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.

book.
subscribe.
instagram.