Happy New Year!
I can't quite believe it's 2013! I don't quite know why, but it seems like a funny year somehow, like a date from the future that years ago when I was a child seemed so far away. I don't know why it should seem odder to me than 2012 but there you go; the inner workings of my brain have always been a mystery.
I'm not a fan of January, so much. It's a funny month, the excitement of Christmas has gone and it's just cold and damp and still dark outside so early and everybody is recovering from the over-indulgances of the festive season: tummies are full and purses are empty. If December is the party then January is the hangover and I never much cared for hangovers. Speaking of Christmas, what a lovely time. I say lovely, I was struck down with the plague between Christmas and the New Year [not the actual plague - it's 2013 people, but the norovirus which I don't mind telling you felt like a plague at the time, woe is me] so it could have been better, but the before and after were lovely. Low-key, but lovely. Ian and I had a carpet picnic on Christmas Eve which involved pyjama's [and mine were festive yes, thank-you very much] and plates of food which we ate with our fingers sitting cross-legged on the rug, and Poirot's Christmas and Snowballs - made from Advocaat not from snow - and lots and lots of giggles. It was just the two of us and it was perfect. Best Christmas Eve Ever.
And now it's New Year and it's a time for reflection and planning and resolving and yes, I have made a couple of resolutions. Some that are for myself, secret resolutions that I shan't share in case I jinx them, some that are less resolutions and more hopes, wishes, dreams because God, isn't it nice to have something to hope for, to aim towards? It's a bit of a trope really the whole New Years Resolution thing; everybody makes them, hardly anybody keeps them and the whole idea is probably totally over-used but still, new year new start and all that and why not, what's wrong with trying to better yourself?
That's the point I think, for me at least. I want to better myself. I want to be more. I'm 30 this year and whilst I am not having the breakdown about it that I have witnessed in a few of my friends, I am aware that perhaps turning 30 is also turning a corner. It feels like the age when one has to really grow up, which is a horrific concept and I am still waiting for Peter Pan. I am aware that there are things I'd hoped I'd have done by now, and that I'm not quite in the place in my life I'd thought I might be, and whilst some things are past and lost and some things are out of my control, it feels like as good a time as ever to seize my destiny [not really seize my destiny though, because hello, really? I just wanted to use that line in an actual sentence.] I do want to 'be better' though.
I want to be fitter, healthier because yes I am a New Years Resolution cliche, whatcha gonna do?! I want to eat better because I don't eat well at all. Some days I just don't eat. That's bad. I want to be fitter, not to lose weight but to be toned and to have the better general health that comes with regular exercise.
I want to save money, because last year I didn't - last year, financially, was really tough for us, I don't want this year to be the same. I plan to set up a Christmas savings account, and I also plan to pay regularly into my ISA. I want to live more frugally, to make better choices, to cut back in some areas so as to go forwards in others.
I want to make more of my family and my friends. I lost my Grandpa in 2012, which sucked and I regret so much that I didn't make more of him. I miss him every single day and it kind of makes you realise that life is just so fragile. You just never know. I want to spend time with my parents, my brother, my Granny, my sister-in-law, my niece etc. I want to be a better friend. I can just about count on one hand the friends that I class as 'close' (which i love actually because I'd rather have a handful of really close friends than a whole load of 'friends' you know?)and I want to be a better friend to them, better than I have been because those people? They deserve it. I want to see them, speak to them, write to them. I want to make sure each and every person that counts, knows it. I want to make memories I can hold onto forever and take photographs that I'll always be able to look at. I want to spend 2013 with the people I love around me, and I want them to know why they're there: because they matter.
I want to pamper myself. I'd like the odd massage because, not gonna lie, I am tense. I do not know how to relax. I am snappy and stressy and I don't sleep when I am supposed to sleep and most of the time my entire upper body just hurts. My back is knotted up beyond belief, all of the time. A massage on a semi-regular basis would be nice. I'd like the odd day spent in my attic with a good book and a big bag of jelly beans, guilt-free. I'd like coffee dates and lunch dates with a glass of wine where I can make like I'm Carrie Bradshaw and duvet days where I can make like i'm a hermit crab just because. Days that are unashamedly about me because it's so easy to get up and go to work and do the same thing day in and day out and let months go past without ever focussing on who you are. It's ok to be selfish every now and then.
