Every year around this time I find myself perching precariously on the horns of a dilemma. Shall I keep a diary in the New Year? It may not sound like much of a dilemma but there is more to it than meets the eye.
On the one hand I can keep a diary. This would mean that I have to buy a diary and a new pen and then commit to finding time on a daily basis to writing it. Not that onerous one might think. However, because it is my diary it has to be the same size and style as its predecessors or it won't match. Once that hurdle is overcome I have to find a quiet time when I will not be interrupted and yet am not too exhausted to pen a few paragraphs about the day's events. This can be tricky. Over the years, bedtime has proved an unsatisfactory time slot because, to be honest by that time I really can't be bothered. Recently, I have taken to using the time when my smaller children are in the bath. This works well because I get ten minutes undisturbed but it does presuppose that nothing exciting is going to happen in the remaining six hours of my day. Now it is fair to say that nine times out of ten by the time I get to 6 o'clock my day is over but you never know. I might have an exciting, impromptu evening event and no space left to record it. Given that the likelihood of this is slim in the extreme, I have taken the view that it is better to run that risk than not use the bath time slot for diary writing.
This takes me to the next point. If, as often happens, I don't get to my diary on a daily basis then the days build up and I have to eventually sit down and do a week's worth in one job lot. I have decided that this is pointless because whilst I can usually remember what I actually did from one week to the next, how I feel changes as events unfold. So, if I am writing on a Thursday about something that happened the previous Monday my account of the day will be coloured by subsequent thoughts or conversations and it is hard to try and record the day with only the influences that I had at that point.
Another difficulty that I have to overcome is what I actually write down. As I get older I become more cautious about exactly how honest I can be. Before I had my children I wrote what I wanted. If people annoyed my I let them have it with both barrels. If I had a tricky problem to fathom I discussed the pros and cons as if I were having a conversation with a trusted friend. However, as soon as the first child was born my perspective changed. I started to think that when I died my child would find and read my diary and I wanted to protect her and myself from my darkest thoughts. At that point, albeit subconsciously, I started to sanitize my diary. When, a few years later I became aware of what I was doing and why, I tried to regain my former candid style but found that I have become too self conscious to bear my soul on paper and so the diaries have never regained their honesty.
So why bother? If what you write only covers a portion of your day, is a sketchy description of what you have done and doesn't accurately reflect your thought processes why waste time worrying about it? And here is the essence of my dilemma.
I started writing my diary in 1985 and with the exception of two years have written one every year since. I have them all in a shoe box, all more or less the same size and shape recording ( or not recording) my life for the last 23 years. If I have a trip down memory lane with someone and we have forgotten a particular detail I can look it up and give an accurate account of who, when and often why. Writing a diary has been a part of my persona for more or less as long as I can remember and a part of me cannot bear to look at that shoe box in 20 years time and think "What a shame I stopped recording my life back in 2009 " or whenever.
And so I have answered my own dilemma. I can never stop writing my diary. Even though its contents are fundamentally flawed and it adds to my daily quota of guilt when I haven't done it, it is a part of me and so on I must go. The diary for 2009 is pink.
Wednesday, 31 December 2008
Sunday, 28 December 2008
BYE BYE ROBINS
If you haven't logged in over Christmas then you missed the festive robins !! Serves you right for not following me avidly enough. Happy New Year.
CHRISTMAS LESSONS
Christmas is all done for another year. I have only just managed to change my blog background to festive robins and now I am going to have to put it back again. What shall I have for January I wonder. Sorry - must stop asking rhetorical questions as they don't get me very much further forward and make me appear indecisive. Which I don't think I am - do you?
I suppose I am now expected to ruminate for a while about Christmas and how it's gone in a flash taking all that preparation, list making and sheer hard work with it. But I don't really want to do that. It is gone too quickly and if you are the one in charge of the turkey it does seem that you spend all the time in the kitchen and miss the good bits but that's just the way it is. It was ever thus.
I would rather look at each Christmas as it passes and learn from it. For example, I have now got Christmas dinner off to a fine art. I can cook turkey and all the trimmings for however many there happen to be around my table without any stress. That box is ticked. I know that and so I no longer worry about it.
Another lesson I learned is not to expect too much from the day. After all it is still just the six of us. No miraculous transformation takes place as Santa delivers his presents. We will still bicker, the children will be noisy and shout at each other and at some point I will shout louder. Really it's just like any other day with presents and guests and a more complicated meal. It took me a good few years to work this out but now that I have it's fine if we all argue and I try not to let it worry me.
I never get drunk. I always start with that intention but somehow after a glass of bubbly with the mid morning mince pies and a glass of wine as I make the gravy I seem to lose my way and before you know it it's half past six and I can't be bothered. It's one of those things where the idea of it is so much more appealing than the reality. Have you ever tried to baste a 13 pound turkey whilst plastered? Downright dangerous!
