A New Year's Wish!

Well, another year done and dusted and like you I'm sitting here scratching my head and wondering, as I do every New Year's Eve, where the hell all the time has gone to? Well wherever it went, it left in its wake a few things to be thankful for, a few to be sad about and even a few things to bring hope and to look forward to in the New Year. Looking back now, there were indeed some personal highlights too ... highlights like:

• Finishing the ole booookie booook
• Creating this 'ere blog as a result
• Reaching my target of reading 50 books for the year.
• Saying: "Congratulations on winning the World Cup!" straight to Joachim Loew's face!
• Picking up a new finger-picking style for my ukulele and ...
• Duetting with an ole pal in celebration of the fact! :)

Yes folks, just a few outstanding achievements that the world would have missed had I not flagged them right here, right now! And come to think of it, if I can write a list even half this length this time next year, I'm sure it will have been another bumper year that bubbled with achievement!

So, what are my plans for 2015, I hear you all ask with dead-pan faces?

Well, I suppose if I'm honest, my goals for the year to come remain as ambitious as ever and include, to wit: getting a cover on said book of mine (if I have to do it myself, then so be it!); selling the rights to a few of my songs to some major movie company and then heading for the Hamptons; reaching the 99, 100 and then 200 'number of posts' mark on this here ole blog; taking at least one nice photograph with my new wide angle lens; winning Wimbledon and getting back in some kind of string band again!

Ah, getting back in a band. That's a real wish. One regretful thing in 2014 was the end of the line for me ole group of ukesters, Ukeristic Congress, the demise of which has left a real void in my vocal cords and has me itching to get playin' again.

On a much sadder note though, 2014 was a year when four fine people I knew died well before their times and I remain deeply sad for their loss and for the sadness their passing brought to the people closest to them. Nothing can ever make up for that and all I can say is that their memory will live on and that I am personally thankful for having met them during the course of their lives and mine. I hope too that they are resting well and in peace - dear ST, L'B'C, JC and MvdH.

So we've come to the end of another post, the last one of the year. Nothing beside remains but to wish you all the very best for the New Year, to thank you all for stopping by the blog this year and to add my shoulder to the wheel of your hopes and dreams for 2015. Or as T.S. Eliot might have it:

“... last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.”

Happy New Year!

Shona Bhliain Nua do gach duine!


More soon ...

The Ghost of Christmases Past ... and Presents!

My, it's been a couple of weeks but since you've been away I've been rummaging in the archives again and this time I unearthed yet another forgotten relic from my distant past. It were a book about vets what I read when I were a lad, because, as few of you know, I once had big ambitions towards becoming an ole MRCVS - that is until I discovered the job was less about tiddling fluffy kittens and more about being knee-deep in cowshite at two in the morning every day of the week. So, maith an fear James Herriott for putting me straight.

No, to be honest, I forgot about being a vet a long time ago and the book I found, Vet in Harness, did little to bring back the memory of ever wanting to be one. Instead, it reminded me of Christmases past because that's when I would have got it as a present (and many others in the series) and the memory of me sitting in an armchair by the roaring  fire in the sitting room (only ever lit at Christmas), riveted to it, remains a fond one. And, of course, thinking of that set a ghost train of other Christmas memories in motion and before I knew it, images of old cameras and slide projectors and Cluedos and Frustrations and deoderant sets and leather footballs and crap records and rollerball pens and digital watches came to mind - and thus we have yet another mood board for you all to add to or subtract from!

When I look at some of the bigger presents that Santy brought all those years ago, I suppose, they probably do contain clues to the sort of ideas and ambitions I was harbouring for myself back then. It was no fluke, for example, that I got as 'big' presents, a camera one year and a slide projector another, because back then I saw myself as a budding photographer and I had real ambitions to one day rise to the professional challenge - that was until some point in time when I had to acknowledge that I didn't really have what it took. The other presents might contain clues too, clues about other roads I could have taken and about other things I had in mind to do or be. Though I'll never know for sure, maybe these other great gifts were indicative of pursuits in life that I wouldn't have minded taking a bit further - like being a rock star, a weightlifter, a detective, a professional footballer, a perfumist, a computer programmer, a professional gambler, a strategist and, as denoted by the Parker Pen, a writer. Hmmm, I'm even wondering now did that pen play any part in my opting to go the hack's route? Meh! It's impossible to tell from this juncture because, in the meantime, life went and diluted the direct influences and muddied the proverbial waters. But still, the very presence of that pen perched in its box back there in the distant past might mean that the seeds were sown that far back. And I'm sure it must be similar for you. The clues to how your own future would pan out might well be concealed there somewhere among the bric-a-brac of all your own Christmases past and in the presents that they brought. To your present. Might be worth a look back!

More soon ...

Past presents!