I want to properly reinstate Friday night date night because my boyfriend is the most awesome awesomer to ever awesome and Friday night date nights were the best thing. Also, double dates? I'm up for that. Yes. I'm looking at you, you know I am.
I want to have fun and I want to be happy and I want to be able to look back, this time next year with money in the bank and my best people by my side and say 'yep, 2013 was a pretty good year.'
A quick review...
Goodness me it’s grim up North
[by up North I mean here, where I am, which is significantly more north than
where some people are.] It’s freezing. Although warmer than last week. Last week i was sat at mey desk in several layers, one of
which was a Fat Face hoody and another of which was a snowboarding standard
bodywarmer. I was also wearing sheepskin lined boots and gloves, had the heating
on 5 and a fan heater pointed right at me and I was still unbelievably cold. Last Thursday night I babysat for Daisy, I
bet I was there for all of 4 hours and I
still had to de-ice my car before I could go home. Nothing about any of this is fine.
Speaking of Daisy
she gets cuter by the minute. Last week we played with the camera. I really
wanted a photo of the two of us; a nice smiling picture of me and my niece would
be lovely on my office wall. Daisy was having none of it. To her it was all a big game, let's see how many funny faces I can make Auntie Jo pull: ‘say cheese Daze,’
‘show Auntie Jo your prettiest smile Daisy,’ ‘like this Daisy *I smile* see, you do it’ ‘Daisy,
smile.’ I think out of about 12 pictures I got one where we're both smiling. Then yesterday we met up with some other friends with small children at a farm. Daisy had a donkey ride. Two donkey rides actually and it was the cutest thing because she's so small and she was sat there bouncing up and down on this donkey [his name was Patch] all 'giddy up, giddy up.' Adorable.
Anyway.
In April 2011 Helen
and I fell in love with Major Pettigrew. If you haven’t read the story of the
retired Major and his friendship with his Pakistani neighbour, Mrs Ali,
gorgeously detailed in Major Pettigrew’s
Last Stand, then I suggest you rectify that post haste.
This December I fell in love with
Harold Fry.
Helen hasn’t read about Harold’s unlikely pilgrimage just yet, but I know when she does she’ll fall in love with
him too. I challenge anybody who doesn’t have a heart of stone to not read this
book and come away just feeling better.
The Unlikely
Pilgrimage of Harold Fry tells the story of 65 year old
Harold, distanced from his wife and having not heard from his son in 20 years,
he’s recently retired and he’s at a bit of a loose end when one day he gets a
letter from an old colleague and friend, Queenie. She’s sick, dying of cancer
and she wanted Harold to know; the letter is her goodbye. Harold scribbles a
hasty [and what he feels somewhat lacking] response and heads out to post it,
reaches the post box and just keeps going. He needs to save Queenie, he needs
her to not give up, he needs something tangible to focus on and somehow the
belief that his walking from Devon, to Queenie in Berwick on Tweed will save
Queenie’s life becomes it. He walks and he walks and he walks, in his boat
shoes, to save the life of a woman he used to know and it’s the most wonderful,
touching, real story. It made me
laugh and it made me ache and it made me believe too. I rooted for Harold all
the way: I wanted it to work, I wanted him to make it, for Queenie, for
himself.
Reading this felt a little like
huddling under a favorite blanket on a winter day but as well as that, this
book is a lesson. It’s undeniably emotional and sentimental but not
tooth-rottingly so, and it’s a story about
human nature I guess, about love and loss, friendship, kindness and
self-value. This is a glorious book, and I am so so glad I took this walk with
Harold Fry. I feel better because of it.
[Apparently Jim Broadbent reads the audiobook. I bet he’s
the perfect Harold….]
we may not have it all together but together we have it all...
un·der·state·ment
[uhn-der-steyt-muh nt, uhn-der-steyt-]
noun
the act or an instance
of understating,
or representing in a weak or restrained way that is not borne
out by
the facts:
My boy loves Christmas. This is an understatement.
