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No party
1 January 2005
Thing is, though, that it all starts with a retreat. Anybody out there under the impression that I’m having a party next Sunday (9th) - well, I’m not. Sorry. Other people’s parties I can manage, seemingly, tho’ last night’s did feel like one over the eight, a party too far; to give a party of my own just now is just not possible. It galls me; I haven’t cancelled a party since 1963, the year of the Big Freeze.
Not that I could afford the time, anyway. In my current state it would have taken all week to clean the house and cook the ham, the beef, the cakes, the scones, the dips and dippees and the rest. And I have only four weeks to rewrite the novel.
Which is another rule broken: I do not, as a rule, work in this ten-day stretch from Xmas to my birthday. I don’t usually do much of anything, except the cooking & cleaning noted above, and the partying implicit. This year, I am at work. Usually I like it when I’m working, it pleases some atavistic Protestant part of me I have not yet drowned in Malmsey, but I keep looking back all the way to 2004 with a certain bitter twist, because I worked harder last year than I can remember, and I ended the year in far more trouble than I started. Might as well have idled, really...
© Chaz Brenchley 2005
Reproduced here by permission of Chaz Brenchley, who asserts his moral right to be identified as the author of this work.