Walking The Dog

'The way I mean to go on' ... what does that mean? At New Year, we ask ourselves and each other, 'What are our resolutions?' I have written about this before. Hundreds of people have written about this before; every minute of every hour of every January 1st ever since someone first had the bright idea that on the strike of midnight when December 31st trips over into January, it would be a bright idea to recalibrate; to promise ourselves that we would change. And we all know what happens to most promises. They get broken; most of them before the end of January. No, strike that out and let's be honest, most are broken by the end of the second week of January; sunk with everyone else's broken promises into the murky gloom of dying resolutions and dark mid-winter. So for a moment, let's break this ramble down, reiterate a bit, and return to where I started - resolutions are pointless promises made out of desperation when we look at the lives we have created...

It could be argued that I watch too many films. Arguably - and more accurately - it is not the watching of too many films that I am guilty of, but the  purchasing of films in abundance: more per month than I could ever watch, apparently - or so I have been told. But this is probably accurate, as I frequently have to explain myself, when asked have you seen such-and-such a film and find that I have no option but to reply yes, sort of. By 'sort of' I mean that I have seen bits of the said film. Sometimes, enough to get the gist of plot and theme and story, but more often a taste that is puzzling and unsatisfactory and teasing in a cruel you-can-see-me-if-you-can-catch-me sort of way. And I never have time to catch it. It is the lot of a mother - she who washes and cooks and clears and cleans and finds the odd socks (sometimes) and walks the dogs and feeds them and wrestles the ironing-mountain and answers the phone and waters the garden and bakes the bread and never sits still ...

In a few hours - and fewer hours by the time you get to the end of this procrasti-ramble - it will be another year. 2016 will be in the past and 2017 will open its doors and lie before us. Which is all pretty obvious really. This being 31st December. What perhaps isn't so obvious are the hopes and aspirations we invest in this passing into the New Year. The promises that we wish upon ourselves and that we call resolutions. Brief intermission in the ramble for a picture of the end of a winter's day The New Year's Resolution is a gift in the hands of a procrastinator. Hours ... no, days ... spent planning exactly what to pick; which dissatisfaction with oneself to correct; which dream to commit to; which impossible ambition to clamber towards. Note the words dissatisfaction, dream and impossible and call me a cynic. Or a realist. Or a resolution agnostic. Why do we accede to the annual resolution humiliation? Where and when did resolution-making start? Why do I h...

Foreign holidays; what are they good for? Blue skies and pretty buildings Opening your eyes to things new and different and inspiring that send your head off into an intoxicating spin of words and stories and pictures and magic and light and mystery ... I see these lamps and imagine spirits huddled round them at night to keep warm; spirits that sing so quietly that you almost notice a softly lilting hum and then wonder what it was you were hearing and look away before anyone notices how intently you were studying the lamps and comments on the mad, far-away glint in your eye and wonders if it is something to do with the bottle of red at lunch-time; and spirits that sway as they sing, making the hot air dance and shimmer ... Seeing strange places and dreaming a people, their culture and history, at a time very different to our own  Being one of a crowd and experiencing that awkward, shuffling tourist-as-one-of-a-herd discombobulation at sit...