Happy new year. I cannot think of a clever title. Have I ever?

(Photograph by Dear Patient M from his excellent new blog, Balihai) 

Happy Belated New Years to you! Crank up the gramophone and dance about like loons!

1. Noughtiness

Where did those silly old Noughties go? Is it just my imagination or are decades just not what they used to be? My distaste for the 1990s has been expressed elsewhere on this blog.  I do not believe that the Noughties were much of an improvement in the personality stakes. For all of its horrors (Cold War Angst, Stonewash denim, T'Pau's "China in your hand") at least the 1980s had pluck! Those 1980s had vim!

2. Most people live on a lonely island, lost in the middle of a foggy sea...not for much longer!

Onwards and upwards to more salubrious topics. The lovely image above is one of Dear Patient M's Holga photos, taken at the Butchart Gardens in Victoria, BC. Yes, my long-suffering paramour has recently started his own blog:

http://balihai.typepad.com/

I highly recommend it - there is less sturm, less drang and many more pleasing images than you will find on this blog!

(Actually, I almost included a link to a Bahai Community blog instead of Dear Patient M's blog by mistake. That particular blog also featured less sturm, less drang than this blog. But, if I might respectfully add, the pictures were not much chop.)

3. Unresolved

New Year was quite a different experience for me this year. For starters, I sprang out of bed on New Year's Day without a hangover . It was a sunny and breezy day and it was hard to keep my surprising euphoria in check.

I have always slavishly made new year's resolutions in the past. I have never kept them for long. I have finally twigged that new year's resolutions are, for me at any rate, rubbish.

Instead of "resolutions", then, I cautiously venture to share some of the things I would like to achieve this year:

1. Learn the banjo. I want to pluck like mad.

2. I would like to write a story about a chain smoking  amateur sleuth with sloping shoulders who gets about in a long pea-green coat, and makes her way from one mystery to another by train. The  mysteries to be solved would all be rather second-rate. I think that story will be called "A bit of fun". The screwball comedy about a dowager and her lost jewels will just have to wait for the moment.  I think that one will be called "A touch of elegance".

3. I would like to appear on the ABC's 'Collectors' with my ever-growing collection of World Record Club records. Before some upstart beats me to it.

Do I ask for the moon? I think not.

Comments

[Lizzy]

Haha--you're into pluck, huh? Maybe you could play your 80's faves on the banjo.

I have to agree about the naughts. What an age to...come of age (in my case, at least). At least the naughts were named appropriately.

And, Dear M's picture is gorgeous. I'm so glad I have your collections/work to fawn over during these gray slushy months.

[Elizabeth]

I am still laughing over the idea of clicking on what I think will be M's blog and finding myself lost among the Bahai community! Strangely dressed people would descend on me like friendly piranhas, Seals & Crofts would be playing on a constant loop, and I'd be searching futilely for for M and his lovely pictures.

And
1. fie on all upstarts!
2. Write!!!!!!
3. I really truly read it as the dowager who lost her jowels! I thought, 'Oh, he's such a funny man... losing her jowls...' Then I reread it.

[a thousand shades of twilight]

Lizzie: But its folks like you that give me hope for the Naughts! :) I like the idea of plucking the 80s. I may work on "The Warrior" by Scandal next. Glad you like M's pictures. I am of course biased, but think that his eye is unfailing!
Elizabeth: Ha! You would have thought I'd finally taken leave of my senses once and for all and was trying to convert you perhaps. I actually had the link in there ready to go and it was only when I clicked on it after posting that I realised what I'd done!
Losing her jowels? You're the genius for coming up with that -I love it. There could be great scope for misunderstanding by a bumbling old fool: "Lost her jowels, you say? I thought she'd be pleased of it!" etc

[elizabeth]

Tell Dear patient M. that (idiot that I am) I can't figure out how to comment on his blog!

[a thousand shades of twilight]

I seem to be having trouble commenting on my own blog - I'm sure I posted a response but it's disappeared! I will pass that on to M - you're not the only one having that problem. I'm sure he'll be chuffed that you tried!

[Jacanegra]

Love the BaliHai blog.

[a thousand shades of twilight]

Hi Jacinta- nice to hear from you! Will pass that on to DPM!