That Was The Year That Was . . . . .
. . . . . and when it's over, can we really let it go? I suppose it's too early to tell[after all, it still has a couple of days left to run and like the FA Cup: Anything Can Happen!
There will be storms and more floods. Storm Frank is passing overhead as I type, the winds have increased in strength, some plastic bins and tubs have been moving about on the Patio but it's too wet to go out. Thy Syrians are all sleeping peacefully, the Three Wise Men are still up, but sitting in the aptly named Smoking Room with their pipes and a decanter of Auntie Christ's House of Lords Whisky (though they don't know it arrives in Co-op bottles which she then pours into that particular decanter) which Hamish, the elder of the trio, declared “one of the finest blends you'll get for under a hundred guineas,” and which they seem determined to finish before the night is over; the Three Shepherdesses – having returned their sheep to the Farm, only to discover their bivouac blown away
by the storm, are now watching a repeat of a repeat of Erin Brockovich in the TV Lounge, together with a couple of my insomniac cousins; my Aunts have adopted the roles of Head Warden, Deputy Warden. Assistant Wardens and have converted the House into an unofficial Youth Hostel, allocating duties every morning, which everyone is happy to comply with and the Syrians find highly amusing, and seem to mesh with their idea of Britishness, probably drawn from old Margaret Rutherford and St Trinians movies (with Alastair Sim as Headmistress); at least the Border Agency (which is how most people still refer to the United Kingdom Visas and Immigration Section of The Home Office) have stopped calling – well, once Police Scotland knew that that punctilious WPC Isa Urquhart, together with her Trainee WPC Gertie Mountcastle and Sergeant Goldy Brevity are resident over the Holiday, and decided that the schoolboys were better employed directing traffic over the Bottle Bridge when mthe lights conked out, or dealing with suspected shoplifters in Tesco or Asda who seem to think that the Self-Service Checkouts mean Help Yourself, rather than protecting Agency Officers in harassing poor unfortunate people who have fled their own country to try to make a better life for their children here, something Scots have been doing for hundreds of years, since the Highland Clearances saw whole villages razed to the ground by the Estate Landlords to make way for sheep; and my Political cousins – Ginger Goldfish, Leigh Waters, Roxy and Trixie Davidova – are in the Games Room playing a kind of Four-Way Billiards, using the Yellow, Green, Blue and a single Red together with the White in a game which will probably see some kind of a surrender in the wee small hours, more from exhaustion than overwhelming ability of any one of the four.
As for me?





 I'm just sitting in Auntie Christ's study, surrounded by the books of our childhood and education – I'm not referring to school books, or set works to be read and studied for exams! I'm thinking of Sartre and Camus, Samuel Beckett, Jack Kerouac, Virginia Woolf and Muriel Spark, H G Wells, Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley, Simone de Beauvoir, oh – so many old friends. I can hear them talking to each other from the shelves around the room, certainly they speak to me while I sit here. Tapping time away on this keyboard. Waiting for the clock to chime before I go to make myself a mug of cocoa and for anyone else who happens by. Then, if the rain has eased, I may step out into the porch for a last cigarette before bed. And my book at the moment: Sidney Chambers and The Shadow of Death by James Runcie. I enjoyed the dramatisations on ITV under the series title Grantchester with James Norton as the Vicar who finds himself detecting and Robson Green as the Detective who is initially unpersuaded but comes to appreciate his friend's insights. The stories are set just after the Second World War, in a society which is still recovering and facing more change. I liked The Bletchley Circle also on ITV which was set in the same post-war period, one I only know second hand, but which shaped the family in which I grew up.
So, lots of happy memories.
And any regrets?
Oh, yes. Plenty of those. But for the moment:


 Miss Teri Regrets She is Unable To Read Every Book on the Shelves.

The First Christmas
This was probably the first Christmas, certainly the first in a long time, when I haven't been able to do what I always do: find the perfect gifts for those I love and care about. And I'm not talking about expensive things, because I've never really had to money to totally splash out, and that isn't what my friends and family and lovers have wanted, anyway.
     No – I've always had the knack of finding the right thing: a book, or a trinket, that one thing the person I give it to is happy to receive; perhaps because it's something they've always wanted but never known that until I give it to them, or they've never been able to find themselves.
     Some years, I've bought the presents in May or September: in fact, most years, I buy the thing when I first see it, because I know it is just right for the person I have in mind. Depending on the date, it may become a Birthday gift, and I'll then find another for Christmas. And I've always managed.
     But this year, I've not been able to look for what I want – a combination of time pressure, other commitments, my own health, or the health of those I've been caring for. And that has given my cause for regret.
     For the most important people, though, I did manage. Last minute, last chance, but fortunately – just right. You see, the Gods are always on our side, if we allow them to be.
     But it wasn't the same – not the way I wanted it to be. Not quite the way it should be. Does that make me some kind of Control Freak? I don't think so. If it is better to Give than to Receive, which is what I do believe, then I want to give the Right Gift.
Miss Teri Regrets She Was Unable To Do It Her Way!

Live in the Moment!
Someone once told me to think this way:
The Past is History,
The Future's a Mystery,
This moment is a Gift,
We call it The Present!
And the whole idea was
1) not to waste time filled with regret or remorse about the past, because as soon as you do something it can't be undone, so there's no point beating yourself up over it.
2) not to lose sleep over what is coming up, tomorrow or next week or whenever; just make a few decisions about that part of what you are expecting, in so far as you will have any control, then switch off. Because there is only so much that we have control over, and the rest is in the lap of the Gods.
It sounds so simple and perfect and if we all lived our lives like this the promise is that we will have no angst, no neurosis, no weights to carry around, because our minds will be liberated and our hearts free to enjoy the world we live in.


CRAP

I have regrets – new ones every day. Some of them I own up to, others I have no intention of anyone ever finding out about. I'm not talking big here – no murders or hit-and-runs, Hatton Garden bank heists. Just ordinary run-of-the-mill stuff like everybody else.
Catholics go to Confession, the rest of us file it away in a little drawer in the filing cabinet that occupies space in our brains. And there it gets added to and gets bigger and eventually takes over a whole cabinet and then another and then a whole room and then two rooms and then it has a whole corridor or a floor in the office block then the whole block and it spreads out over a whole neighbourhood or district and the longer we live the more it takes over until we die.
I can't hack that. I have to do something with it. So this is my confessional. And anyone who bothers to read it can be my Father Confessor and either grant me absolution or a few penances.
That's okay with me,

Today, Friday Night:
I've been smoking too much. More than I admit to. I have a couple of e-cigarettes, which taste ok but are heavier than the real things and I can't et used to them. So I light up. I know that a lot of it is because I'm waiting to start treatment, but first I have to see a Consultant, and so far I've waited 20 weeks, and now I have an appointment for the second week in January, and then I'll have to wait to start a course of treatment, which I hope will be successful, but until then I really can't quit. It's pathetic, but there it is, Father.
 
Miss Teri Regrets She Is Unable To Quit Today!