Just around the corner

New Year’s resolutions have never really been my thing, but a resolution at any other time of year definitely is. I’m always up for anything that makes my life more efficient, more minimal, more succinct (in the sense of clear and precise, rather than short), and I like the idea of the impetus for this arriving at random times of year. So my most recent resolution – to be that little bit more efficient in my dealings with the world – came into effect at some point in October, and is still very much with me.

But if the leap between one year and the next galvanises something in us humans, then all the better. And I like the idea of everyone around me resolving en masse to become in some way improved. Perhaps the knock-on-effects will reach us fellow, but less annually resolved, humans – and perhaps these will then be enough to sustain us all.

In fact, a case in point and one that had a particularly positive impact on my own life: if it hadn’t been for the formal prompt of a New Year approaching, my now husband might still be considering whether to get in touch. We first came across one another in 2002, but it was a New Year’s resolution on 31st December 2004 that resulted in the email I got in early February 2005 (so even once the resolution was made he wasn’t quick off the mark).

Anyway, now that 1^st January is a fading memory and the rest of you are hanging on to your resolutions for dear life, and now that February isn’t far off and the likes of my husband are just resolving at last to put their resolutions into practice, I’m in the happy position of wondering when the next urge for change might decide to creep up on me. Freed from the confines of the Gregorian calendar, the happy prospect of improvement (in any shape or form apart from that of the aforementioned husband) is always just around the corner.

How things used to be

It’s the Tuesday before Christmas, and we’ve arrived at London Bridge just a few minutes late. Which as our conductor has kindly pointed out is rather good in the current icy circumstances. And indeed it is. It’s been a good journey: a double seat all the way, my companions suitably silent, my carriage warm. And, as my last 7.42 of the year, a good way to end.

As you can see, then, my grumpiness has passed and I’m in tune once again with my surroundings. Even a longer than usual delay on my way to London would have been easy to cope with, and perspective – that curer of some ills and not of others – would have done its work. Because now I have other things to worry about: namely, a flight to New Zealand tomorrow (my first flight in years, actually) which, from my point in time, looks distinctly dodgy.

From your point in time, of course, this will all be history, and my worries will be last year’s problems. My cry for help will be purely rhetorical, and any sympathy I do elicit will be obsolete (but thank you anyway).

Such a clashing of one point in time against another is not a state of affairs we have to get our heads around very often any more. It’s a reminder, for me at least, of another century and a time of real letters: questions asked and forgotten before the answers had a time to form, and worries aired and then long gone by the time commiseration arrives. So perhaps consider this column just a remnant of last year’s postbag and an interesting reminder of how things used to be.