It's our round robin!

Actually, round pigeon. Ready for the yearly boast?

Dear friends, 

We’re almost at the end of the year and what a stellar one it’s been. For me, 2023 was the year I really wanted to get my life in order and achieve balance. This meant taking time to just ‘be.’

For instance, appreciating our newly created garden. It’s a small container garden in front of our building of six flats. This year we spent as much time out there as possible, admiring the only herb we’d managed to grow (marjoram - what is it for?), and plucking empty miniature whisky bottles from our pots which a certain neighbour plants there, perhaps hoping they’ll grow into BIG whisky bottles.

WE KNOW WHO’S DOING THIS, BTW!! But we haven’t told your parents - yet. A small donation should sort it.

We also made a point of enjoying the wildlife in our little urban space. Jimmy invested in a wide array of bird feeders and we enjoyed many months of him banging loudly on his workroom window and shouting that they were stamping all over our plants and eating the flowers.

Pigeons, that is. I have no problem with them, as birds. But they’re destructive! In the same way that my friend, whose house has been completely infested by squirrels, has no issue with them as long as they stay out-bloody-side!

And I get this. I loved seeing beavers swimming about majestically on our trip to Perthshire. But I wouldn’t want one in the bath.

Get off our land!!

As for other notable events, 2023’s highlight wasn’t having my book published, or our offspring achieving various professional successes, or our fantastic drive up the Portuguese Atlantic coast - but the acquisition of an air fryer.

I realise we’re a little late on this, and that 2022 was Air Fryer Year, in the way that we became obsessed with Wordle around Easter time, by which point everyone else had stopped. But let me tell you about the many and wondrous things we’ve cooked in said appliance - namely chips. I know our grown up kids are looking forward to coming home for Christmas, to witness us banging on about it and demonstrating the various functions until they keel over with ennui.

I asked one of our kids if he’d like one: ‘No thanks.’

This has also been the year of ringing the changes and defecting from my lovely hairdresser and going to a new place (only because he was forever on holiday and I needed urgent attention). The result? A gradual yellowing of my barnet - first to something like hay, then nudging towards a custard hue, then the retina-searing yellow of daffodils - not that I don’t love daffodils (I did until the pigeons ate them all).

To match it, we painted our hall yellow as well.

This was also the year I embraced frugality, in terms of dressing myself, and bragged to anyone who’d listen (offspring mainly - is it any wonder they moved away?) how amazing my ‘find’ was - a Uniqlo sweater with one of the those necks I don’t know what to call anymore (funnel? Polo? Turtle?).

The third time I wore it, I was waiting in a hospital canteen for my dad, who’d been whisked away for a full day appointment.

Hours went by. I was trying to work on my laptop but was getting a bit restless. ‘Oh, a loose thread,’ I thought, picking at a sleeve. I pulled the thread a bit more. The thread that was in fact holding the entire garment together; a garment which literally opened up in front of a room full of nurses and orderlies all chatting over their lunch.

It was no longer Fashion Find of the Year - a snip at £29! - but a collection of (separate) knitted pieces, like a very basic woollen construction puzzle.

Fashion Editors - do contact me for ideas about any other style must-haves! I am open for commissions on this.

The whole frugality/splurge dichotomy is something I’ve wrestled with this year. One the one hand, I wear shoes until they rot. Like these ‘robust’ walking boots which, as I bragged to Jimmy recently, ‘have lasted me 25 years’ (admittedly barely worn). That’s what you get when you buy quality, I boasted: ‘They’ll probably see me out.’

Don’t you love it when people talk about things ‘seeing them out’? So gleefully morbid. My late mum used to do this, semi-jokingly. Fine when it’s, say, a new fridge freezer, built to last. Less so with a pack of butter.

Anyway, the boots didn’t see me out. They didn’t even see me through one walk in the snow, but completely disintegrated half way round.

But that was okay. My curious high-kneed walk (to stop me tripping over the flapping soles) looked completely normal.

So yes, I’m tight-assed with some things - like clothing myself - but then I go crawling back to my beloved hairdresser and give him all my money. I swear by the time I’m an old lady (ie, next year) I’ll be re-using teabags yet drinking from a £250 mug.

I also took to bed to write my books - like a sick person - because I was too tight to allow the heating on. Trouble is, now I can’t get out of it. My desk, which is also in our bedroom, glares at me, transmitting the message: Why are you in bed? Why aren’t you sitting at me like a normally functioning person?

‘It’s a lockdown thing,’ I told my kids when they asked me about this worrying development. It’s like when I make excuses for my dad, for keeping old cans of food in his cupboard, way past their use-by dates. It’s because he grew up in the war.

Come on, it’s 2023! We’ve moved on!

What will 2024 hold, I wonder? Further facial hair sproutings? Squirrels coming inside?

Whatever it is, I need new boots.

Love,

Fiona xx

PS I do have a new book coming in March 2024! The Woman Who Ran Away from Everything is for YOU, if you’ve ever fantasised about doing just that! And you can preorder here!