Things you should probably know about my boyfriend: he’s an
adorable brand of crazy.
Let me give you an example or two here. He loves Sherlock
Holmes. Like, loves. He’s more old
school though, where I am [for obvious reasons pertaining to the attractiveness
of RDJ] all about the Guy Ritchie films, he likes the books. And Jeremy Brett –
although he did devour Sherlock and is quite taken with the Cumberbatch.
He’s kind of a Sherlock Holmes fanboy, really.
Which brings me to the point. Have you been watching Elementary [and if not, you need to
rethink your life choices because Johnny Lee Miller is hot] – a modern day take
on Sherlock Holmes with Johnny as Sherlock and the fabulous Lucy Liu as Watson,
set in New York? It’s amazing. And Ian loves it. As in he actually made these
funny little noises in the back of his throat when we watched the first episode
and does a little sofa jig whenever we watch it and gets ridiculously excited
at all the little nods to ACD, like, that one time when Sherlock wore a t-shirt
with some kind of bee print on and he practically fell of the sofa in
excitement. He loves it. He also [I suspect and he would mostly deny] has a bit of a boy crush on Johnny
Lee Miller. In one episode Holmes was texting Watson but was trying to save
time by using acronyms. Like OMG but for every word. Ian adopted that habit for
like a week. I almost went insane. You would too if 'what would you like for tea, I'm home early so I'll cook.'
became 'WWYLFT? IHESIC.' And then another time Sherlock started doing some weird ass kind of squats. A
couple of days later Ian could barely walk, turns out he’s been doing these
squats at every available moment ‘and Jo, they actually work!’
My boyfriend is Sherlock Holmes, as portrayed by Johnny Lee
Miller. Or at least, he is in his head. And you can’t even care because he’s
just so damn adorable when he’s excited.
Which brings us to Christmas.
He loves Christmas, ‘like, more than my birthday’ and he gets all bouncy and grins this face splitting grin
that’s all teeth and wide eyes and he sings Santa
Baby really loud and drinks more Bailey’s than is perhaps good for his
health.
And insists on a real tree.
Even though we live in a terraced house and have no money.
Tueaday night we went tree shopping. I had my eye on a
reasonable sized little tree, all bright green and you know, cheap. Ian fell in love with some kind
of tree giant. The Hagrid of Christmas trees. All big and bushy and ‘Jo, look
how beautiful it is.’
‘It’s massive’ I told him, ‘it’s never going to fit in our
lounge.’
‘It will.’
‘It won’t.’
‘It will.’
‘It won’t.’
And then he did the grin, and a bit of a jump and ‘pleeeeease, I love Christmas so much
and I love this tree and I will never be happy again if we can’t have it.’
Jesus. Never happy
again, like I wanted that on my
conscience. So we bought the tree and hauled it home, with me wedged against the
window of the car and him still grinning as he patted it gently before starting
up the engine. ‘Hello Mr Christmas Tree.’
Answer me, please: how
has this become my life??
Guess what.
The tree didn’t fit. Or at least it fit, but only if we
moved all our other furniture out of the way. Ian surveyed it. I swallowed down
my ‘I told you so.’ He looked at me, said, ‘Oh fuck.’
And I couldn’t help it, ‘I TOLD YOU SO.’
And then he laughed, this deep proper belly laugh, ‘but look
how lovely it is.’
I wanted to be mad, because God, it was insane, this massive
too expensive tree that was too big for our house but he’s putting on Christmas
Crooners and thinking he’s Frank freaking Sinatra and hacking at it with the
secateurs and all I could do was roll my eyes and go and cook, telling him
crossly to think about what he’d done and looking away before he could see me
smile. Which just made him laugh more, ‘it’s such a lovely tree. Look what I’ve
done.’
So there’s half the tree in a pile by the door and the rest,
the tree that’s not been hacked away, pushed against the wall and half hanging
over the sofa and Ian singing Twelve Days
of Christmas and drinking his Bailey’s and having a minor breakdown because
he has a mild case of OCD and ‘I can’t remember where this decoration went.’
