A New Year

and a few recommendations to read or watch

We are already five days in but as this is my first newsletter of 2025 I feel it’s not to late to wish you all the happiest of new years, whatever your plans or intentions may be. 2025 certainly arrived with a bang here in the UK, riding on the crest of a storm with high winds and rain and now this weekend we have seen plummeting temperatures and the promise of snow, which hasn’t actually appeared here in the east. But it’s January so what do we expect.

Christmas came and went, not without its ups and downs. My mum who was in fine spirits on Christmas Eve, although without much idea of why we had joined her at a party in her care home, seemed like a completely different person on Christmas morning. She was refusing to wash or get dressed, insistent she wasn’t going to stay in “this place” and put on a good show of pretend retching when I suggested she might want to get dressed for her Christmas dinner. Last year when she came to us she cleared two plates full of roast goose with potatoes and veg followed by Christmas pudding. This year apparently she has never liked Christmas dinner. In Shakespeare’s seven stages of man we are definitely back at the terrible twos with a truculent toddler! We try to keep laughing but the sad reality is that her decline has been rapid over the past few weeks. Then we had a bit of a scare when son number two was admitted to hospital with complications having gone down with flu. He was given fluids, oxygen and drugs and eventually sent home in the early hours of the morning, so all was well and he is recovering.

But we had good times too, seeing friends and family, with nice things to eat, gentle walks, some good TV, and perhaps most importantly no expectations. Between the two of us we exchanged simple gifts of books, chocolate and socks. Well that’s not entirely true as Stewart received a single sock from me. It’s a tradition that I knit him a pair of socks each Christmas and this year I timed it so that I could get them finished while he was out of the house on dog walks. Then at the end of November he had a minor operation that meant dog walking wasn’t very practical for him for a few weeks, which in turn meant I took over all dog duties. Accomplished knitter I might be but simultaneously walking an exuberant Labrador whilst knitting cabled socks is a step too far, so my knitting was confined to moments when Stewart was in different rooms. After stuffing the half knitted socks behind cushions every time I heard him approach and then dealing with the inevitable dropped stitches more times than I care to remember, I gave up and he was given a single sock and a promise. They were finished on 30^th December, which I just see as prolonging the Christmas joy. I’m nice like that!

The free pattern is Parade by Judy Kaethler, yarn is from my stash

I had an idea that I would like a jigsaw to work on in the lull between Christmas and new year, not a pastime I am in the habit of doing. But memories of Christmases past trying to put 1000 tiny pieces together and getting annoyed at my Dad for casually walking past and slotting a piece into place with ease made me nostalgic. Santa duly obliged and I had a puzzle in my Christmas stocking. Now I’m not one to baulk at a challenge and being very visual in my approach to most things I usually find matching colours and shapes in a jigsaw quite satisfying, but I think I have been given the jigsaw from hell. It’s a wonderful image of Frida Kahlo but the background is entirely made up of shades of red and dark brown, not helped by the reference picture being postcard sized and the light in our cottage at this time of year non-existent. I’m determined not to let it beat me. Although it might be Christmas 2025 before it’s finished and we have the end of our kitchen table back.

I’m a big fan of the writing of Sarah Moss, having first come across her through her wonderful memoir of a year living in Iceland, Names for the Sea: Strangers in Iceland, a book I have read multiple times. I have since read most of her works of fiction and enjoyed every one so I was delighted to receive her latest memoir My Good Bright Wolf. The dust jacket describes it as beautiful, audacious and very funny, a description with which I don’t agree. I loved the approach that this memoir, whilst being a memory of what Moss recalls is not necessarily a memory of absolute truth. Different people have different recall of shared experiences and as such memory can be contested, especially a memory of mental illness and self-doubt. It is indeed a beautiful account of her struggle with an eating disorder, something which appears to still be very much part of her life, and although I found it absorbing I didn’t find it funny. I found it disturbing, especially the memories extending back to her childhood. Interestingly I am now reading her first novel Cold Earth and finding the constant references to food and what everyone is eating quite fascinating in the new light of having read the memoir.

As well as reading there has been a lot of excellent TV over the past couple of weeks. Our reading group book for January is A Gentleman in Moscow, an excellent novel that I read a few years ago about the house arrest of the fictional Count Alexander Rostov in a grand Moscow hotel following the revolution. I have loaned my copy to a friend so decided to watch the recent mini-series adaptation of the book starring Ewan McGregor, as a refresher before our group meets in a couple of weeks. I thought I had hit a problem as it’s only available on Apple TV, one of the many subscription services we do not have. Fortunately it is possible to sign up for a week’s free trial, so I did that to find that it is actually available on Paramount via Apple, so having signed up for Apple TV in addition I had to sign up to Paramount which was also offering a week for free. We watched all eight episodes over four nights and it was absolutely worth all the bother of signing up to the various different services. It is a beautiful story of duty, friendship and romance told with great humanity which I can thoroughly recommend. And after you have watched it you can cancel the various subscriptions with no bother at all, should you wish that is!

There seems to have been a fair number of Agatha Christie adaptations on TV lately too and a couple of enjoyable afternoons were spent with my knitting and an old film. There was the 1974 version of Murder on the Orient Express where Albert Finney’s Poirot is forced to investigate and solve a murder on the train which is conveniently stuck in a snowdrift, and where twelve strangers are all suspects. Very camp, very predictable but very entertaining nevertheless. And I also watched The Mirror Crack’d, a 1980 adaptation of a Miss Marple mystery starring Angela Lansbury and a host of Hollywood stars where Miss Marple takes it upon herself along with her detective nephew Inspector Craddock played by Edward Fox, to solve a case of a local woman who has been poisoned. It appears that the intended victim is a visiting movie star Marina Rudd, but all is not quite what it seems. I found it hilarious with some great lines. When Kim Novak’s character Lola another actress, meets her rival Marina played by Elizabeth Taylor she remarks “I’m so glad to see you’ve not only kept your gorgeous figure, but you have added so much to it”

A few minutes later Marina’s come back is equally witty

“Lola dear, there are really only two things I dislike about you”

“Really, what are they?”

“Your face”

It’s been a good couple of weeks, and I feel it provides an excellent template for the coming year in that we should all do more of what we actually enjoy and less of what we feel we should be doing, so in the spirit of Virginia Woolf (writing in her diaries) I resolve to have no resolutions, not to be tied to doing anything, to be free, to be kind to myself, and to read quietly when I feel like it. And like Virginia I will continue to knit.

Virginia Woolf by Vanessa Bell, Oil on board, 1912, National Portrait Gallery

And if I suddenly feel the urge to change and better myself, to resolve to be fitter, healthier, more athletic etc, then it can wait until a more sensible time of year because no sane person should be considering new regimes in the middle of winter when we need to be conserving our energy, staying warm and generally taking things slowly.

Wishing you a good week doing the things you love and I’ll see you next Sunday as I gently ease myself back into a habit of writing.