2014: Thank you and F**k you

I hate New Year. Stupid, made-up, melancholy festival that it is. I have recently decided to ignore the bloody thing altogether but that gets tricky when you spend the evening browsing Facebook and everything’s all “End of 2014! Beginning of 2015!”

Oh fuck the fuck off.

Maybe it’s my inner Pagan but I think that the New Year should start in Spring. It used to, you know. That’s why Aries is the first horoscope sign. Late-ish March (coincidentally around my birthday) is the proper time to celebrate New Year as far as I am concerned and you can take your Gregorian Calendar and your de facto international standards for dates  and shove them up your arse.

Aries.
So little of this picture makes sense

If I have resolutions to make, I’m doing it in Spring. Or possibly Autumn. That  always feels like a good time of year to make changes – presumably because the school year starts then and that “New Term! New Start!” mentality gets seared into your brain at an impressionable age.

You know when the worst time to make resolutions is? A week after fucking Christmas when we still have the worst of winter to get through. That’s when.

Always Winter and never Christmas, you say, CS Lewis?
We have a word for that: January!

And I hate the idea of taking stock of the previous year. “What did you achieve in the last twelve months?” Fuck off. Admittedly, while I may have in previous years had every reason to be angry about this question, my anger this year may be somewhat misplaced. Because, by any possible measure, this has been a corkingly good year for me.

This is my favourite book. Don't tell the others, though. I don't want them to fight.

• I published my first (and second, third and fourth) spanky romance books.  

• I finally got onto the property ladder (which is no mean feat for a single parent living in the most insanely expensive area of the UK outside London).

• I got my bloody degree! And a 2:1 at that! I can still scarcely believe it. Seriously, no-one gets a first. It’s literally a myth. A 2:1 is everything I ever dreamed of degree-wise. I have booked  all my graduation gubbins for next March. Tickets for my daughter and my parents? Check. Hire stupid-looking gown and hood? Check. Book photographer to do both individual and family shots of me looking stupid in my gown and holding a rolled-up bit of paper pretending to be my degree? Checkity-check. I can't wait.

And there was another thing that was rather marvellous at the time but now that it’s over, is probably contributing significantly to my melancholic mood. I thought I was going to talk about it when I started this post. On reflection, I realise I won’t be.

I'll acknowledge it was a good year. But you know, I’m still not happy with where my life’s at, right now. There’s some significant stuff I want to achieve in 2015. Luckily, I made a wish when I was stirring my Christmas Pudding so the main life-changing thing will definitely happen.

Honestly, Christmas-pudding-stirring wishes are the most reliable wishes ever. They’re even better than Birthday Cake wishes. This is based on at least ten years of research where I think all of my wishes have come true. Christmas Pudding wishes are  totally cast iron. So much so that next year, I’m going to wish for a glow in the dark unicorn that shits gold doubloons instead of wishing for stuff that will inevitably happen in the next 12 months anyway as I have previously been doing.

The flame mostly burns on MAGIC

So yeah, 2014, you were probably a brilliant year for me but right now I feel too bloody grumpy to acknowledge it.

Raises virtual glass. “To 2014. Thank you and fuck you.”