I am a planner. I write lists and create schedules. I like to think about things several months before they happen. I plan to calm myself down and I plan to feel in control of uncontrollable things. When I make a plan, I do so with the solid intent of making it happen. When it doesn’t I am rankled, although I am learning to be less so.

I married someone whose idea of planning is to openly state an intention that rarely happens and it has been very good for me, although it has taken me years to learn that some plans just exist in thin air as ideas, and that is fine. Maybe someday they will happen. It has made me realise the gift of time opening up. Spontaneity is one of my favourite things - an everyday magic trick - and it is something that I have had to learn how to cultivate.

One of the rare, guaranteed moments of the year when we rarely have plans is between Christmas and New Year. We don’t voyage across the country to see our families; we’re normally home by the end of Boxing Day. Then sweet quiet unfolds. As December rumbles on we discover who else is “in town for Christmas” and sometimes we will see them, but always without much fuss. Plans fall in, plans fall out. The greatest time-marker is the frequent consumption of mince pies and satsumas, as Christmas ekes out into January and with it the leftovers.

We often host a last-minute dinner during this time, but this year our friends were poorly. I was resolute that we would take ourselves out, instead: off the sofa and out of the sweatpants and into the world. And so M found a rare reservation with hours to spare at Brunswick House, where we got married in the spring, and I put a bow in my hair and we spread thick green garlic butter on soda bread and all of the crystal hanging from the ceiling glinted and there, on the penultimate day of the year, we had a moment to reflect on all the plans we had made and all the ones that had fallen through and all the things that had happened instead.

Here’s what else happened while I was offline over Christmas:...