And so it is finished for another year. The build up is always better than the day just as the smell of fresh coffee is always nicer than it tastes. That is another lesson that I have been taught over the years. Now I can look forward. I have always loved the promise of a new start. The new year will be my first complete year with all my children at school. I will grow more of my own vegetables having had a successful first try last year. I will make new year resolutions that I have at least a chance of sticking to and I shall wait for the spring and the light nights and the warmth and everything that helps me get through the interminably grey winter in one piece. Of this expect more in later posts. For now I will whip down the decorations on New Year's Day and start 2009 with a spring in my step.
I suppose I am now expected to ruminate for a while about Christmas and how it's gone in a flash taking all that preparation, list making and sheer hard work with it. But I don't really want to do that. It is gone too quickly and if you are the one in charge of the turkey it does seem that you spend all the time in the kitchen and miss the good bits but that's just the way it is. It was ever thus.
I would rather look at each Christmas as it passes and learn from it. For example, I have now got Christmas dinner off to a fine art. I can cook turkey and all the trimmings for however many there happen to be around my table without any stress. That box is ticked. I know that and so I no longer worry about it.
Another lesson I learned is not to expect too much from the day. After all it is still just the six of us. No miraculous transformation takes place as Santa delivers his presents. We will still bicker, the children will be noisy and shout at each other and at some point I will shout louder. Really it's just like any other day with presents and guests and a more complicated meal. It took me a good few years to work this out but now that I have it's fine if we all argue and I try not to let it worry me.
I never get drunk. I always start with that intention but somehow after a glass of bubbly with the mid morning mince pies and a glass of wine as I make the gravy I seem to lose my way and before you know it it's half past six and I can't be bothered. It's one of those things where the idea of it is so much more appealing than the reality. Have you ever tried to baste a 13 pound turkey whilst plastered? Downright dangerous!
And so it is finished for another year. The build up is always better than the day just as the smell of fresh coffee is always nicer than it tastes. That is another lesson that I have been taught over the years. Now I can look forward. I have always loved the promise of a new start. The new year will be my first complete year with all my children at school. I will grow more of my own vegetables having had a successful first try last year. I will make new year resolutions that I have at least a chance of sticking to and I shall wait for the spring and the light nights and the warmth and everything that helps me get through the interminably grey winter in one piece. Of this expect more in later posts. For now I will whip down the decorations on New Year's Day and start 2009 with a spring in my step.
Saturday, 20 December 2008
IMAGINATION
I have been thinking about Charles Dickens. And why not? It is Christmas and all that Dickensian bonhomie and good cheer is depicted on cards adorning my walls. It's not that though. Nor is it a tendency towards Scroogeiness (that's not actually a word is it?) I like Christmas and all it brings. Mr Scrooge is not welcome at my house.
No. My thought pattern is much more convoluted than that and I suspect will take quite some time to develop. I was thinking about my blog. It is still very much in its infancy but I started it as a way to string words together which is something I have always enjoyed doing. As a child I was always at it and as a lawyer choosing the right words often made the difference between whether a dispute was settled timeously or marched indignantly all the way to the House of Lords. However, whilst my legal training taught me the importance of the careful selection of words it also had another, less desirable consequence - the almost total obliteration of my imagination.
Creativity is important in a legal mind and is one of the qualities that distinguishes a talented lawyer from a pen pusher. Creativity can help you think round a problem and devise a cunning plan to solve it. It can help you find a way through the stranglehold that legislation and red tape can have on your client and has got me out of a pickle of my own making more than once. Creativity is not imagination though and that part of my brain which provided imaginative ideas, though fully formed in earlier life, is now well and truly frozen.
And so I decided to blog. It is still very much in its infancy and I am making very tentative progress. I have kept its existence a secret, telling only a handful of close friends carefully selected because I believe that they will be honest with me about its contents. Obviously, its not that big a secret. It's on the world wide web for a start but it is quite a personal process and so I am guarding it and consequently myself closely. So far I have used it to write about thoughts or experiences that I have had, allowing me to practise putting words together but obviously requiring no imagination at all.
And this is where Mr Dickens comes in. I was thinking about my blog's long term future. I can't expect anyone to be interested in anecdotes and musings of my own making indefinitely, highly diverting though they may be for me. What if it became a vehicle for something more imaginative, something entirely fictional? As I understand it, Mr Dickens and other great writers of his ilk wrote some of their major works as a serial, publishing on a weekly basis in newspapers. The bloggers of their day perhaps and how scary to make it up as you go along. If your audience already know that your character likes pheasant and has a limp you cannot suddenly make him a pole vaulting vegetarian for the purpose of your plot and go back to cover your tracks in the edit. I exaggerate for effect but the point is well made I think. How would that test my imaginative skills? Anyway, I shall continue to muse on this and see where it takes me. I wouldn't expect much change to content any time soon however.
