new year - Debbie Young's Writing Life

Happy Chinese New Year (and sorry Christmas passed me by…)

Posted on January 17, 2012July 18, 2016 by Debbie Young

A visit to the Bath Postal Museum renews my guilt at failing to post as many Christmas cards as I’d intended. My negligence is another tiny dent in the viability of our postal service. So two reasons to feel guilty.

Laura dresses up at Bath Postal Museum — Postman Laura - role play at the Bath Postal Museum

Every November the same thing happens: I buy second class Christmas stamps as soon as they are issued, smug at my preparedness. It strikes me as indecently early to start writing my cards just then, so I put them to one side.

December dawns, but while the days of the month are in single figures, card writing seems less than urgent. I determine to wait until the Advent calendar doors reveal more than they conceal. By then, I tell myself, I’ll be feeling Christmassy enough to write cards.

And then, all of a sudden, the last posting date is looming. I scrawl a quick signature on the cards that don’t require an accompanying letter and whiz them up to the pillar box. With misplaced optimism, I set aside the others into my letter-writing pile. So far, I’ve refused to succumb to the catch-all standard letter as issued by some friends and family, but maybe I should, as without such drastic recourse, those cards awaiting letters won’t make it as far as the postbox, never mind the intended recipients’ mantlepieces.

Christmas card from Hawkesbury Upton — Village greetings

For a small subset of these people, it’s no big deal if I miss 25th December. These are my Jewish friends. To them, the Christmas festivities serve simply as a trigger to an annual exchange of news. One of them pointedly writes to me each year on Christmas Day itself, just to remind me that they’re not celebrating. That’s fine by me: the main thing is that I hear from them. They may even interpret my delay as a thoughtful recognition of their faith.

Christmas Day passes, and Boxing Day. Well, who wouldn’t welcome a New Year card instead? I love New Year and its promise of renewed good intentions.

New Year comes and goes; the unwritten cards remain on my desk. I despair until I realise that despite the BBC’s broadcast of 2012 dawning around the globe as it turns on its axis, there are still some quarters in which the New Year has yet to arrive. It’s not too late for me to wish my friends a happy Chinese New Year. That doesn’t fall until next Monday, 23rd January. So all is not yet lost.

新年快樂,as they say in Beijing.

Personal life

Surprisingly Resolute as the New Year Begins

Posted on January 3, 2012July 18, 2016 by Debbie Young

Debbie Young after the Bristol 10k Race 2011 — Bacofoil - not a flattering look but a welcome comforter after completing the Bristol 10K last year

Feeling sorry for myself during a bout of pre-Christmas flu, I decided I needed something more powerful than paracetamol to tackle my symptoms. So I tried the psychological approach: visualisation. I imagined how I’d feel if I was better. I started to picture myself doing healthy, vigorous things in the open air, in sunny spring weather, quite unlike the raging storms that were beating against my bedroom window.

I discovered I was frighteningly suggestible: before I knew it, I’d reached for my laptop and signed up to run the Bristol 10K next May. This also made a splendid New Year’s Resolution. I coasted into the Christmas festivities with confidence, knowing that I’d soon be running off all those mince pies.

This was a prime example of Janet’s Theory in action – a phenomenon I named after my sister-in-law’s insistence that “the best way to get something done is to do something else”. The most memorable example she gave, in an unguarded moment at a dinner party, was “If you want to get your nails really clean, make pastry”. The apple pie she’d made for pudding suddenly seemed less appetising.

I’ve seen her theory proven many a time. Getting my car valeted provided my husband with a new mobile phone. (The valet found one I’d lost – and replaced – underneath the driver’s seat.) Taking my car to be MOT’d equipped me with a whole new wardrobe. (Killing time while I waited in the high street, I discovered my favourite clothes shop was having a big spring sale). And if I ever want the house spring cleaned, I know exactly what to do: plan a party. That always triggers weeks of scurrying round to get the place respectable before the big day.

So if you have the misfortune to catch a cold this winter, I suggest you give the Lemsip a miss and let your imagination provide the cure. You never know what it might lead to.

I wish you a healthy and happy New Year!

(This post was originally written for the Hawkesbury Parish News, January 2012)

Family, Type 1 diabetes

Run, Rabbit, Run

Posted on January 24, 2011July 18, 2016 by Debbie Young

Year of the Metal Rabbit — Image by OnTask via Flickr

January 1^st was a rotten time to make New Year Resolutions. The excitement of Christmas was over, the decorations were losing their charm, and the mornings and evenings seemed darker than ever. Relentless advertising for the post-Christmas sales rubbed in the fact that it was an awfully long time till payday. It’s no wonder that January 24^th was officially designated the most depressing day of the year. This January had only two highlights for me: the opportunity to write cheques dated 1/1/11 or 11/1/11 and, a week later, my birthday – though, goodness knows, the novelty of birthdays wore off for me a very long time ago. So this year I decided to be realistic about New Year’s Resolutions: I resolved not to make any.

But then, a few weeks into the New Year, something wonderful happened: I looked up into the sky at 5pm and realised it was not entirely dark. A tiny tinge of blue was still hovering behind the impending night sky, a promise of the spring to come. It was enough to make my personal sap begin to rise. Then I spotted in my diary the fact that we’re on the brink of Chinese New Year. We’re entering the Year of the Rabbit. It wasn’t too late to make those New Year Resolutions after all! Before I knew it, I found myself signing up to run the Bristol 10K. A leaner, faster, fitter new me is just around the corner of 2011…

But it won’t only be me that benefits. I’ll be fundraising for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. Every £60 I raise will pay for an hour of research to find a cure for Type 1 Diabetes. This horrible disease has blighted the life of my husband and my small daughter, through no fault of their own. (Type 1 diabetes is not related to lifestyle choices). 100 years ago, their diagnosis would have been shortly followed by their death. Decades of research has made it possible to live with diabetes, provided you submit to constant and costly medical intervention, including multiple daily injections or the use of an infusion pump 24/7, plus half a dozen or more blood tests every single day. The next ambition of researchers is to make it possible for Gordon and Laura and millions like them to live without it. At present, there is no cure.

