Best Wishes for 2022

I found a card last month that said; “2021. A great year. Unless you wanted to go anywhere, do anything, or meet anyone.” I sent it to a friend who needed a laugh. But looking back on 2021 earlier today, we were pleased at what we’ve achieved in the year. Rosebeds, repaired compost heap structure, woodshed put up and filled, the kitchen finished and the floor in the living room finally laid down, and a work of art it is too. Wonderful underfoot and a work of art.

We are looking forward to 2022. Less than two hours to wait, though we won’t be tackling any large projects at midnight. We do have Plans, though. Finishing the repair on the compost heap structure. Anyone having a good laugh at how long it takes can consider that a two-bay structure measuring 2.4 meters deep by 4.8 metres long by 1.8 metres tall – getting the right angles right and putting a shuttering mechanism on the front face to hold back the grass when it is piled nearly two metres high – is a bit of an engineering challenge. The first bay went well. Now we have to repair the second bay to match it, but the hard part is done.

The rainy weather recently has been a good time to hide indoors and write. I submitted my Globe Soup flash fiction entry two days ago, sent off a weird fiction for a fantasy magazine yesterday and I’m currently shaving words for a flash fiction to a podcast magazine. From 1,200 words down to 800. No pressure, eh. But then again, no deadline for this one – the other two expire at midnight tonight, like 2021 does.

It was a kind day today, weatherwise. Sunny, largely dry and very warm. He repaired a broken panel on my car (at 17 years old, a cable-tied panel and a splash of nearly-matching touchup paint is good enough – it’s the sheer oomph under the bonnet that keeps me patching up this ancient speed queen). I cleared away some of the brambles in the planned fruit patch and leftover bean stalks on the veg plot, and pulled away the fleece that’s been protecting the over-wintering onions from frost. It was 15 degrees Centigrade at best, 11 degrees right now, and we were sweating in T-shirts today.

It’s been good to get outside today. We’ve forgotten how happy it makes us to work in decent weather. It’s been raining most of every day for several days, and we’ve found indoor jobs to do, like painting, writing and watching the excellent Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, a better explanation of virus control than was ever presented for adults in the daily briefings. My respect for Jonathon Van Tam has gone up immensely – those tortured football analogies were worse than having my tooth drilled, but hey, we’re rugby fans.

The shortest day’s over and we are telling each other we’re noticing the sunset getting later (what a lovely fiction), and I will be planting up the first seeds of 2022 in a fortnight. That’s the start of the year, for me, and I cannot wait.

Happy New Year to everyone reading this. Give yourselves something to look forward to and make it happen.