Many good reasons to be glad it’s 2007

A bit slow off the mark on this one, but in the spirit of better-late-than-never, I’m hereby submitting my 2006 accounts for final reconciliation.

Mercies large and small:

New places: Copenhagen. Sardinia. Cinque Terre. Braunton. Norfolk. Sydney. Melbourne. Padstow. Watergate Bay. New Forest.

New people: Nevaya. Rav, Pun, Ryan, Michele, JL. Baby Alice (I can’t wait to meet you).

New things: The Charles Lamb. Knitting. So many books. Six Feet Under. Miranda July. Learning to make clothes. Travelling with my Mum and Wim. Being upgraded to CE. The treehouse room. Bat For Lashes. Jonathan Safran Foer. Camilla Engman. Vincent Vincent and the Villains. Carston Holler. The Elk in the Woods. Green Wing.

Old places: Fremantle. Victoria Park in summertime. Croyde. The Dove.

Old friends: Clancy. Elsa. Erin. Reub. The inimitable Loz. Catherine and Tamsin. Naana’s sweet return. Ms C. The Mansion Dwellers. Prodigal Andrew. Garry Dazzle. Now-Mr-and-Mrs Sus & Nick. Elsa again. My beautiful Katie Bebe. Matt and Maz.

As always: Moleskine. Monmouth Coffee Company. Broadway Market. Riding my bike. Autumn. Nigel Slater. My favourite.

Eat my dust, grit liver lips:

Justified paranoia. Blonde dwarfs from Dwarfland.

Foolish, foolish boys, most especially ones that break my sister’s heart in their stone-hearted idiocy.

A Glastonbury-less summer.

Missing Sufjan Stevens at Barbican.

Homesickness and distance – a sour taste in my mouth most of last year.

Shit magazines, shit books, shit gigs, shit films. Unless they’re so shit they accidentally morph into brilliance.

Leaning into the future.

Miserliness.

Holding patterns. Any and all.

The big three:

1. Do the things you love. Easy.
2. (no-one else’s) Life is perfect (either).
3. The magic words are:

i

see

you



Happy oh! seven, however you feel watching the disappearing back of ’06.