A 2009 MeMe

1. What did you do in 2009 that you’d never done before?
Started blogging. Keris made me do it and like so, so, so many other things, she was absolutely right about how much fun I’d have and how much I’d enjoy it and get out of it.

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions and will you make more for next this year?
Along with David Tennant (see how we’re just *meant* to be?), I don’t do resolutions because life throws enough disappointments my way without enforcing some of my own. But this year I am *determined* to be more confident and optimistic. Oh and eat less. That’s like saying ‘loose weight’ only it sounds less scary.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
My husband’s cousin’s girlfriend had a little girl in January and my lovely interweb writer-friend, Keris (who made me blog) had another little boy the same month.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
Funnily enough (no, bear with me) I went to a funeral in May – the wife of one of my husband’s colleagues and was confused to notice some cousins of mine in the congregation. Turned out the deceased was a distant cousin of mine I’d never met. Spooky.

5. What countries did you visit?
Italy. Odd that, being married to an Italian!

6. What would you like to have in 2010 that you lacked in 2009?
Oh God, the elusive Agent please. One who loves what I write as much as I love writing it and who believes in me and encourages me and gives me deadlines I need to have to make me be more disciplined.

7. What dates from 2009 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
November 6th is a new date that will stay with me. The head-on collision. Oh, and November 9th was quite a biggie as the Girl turned sixteen. Sixteen…. OMG, and they said the pains of labour would fade with the years – how much longer now?

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Being asked by TWO Agents for the full manuscript of ‘Double History’ (the teenage thing). The excitement and delight of being asked still makes my head spin. And even though I haven’t heard anything back I know that I got one step closer than I ever have before. Onward.

9. What was your biggest failure?
No specific failure – just a few disappointments.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
I got pretty cut up in the head-on collision. Bruised, bashed and whiplashed.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
A pyramid of Krispy Kreme doughnuts for the Girl’s 16th Birthday cake. Complete with 16 candles and sparklers. The look on her face when she saw it made my heart burst.

12. Where did most of your money go?
Ppft! Where it usually goes. Bills, bills, holiday, bills.


13. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
See 8. Squeep!

14. What song will always remind you of 2009?
Paolo Nutini’s ‘Pencil full of lead’.

15. Compared to this time last year, are you:

a) happier or sadder?
Perhaps slightly sadder. Car crash knocked confidence and seems to have had a knock-on.

b) thinner or fatter?
Probably slightly more belly. I must move about more – just not so much in the direction of the biscuit tin.

c) richer or poorer?
Probably poorer. Credit crunch put hubby on a 2 day week which is not fun right now.

16. What do you wish you’d done more of?
Writing. Always writing.

17. What do you wish you’d done less of?
Arseing about on Facebook when I should have been writing.

18. Did you fall in love in 2009?
Oh, Susan Boyle did things to me I never expected. You know what I mean. The whole ‘Su-Bo’ effect.

19. What was your favourite TV program?
‘FlashForward’. Am obsessed with anything TimeTravelley (hence the Doctor – it’s his profession, not his foxy cheeky ways, honest!).

20. What was the best book you read?
‘The Disengagement Ring’ by my writerly friend Clodagh Murphy. She even wrote a message in it for me which made my year! And ‘One Day’ by David Nicholls.

21. What was your favourite film of this year?
‘Taken’. The Liam Neeson thing. Can’t remember when I held my breath for a whole film before.(oops that was 2008 - doesn't time fly?) So 'Night at the Museum 2' then.

22. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
Can’t remember and prefer not to remember.


23. What kept you sane?
My amazingly upbeat, optimistic, forever resilient husband and my happy, shiny daughter. They are my rocks.

24. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
Oh… now let me think….Doctor… Who?

25. Who did you miss?
My Dad. Always.

26. Who was the best new person you met?
If internet meeting counts, then Deborah Durbin. We met through a writing site we both belong to and have been e-mailing each other ever since. She’s talented and lovely and I realised I already had a book written by her on my bookshelf – which strangely enough led partly to my meeting my husband. Can’t get better than that!

An Xmas Xcess I didn't xpect!

The fact that I'm sitting here with a bijou glass of Baileys (ok, then, the Lidl half-price equivalent therefore we can legitimately buy two bottles and it's JUST as lovely) you'd be forgiven for thinking that the excess to which I refer is probably alcohol-related.
If I then said that following this posting - and I've SO missed posting and reading everyone else's blogs even after only 2 days' abstinence - I will be reheating a slice of Christmas Pudding and scraping the rest of the homemade brandy butter over the top of it in front of Ant & Dec (the TV stars not our cats, but they will also be there of course) ... then you might even think my excess to be of the usual gastronomical variety.  But you'd still be a tad off course...

Nuts?
Well, yeah I have to hold my hands up to being the closest I've ever been to a Brazilian judging by the alarmingly reduced level of the nuts bowl but even so...
Not booze, not food, so what?

Ok.  I hate riddles just as much as you do.  I'll come straight out with it.  It's David Tennant.  And for me, an excess of DT is like the severest form of a Win-Win situation I can think of in this cheap-facsimile-of-Bailey's-addled moment in time.
Just don't ask the hubby.  In fact just pretend you didn't notice.  I've been trying to but it's so damned hard.
Because you have to admit it, he HAS been EVERYWHERE this Christmas, hasn't he?
I mean if he's not raising a very suggestive eyebrow at a bunch of grazing reindeer outside his snow-drifted TARDIS and then riding them hard across a festive sky (Oo-er Missus) then he's chairing the latest episode of 'Never Mind the Buzzcocks' - and doing it superbly I might add.
And then he's popping up as a guest on the seasonal edition of Q.I and showing off his intelligence along with his all-consuming foxiness.  And then the eagerly awaited Christmas Night episode of Dr Who (which he HAS to appear in, lets face it - even hubby can't have a moan at that surely?  Well, he tried) followed by - and I WAS joking when I quipped merrily "hey I bet David Tennant will be in this somewhere" but even that proved to be right on the money - during the Catherine Tate 'Nan's Christmas Carol' he appeared as the fruity Ghost of Christmas Present - priceless!
But hubby drew the line at taking the foxy timelord to Focus Do-it-all this afternoon while he was standing in for Johnathan Ross on Radio Two.  That was okay though, I'd managed to listen to most of it anyway and although I could've listened to the rest of the show, I knew that later on there was always Hamlet...
Which I'm recording.
Well, there's only so much a self-respecting wife can take of her husband's eye-rolling and thin exasperated sighs of sheer contempt.
LOL!

Merry Xcess everybody!