So, with my resolve strengthening as the daylight hours are lengthening, I’ve signed on the dotted line for the 10K charity run. I just wish I had a Chinese bank account. Because then, when I write the deposit cheque, I could take enormous pleasure in dating it for the first day of the Chinese New Year: Rabbits Rabbits Rabbits / Rabbit.

(This post was originally written for the February edition of the Hawkesbury Parish News.)

Personal life

My Year In Status

Posted on January 16, 2011July 18, 2016 by Debbie Young

Image via Wikipedia

When I logged into Facebook early in December, I was invited to create “My Year in Status”. At the press of a button, there appeared a single page showing a selection of the posts that I’d made during the whole of 2010. (For those who aren’t familiar with Facebook, a “post” is a message that you type into your Facebook page to update your friends about what you are doing or thinking.)

The result was surprising. Some things I remembered as if they were yesterday, but others I’d completely forgotten. Parts of my year I barely recognised. I wasn’t the only one taken aback. Some friends were startled to find that Facebook appeared to think they’d spent the whole year watching telly or boozing.

My Year in Status experience made me realise (a) how quickly a year goes (b) how short life is (c) that to achieve a more favourable Year in Status for 2011, I’d better start planning it now. So here is how I hope it might read, if all goes according to plan.

“Debbie Young ….has finally eradicated dandelions and couch grass from her my garden, making way for a bumper crop of home-grown vegetables …has just completed her first half-marathon within her target time (so the very thorough training paid off) ….feels calm and refreshed after her daughter’s 8^th birthday party ….has renewed her acquaintance with the bottom of the ironing basket ….earned a fine collection of rosettes in this year’s Village Show …has a house so clean and tidy that there’s absolutely no more housework she can do …has completed her Christmas shopping before the end of August ….feels younger and fresher with every passing year ….is very pleased with her new pet: a flying pig”

Happy New Year, everyone – may 2011 bring you your heart’s desire.

(This post originally appeared in Hawkesbury Parish News, January 2011.)

Personal life

The Tyranny of the Christmas Card

Posted on December 30, 2010July 18, 2016 by Debbie Young

Well, that’s it, I’m finally ready Christmas. It’s just a pity that Christmas couldn’t wait a little longer for me.

On December 1st, the inescapable countdown begins, and my heart sinks a little lower with every passing day. No, not the countdown to Christmas Day – opening presents and eating too much I can cope with. What I dread is the arrival of the last posting date for Christmas cards.

Always, I buy my cards in plenty of time for that deadline, picking up tany that strike my fancy as and when I see them. I’m very particular, avoiding anything fluffily sentimental or inappropriately commercial. Favourite designs are those depicting snowy postboxes (ironic, considering my aversion) because I live in an old post office, wintry Cotswold scenes reminiscent of my own village, and anything at all in support of my favourite charity, the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF).

I spend a great deal of time thinking about the friends and relations I’ll be sending them to, fondly recalling their last year’s Christmas message, wondering how this year has treated them, and selecting snippets of my news to tell them. But my inspiration always falls at inappropriate times when I don’t have a Christmas card to hand – driving in the car, pushing a trolley round the supermarket, submerged in the bath.

Meanwhile the blur that is Advent begins, with a rush of Christmas shopping, nativity plays, carol concerts, and parties at home, school and work. In such a social whirlwind, it’s all I can do to keep the household running smoothly, with quick pit-stops between events. And I like to get the house extra clean and tidy so that it’s a more pleasant place in which to spend the extended holiday. The house doesn’t dust itself, you know (contrary to my husband’s apparent belief).

Around 5th December, I make a start on the cards, transferring my stockpile from my Christmas cupboard (well, it gives me the illusion of being prepared) to my desk. Then I amass my various address books, paper and electronic, and the writing process begins.

The people who are only due a simple greeting message get priority treatment. Those meriting a letter are set aside to be picked off one at a time later, in reverse order of the likely length of the letter. Thus the friends to whom I plan to send the longest letters receive theirs last of all. They may appear to suffer from the greatest neglect, but my intentions for them are of the very best.

This year, they’ve had to wait a very long time indeed. I know myself better these days than to stock up on Christmas second-class stamps. I accept that the second class posting deadline will have come and gone long before my cards are ready to send. First class it will have to be. But what I really need this year is some sort of uber-first-class, a time-travelling stamp that can make a card posted after Christmas Day arrive a few days beforehand. Only today have I finally finished and posted the final card, slinking furtively up to the pillarbox, slipping them through the slot as guiltily as if despatching a signed confession.

This year, I’m thankful that any friends who don’t read my blog may just blame the snow for the delay in receiving a card from me. When my missive finally arrives, they may be glad to have belated proof that I’m not dead. But my honest nature compels me to confess my inadequacy.

By chance, one of the cards I chose this year had a 12 Days of Christmas theme. I’m hoping that recipients will pick up the subliminal message that the festive season doesn’t officially end till January 6th. That would left me off the hook.

However, sufficient is my chagrin to make me resolve to do better next year. Some people I know start their Christmas shopping in the January sales. Maybe I should resolve to start writing my 2011 Christmas cards the moment the new year dawns.

Happy New Year, everyone. No, actually, make that Merry Christmas!