First day.

Tuesday, on her way to nursery for the first time. In her bag is one small tiger, one large rabbit and a fresh pair of knickers. The kid knows how to travel.

Hi. How are you all? We're fine. Mostly starting nursery, learning not to shit in our pants, giving up naps and trying not to die from the common cold.

Christmas was fine too. Mostly port, wine, sherry, mince pies, rum, wine, port and roast meat. I'm not a vegetarian any more. The thing about starting to eat meat after 20 years of not eating meat is that you want to eat ALL THE MEAT all the time. Which isn't really cool, for the environment or your arteries or the tightness of your jeans. Yes, in that order of importance. Oh, or your bank balance. Meat costs more than lentils, as it should.

New Year was less fine. Usually New Year is a very shiny time of reflecting (shiny things reflect) and promise and planning. This year it was mostly crying about All The Changes and fearing that my ovaries have started exploding again from all the meat and sugar and alcohol and caffeine.

Last year was fucking intense. We moved to London and we hit London running, we did all the gardening and all the landscaping and all the working and all the exploring and had all the visitors and then we just sort of... crashed. So I have no resolutions for this year except to keep on keeping on. That's it. There are things I want to do and places I want to go and it's really tempting to Resolve to do and go and make. But when my brain starts Resolving ('knit a jumper! learnt to make bread! Take a sock class! Explore London! Write more! Drink less! Read more! Complain less! Socialise more! Shout at my children less! ') I ask it politely to shut up, right now then I take myself to the sofa. Which isn't to say I won't do some of those things, if I feel like it, maybe. But only if I feel like it.