‘Doesn’t matter, put it somewhere else then.’
‘It needs to go in the right place.’
‘There is no right place; just put it where it looks nice.
It looks nice there.’
‘It doesn’t GO THERE. It has to go in the right place. I AM NOT HAVING A NICE TIME
RIGHT NOW.’
And I’m just curled up on the sofa watching him and laughing
and trying to help but not really and I had an epiphany; I thought,
this, this right here is what matters. I have been so stressed about Christmas lately and it’s
all for nothing because Tuesday night with Ian being like some kind of puppy dog
with all his excitement and the pretty decorations – and we buy something new
every year so when we trim up it kind of tells our story – and our too big tree
and my Pop-Up copy of The Night Before Christmas, that’s what it’s all about
and it just made really realise that it doesn’t even matter how hard times seem
to be, how there’s not enough time and not enough money and so much seeming to
be not-quite-right; it made me so so grateful for the memories I have and the
memories I have still to make and the people I get to share my life with, even
if one of those is a Sherlock Holmes wannabe who’s spacial awareness goes out
of the window when confronted with a pretty tree.
I really really am the
luckiest.
in which i post a delayed film review
They did do it justice.
In actuality, the film far exceeded my expectations. It was just so good, so good. It made my chest tight and it made me smile and it made me tear up in the same way that the book did - a lot of this has to be because Chbosky was so heavily involved; I had a little chuckle during the opening credits, his name just kept appearing on the screen over and over and over again, it felt almost like a one man show and I'm glad because nobody knows and loves these characters and this story like he does, I'm so so glad he kept such a tight hold on his babies because he made it work. A lot of the time I get annoyed because due to the nature of the beast, when you're adapating a book for screen, things have to change: things are cut and things are re-ordered and it's never ever the same but here it felt right, like, we were essentially told the same perfect story just in a slightly different way, like it was designed work with the book. Does that even make sense? I am on a caffeine high today. Probably not.
Also? Genius casting is genius.
Logan Lerman was perfect as Charlie, like actually perfect; he played that part so perfectly and I just wanted to hug him and never ever let him go. He was just like the Charlie in my head which is quite the achievement and, because Lerman pitched every line perfectly, nothing was over played, nothing was too much or not quite right, he just was, and some of the subtleties to his performance, particuarly towards the end were so powerful that they hurt. Alongside that, Ezra Miller and Emma Watson were equally believable as Patrick and Sam and God, some of the moments they shared on screen with Lerman were just so beautiful; the acting in this film was incredible, so much was said in little gestures and facial expressions -the way they look at Charlie sometimes was almost too much. Ezra Miller was amazing as Patrick, his pain was so raw all of the time and yet he still managed to steal the scenes with his comic timing; funny funny funny. Miller really got under the skin of Patrick, who I adored in the book and to watch him gradually fall apart, it was hurty.
And then Emma. I came away from the cinema unsure if she was my Sam, probably because I'd gone into it expecting to make comparisons to Harry Potter and it took a while to get out of that headspace, but I take it all back because I've pondered over this and I've gone over and over it and I've thought about it and you know what, I actually cannot imagine anyone else in that part, I just can't. And if nothing else she's proved she's so much more than Hermione Granger. In Perks Emma is so far away from beng Hermione that she's not even a speck on the horizon. I guess there's always a worry, a danger, becoming so well known for playing such an adored character at such a young age that you'll be typecast, that for Emma she'd always be Hermione. Not gonna happen. What she's done here is put herself out there as one of the great talents of her generation, we have some phenomenal Bristish actresses and I think it's safe to say Emma Watson can count herself among them [side note: she's so beautiful, like breathtakingly so.]
All in all, I loved this film, really loved it. I can't wait for the DVD.
Things denied, things untold, things hidden and disguised.
