the fear-inducing dateline 1 jan 2009 stared out at me from my mobile phone.
what have i done with the last 365 days? why did i not earn a dollar a day? was my hair really that grey when this year started?
i learned things, some of which i was actually conscious of learning, i sat in the hall where twelfth night was born – walked in a place where shakespeare definitely trod and listened to the immortal words of lawyers in that place. i guess you can’t win ‘em all. i gained a qualification – which after 20 years away from formal study was almost a shock. i failed to gain a job, which after many years of never growing up and doing what people might regard as a real job was less shocking. i was frustrated by how antiquated the bar truly is and humbled by how kind many of the people in the profession are.
i had another year of laughter and tears (often simultaneously) with two children who might make a man believe in the divine and who would test the patience of a saint. i frequently wished there was a saint whose patience they could try trying. i was reminded at least 365 times how much i owe the clp for all her love and how much richer life is with someone of such unfailing kindness in it. many many times i thought i must call my mother to tell her something glorious or mundane and remembered i couldn’t any more.
i breathed, i ate, i drank, i appealed for stumpings – some of which were given. i lived. and it was bloody good.
i hope you had 365.25 days of wonder of your own. i hope those you love enriched your lives as mine has been enriched. i hope you lived and hoped and laughed and that we will all of us get through another year of this joyful, incomprehensible – and frankly rather daft – mess. i hope, if your year has been one you are glad to see the back of, that next year will see the seeds you have sown bear fruit, that you will feel the wheel turn and raise you up; if you have lost people dear to you, that their love and legacy remains and grows as the emptiness of loss dulls and dwindles; if your year has been full of shit, that next year’s flowers will grow fuller and sweeter. i hope for all of you, the love you put out there will shine back at you so brightly it reminds you of why you bother. and i thank those who have shone some of that love and kindness my way – you are the greater for it.
and if you ended it as i think i have, more confused, amazed, and thoroughly in awe of how fucking wonderful the whole shebang really is, i hope you will find that next year is even … more.
and most of all i just hope.
enjoy.
your wondering chum
xxx
