herd animals. We might all talk on our mobiles and keep in touch using social media but there is nothing like human contact, when all is said and done.
It is a reassuring thought in a world that is getting more and more robot driven.
Stay safe everyone!

Learning new words

We are all learning new words. Social-distancing, for example. Now, I think that will be the word of the year.
Personally, I can't keep up with all the new expressions out there. One of my favourite quotes (don't know who said it) is:  "a smile is the shortest distance between two people." A smile is better than words. If you have ever been in a country where you do not speak the language, you know what I'm talking about. You feel understood without having exchanged a word.
I am doing my bit towards social-distancing. Thank heavens we have social media to keep us in touch with our loved ones. I think I have received more phone calls and WhatsApp messages in the last two weeks than ever before. It is heart-warming to say the least. And it proves that if used positively, Twitter and FaceBook can help isolated people from feeling lonely and depressed.
Take care everyone.

Leap Year Day

I am writing this on Saturday, 29th February, which makes it Leap Year Day. Currently, the sun is shining in a blue sky although there has been a flurry of raindrops against my window.

I woke early this morning and decided to do my shopping straight away in order to beat Jorge the approaching storm, which is due to hit the West of Ireland in the next hours - two counties are on red alert. Not surprisingly, nearly everyone had the same idea. My shopping took longer as I stopped and chatted to any number of acquaintances. In Ireland, the big topic is always the weather: 'Cold, isn't it?'; 'Lovely to see the sun'; I wonder will we get the storm?'

I have stocked up on crispbread and cans of soup - just in case I come down with the coronavirus and have to self-isolate for 14 days. I can't believe I wrote self-isolate! What a whole new range of words can evolve around a storm! We now have a storm warning nearly every weekend. It used to be "strong winds" now its galeforce, gusting up to 150 kmph. Even worse are the rainfall warnings. The ground is saturated, there is no place for the water from swollen rivers to go so they burst their banks and swamp huge areas.
The newspaper headlines which I glimpsed in the supermarket carry assurances from the racing folk that the Cheltenham Festival will go ahead. I sincerely hope so as I enjoy watching this on television and always put on a few small bets. It is bad enough that the Italy/Ireland rugby match has been postponed but our human rights are in danger if the horse racing is off the cards.

I have a sore throat today, so I will stay at home and keep warm  - that North wind nearly took the skin off of my face on the way to the shops this morning. I will do a bit of writing and then I will make a pot of tea and watch Casablanca.
Here's looking at you, kid!

This Writing Life

We are almost two months into the new year and I have finally settled down to write my next novel. It will be a contemporary romance/family tale set during the Christmas period. Until I started writing it, I felt something was missing and yet I was reluctant to sit down and work out plot details. As usually happens when I write, I made several starts and changed several characters. Now that I have written the first 10,000 words, the characters themselves are driving the plot as they say in publishing circles. So I am pretty sure of the ending although not so sure how the characters are going to get there.
I started writing when I was around twelve years old. I still remember why I started. I grew up on a farm and we had been bringing in the hay. This involved putting a chain under a cock of hay and having the horse haul it into the haggard. I bet there are some readers who are scratching their heads and asking what's a cock of hay/what's a haggard? - that is a measure of how farming has evolved. Nowadays we have silage for the animals instead of dried grass = hay. Silage is made from fermented grass stored in a silo. Not half as romantic as cutting the hay, putting it into cocks when it is dry and then hauling it into the haggard, all the while with an anxious eye on the weather. That's progress for you.
Haggard according to my modern Collins dictionary is "looking tired and ill".  In Ireland, the Ireland I grew up in, a haggard was almost always an area adjacent to the farm yard or what once was a farm yard. Traditionally this was an enclosed area on a farm for stacking hay, grain or other fodder. It probably comes from some Gaelic word. Never mind, it is hardly ever used nowadays. Another bit of useless information to enrich your conversation at a social event. 
Anyway, as children we used to sit on the cock of hay as it was being dragged into the haggard by the horse. We got a lot of fun out of this, as we did out of so many simple things, and I remember that I wanted to put it down on paper, this feeling of summer and the sweet smell of the hay and the pungent smell of the horse's sweat. And that is why I started a story called "Lily in the Country", which of course I never finished. It did give me an appetite for writing, though, which has stayed with me.One of the nicest compliments I received was last year when a reader having read one of my crime novels set in the Kerry mountains, told me "I thought I was there". 
The first rule of writing is BIC = butt in chair. You keep writing until you get it right and maybe then a reader tells you something like this and it really makes it all worthwhile.