Friday, Friday, Friday. Hurray and also hurrah. Tomorrow is the the start of another long weekend; the boy and I are off down to Brighton for four days to stop with Mark and Emma. It will be a lovely [cheap] weekend of reading on the sofa and walking on the seafront and eating lots of home-cooked food and watching fireworks and also some horse-racing, so I'm told.=. We've not seen Mark and Em since June and I'm really looking forward to it. Stopping with them is a little like a home from home in a way, which is always nice. There's no expectations and I'm pretty sure I'll spend Sunday mooching around in my PJ's eating Sugar Puffs like I did last time I was there. It's just like being at home except there's two cats instead of one and the house is nicer and the garden bigger and of course Mark and Emma are there being all delightful. I can't wait.Before then though is the rest of today! I'm off to see my Granny in a little while which will be nice as her holiday and my holiday means I've not seen her for 3 weeks so I'm looking forward to a cup of tea and a chat and then tonight I plan to be indoors. We have some TV to watch, I don't know quite what, but something and I'll watch whilst making Christmas presents - this weeks homemade gifts involve buttons! Exciting.
AND!!! Starbucks Red Cups are back. Dance with me?
In bookish news, this week I read The Casual Vacancy. Would I be lying if I said it was one of the most anticipated titles of the year? Maybe. There was a massive stand full of books in Sainsbury's though and Amazon sent me about 72 million emails so I'm going to say people somewhere were expecting other people to anticipate it.
I wasn't sure how I felt when I first heard that J.K. Rowling was writing another book and not only was it not the history of the Marauders but it wasn'y even remotely connected to Harry Potter. I'm not going to lie - I do not think J.K Rowling is the greatest writer that ever lived. I love Harry Potter, everybody who knows me loves that. I love the books, I know them inside out, I am grateful to Jo for writing them, I think they should be required reading for every child in the world but I don't think Jo Rowling is the greatest writer in the world [hush, don't hate me. I still love her]; she could write in Harry's world forever and I would read it forever, but something else, something totally and utterly different? I wondered how that would work out and actually, I was nervous for her because God, can you even imagine the weight of the pressure that comes of releasing anything following the success of Harry Potter - so much pressure to succeed because everything else she's done is just adored and at the same time so many people, watching, rubbing their hands together and waiting to see her fail. *gulp* rather her than me.
I think she made the right desecion taking the step away from children's literature for that very reason; anything she wrote in that genre would be judged - harshly - against Harry Potter, she'd have to produce something incredible to stand half a chance of measuring up. At least with The Casual Vacancy whilst people will always compare it to Harry Potter, the comparisons are harder to make.
First impressions? In fact, earlier than first impressions, so impressions based on the information I had before I even had a copy of the book? I wasn't sure I was going to like it. If Jo's name wasn't on the cover then I wouldn't have picked it up and that's a fact; the blurb would not have drawn me in - a book about small town politics doesn't sound like the most exciting read. I read this book purely because it said J.K. Rowling on the cover; Jo drew me in, the fact that I had to see what she could do and I kind of liked that because I had no idea what to expect, no clue. I was pleasantly surprised, actually, because I actually really liked it.
It's a funny thing to say, I suppose, but it felt familiar reading this book. I mean, the characters, the setting, the story, all of it was brand new and yet somehow it felt a little like settling down with an old friend; whilst there are no wizards and no magic and no Hogwarts in the world of The Casual Vacancy but instead council estates and drug addicts and pompous middle aged men and small town politics there's something about it, which I guess can only be Jo that comes through and it made it easy and comfortable to read, perhaps because like Harry Potter, in The Casual Vacancy's characters are at the heart of the story and Rowling does well with characters. It's a book about class and about society and what at first seems like just a simple story about the complexeties of a relatively small group of people - all of whom had their own distinct voice, well done Jo - soon grips you with unexpected melodrama, and twists that leave you gasping and an ending that is shocking but very well executed. Once it got it's claws in, this book wouldn't let me go, I had to keep reading - meaning I am stupid tired this morning - and I'm really very glad I did.
J.K. Rowling has proven here that she isn't just a one trick pony, that she can do more than just Harry Potter and I certainly won't be as nervous about picking up her next offering.