,
No. My thought pattern is much more convoluted than that and I suspect will take quite some time to develop. I was thinking about my blog. It is still very much in its infancy but I started it as a way to string words together which is something I have always enjoyed doing. As a child I was always at it and as a lawyer choosing the right words often made the difference between whether a dispute was settled timeously or marched indignantly all the way to the House of Lords. However, whilst my legal training taught me the importance of the careful selection of words it also had another, less desirable consequence - the almost total obliteration of my imagination.
Creativity is important in a legal mind and is one of the qualities that distinguishes a talented lawyer from a pen pusher. Creativity can help you think round a problem and devise a cunning plan to solve it. It can help you find a way through the stranglehold that legislation and red tape can have on your client and has got me out of a pickle of my own making more than once. Creativity is not imagination though and that part of my brain which provided imaginative ideas, though fully formed in earlier life, is now well and truly frozen.
And so I decided to blog. It is still very much in its infancy and I am making very tentative progress. I have kept its existence a secret, telling only a handful of close friends carefully selected because I believe that they will be honest with me about its contents. Obviously, its not that big a secret. It's on the world wide web for a start but it is quite a personal process and so I am guarding it and consequently myself closely. So far I have used it to write about thoughts or experiences that I have had, allowing me to practise putting words together but obviously requiring no imagination at all.
And this is where Mr Dickens comes in. I was thinking about my blog's long term future. I can't expect anyone to be interested in anecdotes and musings of my own making indefinitely, highly diverting though they may be for me. What if it became a vehicle for something more imaginative, something entirely fictional? As I understand it, Mr Dickens and other great writers of his ilk wrote some of their major works as a serial, publishing on a weekly basis in newspapers. The bloggers of their day perhaps and how scary to make it up as you go along. If your audience already know that your character likes pheasant and has a limp you cannot suddenly make him a pole vaulting vegetarian for the purpose of your plot and go back to cover your tracks in the edit. I exaggerate for effect but the point is well made I think. How would that test my imaginative skills? Anyway, I shall continue to muse on this and see where it takes me. I wouldn't expect much change to content any time soon however.
,
Thursday, 18 December 2008
TWINKLE AND SHINE
One week to go and counting . You can imagine that in a house with four children the excitement as Christmas approaches is reaching fever pitch. We are a noisy household in any event with everyone, me included, shouting to be heard over the general cacophony. At meal times we try to talk in turns but this rarely works as the younger children need to blurt their thoughts out as soon as they are formed and often have forgotten what it was that they wanted to say by the time their turn comes around. The older two have learned to talk really quickly so that they can tell their tale before they get interrupted but the frustration of never finishing a sentence gets to us all and before we know it the volume has increased again. Our poor neighbours.
Anyway, the general feeling of excitement and anticipation mounts. In contrast to my children, I build up to Christmas in a much quieter way. Obviously there is the masses of stuff that needs doing first but once the presents are bought, cards posted and food planned I can start to feel Christmassy. The catalyst is often the decorating of the house. A couple of weeks before the big day we make for our local farm armed with wellies, a saw and various shot cords to cut down our tree. It takes a while. Usually, I find a tree of the correct dimensions, the children moan that it is too small and start choosing ones that would not look out of place in a shopping centre and then gradually the reality of the situation strikes them and we end up chopping down the one that I picked in the first place. Parenting is all about patience. The tree is strapped to the roof and off we go.
Decorating it falls to the children and they adorn it with a few delicate and carefully chosen baubles which pre-date them and then lots of stuff they have made at school over the years or acquired from school fairs. I used to be a bit precious about having a stylish tree but maturity and experience have taught me that this is a pointless goal and so our tree is an eclectic mix of glitter and tat just like millions of others. I draw the line at tinsel though. A girl must have some standards.
The decorations round the rest of the house are up to me and are predominantly made up of lights. I adore fairy lights and have plenty up all year round but at Christmas the whole house twinkles. Barely a room escapes and it looks beautiful and festive and warm and welcoming and I love it. It takes ages to go to bed though. All those switches.
Anyway, the general feeling of excitement and anticipation mounts. In contrast to my children, I build up to Christmas in a much quieter way. Obviously there is the masses of stuff that needs doing first but once the presents are bought, cards posted and food planned I can start to feel Christmassy. The catalyst is often the decorating of the house. A couple of weeks before the big day we make for our local farm armed with wellies, a saw and various shot cords to cut down our tree. It takes a while. Usually, I find a tree of the correct dimensions, the children moan that it is too small and start choosing ones that would not look out of place in a shopping centre and then gradually the reality of the situation strikes them and we end up chopping down the one that I picked in the first place. Parenting is all about patience. The tree is strapped to the roof and off we go.
