NoughtiCulture - new
Some days ago, I took a new notebook - a small, bendy-backed sketchbook - and wrote “2” “0” “2” “2” on its third page. Lists and notes to self sprawled quickly beneath, then swift lines to separate them. Beyond, the months of the year, a few things that might happen in them. It has been hard to plan, lately. Celebrations have shifted, babies turned up earlier than expected, holidays planned, then cancelled; we counter our attempts at certainty with jaunty reminders to take a lateral flow test. And yet, I am planning. Outside, as the moon waxed gibbous for the last time this year, I filled up pages with things to think about and things to look forward to. A jaunt, a new thing or two, a wedding. Today is the last day of 2021, and, fittingly for what this year has been, it doesn’t feel like it. I opened the curtains to drizzle, I put the pans away as the kettled boiled. Our plans are more admin-based than celebratory: quiet things to do after a week of seeing people, still not quite believing we can. My phone is filled with shared albums of happy faces in kitchens and living rooms. There was some talk of spaghetti alle vongole, probably a drink. I expect I shall go to bed at the usual time and be woken by fireworks at midnight. Yesterday, I stood at the edge of the sea and watched creamy waves roll in, dragging a rusk of pebbles with them. “Mad to think,” I said to M, “that people swim in this”. Tomorrow they will, starting the new year salty. We walked back under grey skies, small people in neon helmets rushing ahead. My glasses misted with spray. A couple of hours later, bath running, I spoke with a friend who had been quiet for a little while. We will both be walking up hills tomorrow, it transpires. We said we’d exchange photos of the views. “Here’s to good views, old horizons, new destinations,” I wrote to her. A toast for strange times. Maybe in 2022 I’ll drink a little less, do a little less, relish a little more. My resolutions are rarely more than this. January, I tend to think, is a difficult enough month. Treat it kindly - like a November, perhaps - and there is something softer lying there for us. I hope to be by the sea, at the edges of the country, with no expectations for good weather and the shutter-click of an old camera cutting through the wind. A sea-swept start to the year. If you liked this post from noughticulture , why not share it? |
Older messages
ribbon
Thursday, December 16, 2021
Yesterday, I self-soothed by buying ribbon. Went out to the post office and found myself in the haberdashers, picking colours and thicknesses behind a woman talking, at great length, about how she
seaweed
Saturday, July 17, 2021
We arrive to blistering blue and talk over open books as the tide pulls out. At first, only the small cars try the wet road beneath the sea. Then the minutes pass and with them come the vans and the
and sun
Wednesday, May 5, 2021
The showers arrived, and they were late. In April the soil was cold and hard. Cracks appeared underfoot, small and thirsty valleys. We took to train to Hertfordshire and walked on chalky white paths.
roses
Sunday, February 14, 2021
The mornings have been growing yolky. M insisted on deep yellow curtains in the bedroom, and so we get Chelsea mornings even in Brixton, on grey days. For months, when he gets up to make tea, I've
white
Sunday, January 24, 2021
Before the curtains open, before my eyes open, it is my ears that try to detect what the weather is doing. The hard slick of tyre on wet tarmac, the push of wind between window sashes. The presence of
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