welsh hills again

I have always been a bit of a sucker for new things: a new school year, all new exercise books and shiny new pencil cases; a new year with a new diary just waiting for the painstaking list of New Year resolutions.  So it is not really a surprise that for years I have carried on making New Year resolutions, long after the age when most sensible people give it up as a waste of time.  Of course one of the problems of being in your fifties is that you know that the resolutions you make have been the same every year for quite a long time (exercise more, drink less, ring your friends more often) which is clear evidence that they don't work.  I have tried ringing the changes by resolving to do things I think I will like to do.  A couple of years ago, I resolved to be more glamorous on a Thursday I remember.  I am not sure that I achieved that one in respect specifically of Thursday but it was part of a general desire not to disappear into jeans and fleeces every single...

I have been blogging nearly five years!  Astonishing.  One of the results of this is that,  as with any form of diary keeping, I have a record so I have been reading back through the resolutions I have made (or not made) in January 2008 and January 2010 .  I don't seem to have made any at all in 2009 and certainly every now and then I just decide not to.   I did make some last year.  Here they are with some thoughts about how they went.  That might just be the decider as to whether to make 2012 a "resolving" or a "not resolving" year! I will make more time with friends and, if going away from home is a bit tricky just now, more invitations for people to come here.   Mmm patchy results with this one.  I have managed to get away and to spend some time with friends.  For the very first time, a year has gone by in which I haven't seen one of my oldest friends although I am about to do something about that.  I think I cou...

I wonder if I am getting too old, too lazy or too awkward for New Year's Resolutions.  The beauty of writing a blog for quite a long time (since 2007! how amazing is that?) is that you can go back and check and see what was happening in your life in earlier Januaries.  Pottering back through the New Year entries I see that some years I have made resolutions and some years I have not.  One year I see that I resolved to be more glamorous on Thursdays.  I think we can safely say that did not happen.  On other years I have blithely ignored the very idea.  I see that I have however kept the resolution to stop resolving to eat less, drink less and exercise more.  I haven't done any of those things but at least I have stopped boringly girding myself up to do them and then berating myself for failing yet again. We have had a challenging few months to finish off 2010 and this morning I learned that my much loved younger brother is ill.  This is not a ye...

Yes, I know it not the 1st of January.  I'm just a bit late.  One of the good things about blogging is that it is so easy to check what I have been doing in January for the last couple of years.  I see that last year I didn't make any resolutions at all and the year before I tried to make postive resolutions rather than the usual "lose weight, drink less, exercise more" litany that has been following me around for years. Reading them now from 2008 I see   I didn't too terribly well with the ones I did make.  The resolution to cook more interestingly, using my huge range of cookery books, was the one which was most successful.  I can't say I achieved the one about being glamourous on Thursdays.  I do from time to pull out something which is not the ubiquitous jeans and fleece and dress up a bit, but it is more like once every couple of months than once a week - less in winter because the urge to keep my clothes on when I have got dressed is very powe...