Writing Letters

I was tidying up my Christmas cards last week. They are getting fewer as time goes on and more people communicate with me via WhatsApp. Some friends still write me a Christmas letter and I really enjoy this. It is so rare to get a handwritten letter these days. To be honest, as my writing has deteriorated in direct relation to how often I use my laptop, my friends all get a typed letter from me. I would be ashamed to inflict my scrawl on them. I used to have nice handwriting though.

I am old enough to remember letters as the usual way of communicating, especially if you lived abroad as I did. Phone calls were expensive so only made in emergencies usually. I know that I wrote to my siblings once a month, filling at least four sheets of A4 with my handwritten news. It would take me over an hour to get everything down in a legible hand. I remember, too, what fun it was to receive letters from family and friends. I would usually wait until I had a quiet time in the day to read them. I'd make myself a cup of tea and take my time over each letter. Some of my correspondents were better at communicating than others, of course, although all letters were very welcome.

Looking back, I have to ask myself: what did we write about? Did we have more fun in those days, more things to communicate? The kids were small,of course, and a lot of news centered around them and their progress. We wrote to each other about places we'd visited, about people who had visited us and about our return visits to them. We added snippets of news about politics or the latest scandals. We always seemed to have something to say and we took the time to write it.

Clicking on an email is no substitute for the pleasure of receiving an envelope with your name and address on it and the certainty that the letter it contains will entertain you as no perusal of Facebook, WhatsApp or Instagram can - despite the photos which you can click through at leisure.

New Year Resolutions and All That. A not quite serious look at New Year Plans

Reading the Sunday newspapers last weekend, I was amazed and amused at all the advice and baring of souls the Lifestyle sections contained. Talk about over-sharing! It is bad enough that we are forever being given tips on how to manage Christmas as if it were some infectious disease instead of a happy holiday time. Mind you, with all the over-eating and alcohol consumption, it could be considered a health hazard. I always want to shout: take it easy, have soup and sandwiches, play board games with the family and maybe - weather permitting - take a leisurely walk before sitting down to tea and Christmas cake. Ban mobiles for the day and get everybody talking if they haven't already started while playing Monopoly or Scrabble or whatever your fancy is. That lost art, conversation, is better than anything on the television. Everyone will find it so much more fun once they get used to the idea of talking to each other.
But to return to my topic, we have stars and celebs giving us their take on what they did wrong and how they are going to fix it in 2020.
Before we make out that list of getting up at 5 a.m. to go running, doing an hour's yoga (Namaste!), nibbling on a lettuce leaf, let's just stop here and ask ourselves the all important question: are you happy with you (despite all your faults and not looking like the latest fashion icon, are you happy with the you of you, in other words)? I would say, you are just fine. Yeah, maybe you put on a pound or two over Christmas, or you were rude to Aunty Beth or told the people next door that you all had flu so you couldn't go to their you-knew-it-would-be-deadly-boring bash. That's what being human is all about. You don't have to share it with the whole world. You can tell yourself that you'll try and do better, be more tolerant, use less plastic, take the bus to work. That's all good, but it doesn't mean that you have made a mess of things. It just means that, like the rest of us, you are human.
I have also seen lists which give ten ways to improve your life.  Abraham Lincoln said something like "folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be". That is the glass half full, half empty idea. It isn't easy with all the social media cant that is out there. I mean, who came up with the expression "imposter syndrome"? That's just trying to scare people who are doing their best.
New Year resolutions? I haven't made any in years. I used to, mind you. I tried giving up cigarettes a lot of times and one year even made it to April when a colleague brought me duty-frees and I thought what a shame to waste them. (I did finally give up smoking but not at NewYear). Alcohol-free January? No thanks.
The golden maxim is everything in moderation: work, play, food, alcohol, shopping. Life is for living. There are no repeats.
Have a great 2020 everyone!