Decorating it falls to the children and they adorn it with a few delicate and carefully chosen baubles which pre-date them and then lots of stuff they have made at school over the years or acquired from school fairs. I used to be a bit precious about having a stylish tree but maturity and experience have taught me that this is a pointless goal and so our tree is an eclectic mix of glitter and tat just like millions of others. I draw the line at tinsel though. A girl must have some standards.
The decorations round the rest of the house are up to me and are predominantly made up of lights. I adore fairy lights and have plenty up all year round but at Christmas the whole house twinkles. Barely a room escapes and it looks beautiful and festive and warm and welcoming and I love it. It takes ages to go to bed though. All those switches.
Monday, 15 December 2008
OLD FRIENDS
I have recently been contacted by someone who was a close friend when I was in my teens and early twenties. In the intervening years we drifted apart and now are having fun catching up on all that we have missed in between.
Whilst I have made friends at other stages in my life, some of them extremely good and loyal ones, there is something very special about the friends you make in childhood.
When you are young every day is an adventure and your best friend is the person that goes through that step by step with you. Because so much is new, you are constantly experiencing things for the first time as is your friend. This brings a bond that is difficult to replicate in later life. In your teens everything is about you and you have a seemingly limitless capacity to analyse and discuss every event without delay or interruption. This sharing of experiences leads to an understanding of a person's inner character which I have never again found other than with my soul mate. Friends made in later life often do not have the depth of knowledge simply because when you are no longer a child there simply isn't the time to be so self indulgent. Friends now understand other parts of me and my life - aspects such as work or the children or hopes and aspirations and often each friend is limited to one piece whilst having very little knowledge about another part of my make up. Perhaps this is a defence mechanism that we develop as we become more adept at managing relationships and seek to protect ourselves from over exposure and possibly danger of rejection. Or perhaps that's just me.
In the meantime I am excited that I am back in touch with someone who used to know me as well as I knew myself. Clearly much has happened in the gap but I am looking forward to rebuilding our friendship on the solid foundations on which it was originally based.
Whilst I have made friends at other stages in my life, some of them extremely good and loyal ones, there is something very special about the friends you make in childhood.
When you are young every day is an adventure and your best friend is the person that goes through that step by step with you. Because so much is new, you are constantly experiencing things for the first time as is your friend. This brings a bond that is difficult to replicate in later life. In your teens everything is about you and you have a seemingly limitless capacity to analyse and discuss every event without delay or interruption. This sharing of experiences leads to an understanding of a person's inner character which I have never again found other than with my soul mate. Friends made in later life often do not have the depth of knowledge simply because when you are no longer a child there simply isn't the time to be so self indulgent. Friends now understand other parts of me and my life - aspects such as work or the children or hopes and aspirations and often each friend is limited to one piece whilst having very little knowledge about another part of my make up. Perhaps this is a defence mechanism that we develop as we become more adept at managing relationships and seek to protect ourselves from over exposure and possibly danger of rejection. Or perhaps that's just me.
In the meantime I am excited that I am back in touch with someone who used to know me as well as I knew myself. Clearly much has happened in the gap but I am looking forward to rebuilding our friendship on the solid foundations on which it was originally based.
Sunday, 14 December 2008
DANCING QUEEN
I went to a party last night. There was food and then dancing. I love to dance especially if there is plenty of room to beetle about the dancefloor. It happens so rarely these days that I really relish the opportunity and if the music is favourable I can keep going all night.
It's also highly distracting to watch other people dance. Most people have one style which they adapt to suit the speed of the music that is playing. It's as if you get to a particular age and are then destined to dance in one style for ever. A few people have different dances for different genres - I think I may fall into this catagory although it does all get a bit repetitive when I get tired. Then there are the people who truely do not care either because they have had enough to drink to remove all inhibitions or they didn't have any inhibitions in the first place. People like that are a joy to watch but really rather rare. There were only a couple there last night but as I danced for most of the night I didn't really get chance to watch them.
I sing too. I really can't help it. Dancing makes me happy and so does singing. In light of this I wonder why it's something that I do so rarely. Note to self. Dance more.
It's also highly distracting to watch other people dance. Most people have one style which they adapt to suit the speed of the music that is playing. It's as if you get to a particular age and are then destined to dance in one style for ever. A few people have different dances for different genres - I think I may fall into this catagory although it does all get a bit repetitive when I get tired. Then there are the people who truely do not care either because they have had enough to drink to remove all inhibitions or they didn't have any inhibitions in the first place. People like that are a joy to watch but really rather rare. There were only a couple there last night but as I danced for most of the night I didn't really get chance to watch them.
I sing too. I really can't help it. Dancing makes me happy and so does singing. In light of this I wonder why it's something that I do so rarely. Note to self. Dance more.
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