New Year, Same Old Me.
My annual resolution of no resolutions.
Like many people, I no longer set myself New Year Resolutions. The years of Bridget Jones-style self-improvement lists have long gone along with the self flagellation at not achieving anything on said lists. I am perfectly happy as I am and grateful to get another trip around the sun. So if I do set myself a goal, I don’t wait for January 1st for permission to start. Besides, I haven’t finished the Quality Street or the Twiglets yet and I may have got carried away buying cheese. We were also gifted cheese. We will be eating cheese for some time to come. Also nobody ate the Christmas cake, everyone seemingly defeated by the end of dessert. It sits in my one of my mum’s old cake tins and will be making regular appearances this month, with cheese.
Instead, the New Year started grey, rainy and blustery but with the rather exciting realisation that there was a whole day of programming on Radio 4 to celebrate 100 years of the Shipping Forecast. A whole day…heaven! Please do not unsubscribe at these words. I was introduced to Radio 4 and The Shipping Forecast in the late 1990’s when the principal of the drama school I was attending told me in perfect Received Pronunciation that I was “too estuary”. What estuary? What was he on about? My Essex accent clearly, but I didn’t live anywhere near a bloody estuary. I was from Epping - it was all forest. He sighed at my blank expression and said “Your glottal stops!” in the manner of one who is talking to a small child, as if this clarified everything. I literally had no idea what he was talking about. “Listen to some Radio 4, darling” he snapped, exasperated. And so I did. I had previously thought Radio 4 was for posh people if I had thought about it at all, and my quest to adopt the clipped tones of somebody who had received a private education inadvertently opened up a different world of thought, debate, drama and all round good quality broadcasting to me, rather different from how I had imagined it to be.
I had rented a high-ceilinged, draughty old room above the drama school. Having picked a school which ran full-time evening classes, the lessons did not finish until 10.30 p.m. A full day’s work, followed by four hours of drama training in whatever form it took on that particular day, left me lying awake, wide-eyed and wired. Outside, police sirens would wail past the drama school with alarming frequency, double decker buses passed by and rattled my window frames. The flashing lights of ambulances turning into the London Hospital opposite would illuminate my bedroom window. Burrowing down under the duvet, the Shipping Forecast theme tune, ‘Sailing By’, would set my mind adrift upon gentle, lapping waters. The Shipping Forecast itself, strangely poetic and beautiful, would lull me to sleep imagining strange lands and wind tossed seas. Cromity, Dogger, Fair Isle, German Bight, Lundy, Malin, Rockall, Shannon, Fastnet - such words, such places conjuring lighthouses, windswept cliffs, wheeling seabirds, fishing nets and trawlers. And the announcer - clear voiced and capable, keeping everyone safe for another night.
Later on New Year’s Day I received a phone call from a mobile number I did not recognise. This usually turns out to be a fairly disastrous decision but I answered it anyway. It was an artist called Dave Crocker whom I had just ordered a small oil painting from online. I had seen a feature on him on Countryfile at the weekend about his time-lapse paintings on the South West Coastal Path and my interest piqued, had been browsing his website. He had rung to thank me for my order, which was extraordinary in itself, and then we proceeded to chat about his work, making connections and finding new pathways. He told me about a book he had recently read where the author had talked about streetlights and how they only illuminate a small area and how it was important to look beyond the streetlights. He was trying to step out of his comfort zone and discover new ways to connect with people. I told him about Substack which he had not heard of. “You switched on another streetlight!” he told me. I love unexpected moments like this. A thoroughly nice human being and a lovely artist.
Immediately after, I received an unexpected phone call from my beloved aunt, who has been unwell. She was brimming with enthusiasm and positivity about the year to come, more for my year rather than hers, which says quite a lot about her. We talked books and poetry - I always end up scrabbling for bits of paper to jot down her book suggestions. She reads widely, prolifically and generously and I always leave her house laden with books to read. We made plans for lunch in the New Year and I put the phone down feeling happy and inspired. It felt like the New Year had got off to an auspicious start - a day of inspiration, talking and connection. I think if I have to make a resolution then it would be for the rest of the year to be rather like my New Year’s Day.
I do not take our decorations down until after Twelfth Night and as a result the assorted woodland creatures, various festive fruits, angels and the frog in the tiara are beginning to slide off the tree. There are no curtains on our front room windows at the moment and I swear there is no bleaker sight on our street than the view of our Christmas angel leaning over at a 45°degree angle as if vomiting, or at least with severe stomach cramps. I’m not sure if it is because it is the start of a New Year or simply because it is cold, wet and miserable outside but I have arrived back home from a short post-Christmas break dying to get back into the kitchen. I have decided to ignore the wilting decorations and practice displacement activity by making a Galette des Rois instead.
I like making puff pastry - there I’ve admitted it. A lone voice howling in the wilderness. That is not to say I make it all the time, I am just as happy to buy some readymade all-butter puff pastry (not the other stuff,) but there is something about the rolling and turning process I find incredibly relaxing. I pop an audiobook on, make a détrempe of flour, salt, butter and water, leave it to rest and then fold in a thin slab of butter (rolled flat within an A4 envelope of baking paper for even distribution as per Le Cordon Bleu method - it sounds finicky but is actually easier when you come to rolling and turning, also a deeply satisfying tidiness to it). Then six single turns or 3 doubles depending on my mood. What is not love to about that? Please feel free to leave comments below…
I always make a double batch of almond frangipane as it stores in the fridge for up to three days or stores in the freezer for up to three months. Useful for a quick frangipane fruit tart with homemade or shop-bought short pastry.
Wishing you all a peaceful and Happy New Year. Eat those twiglets, finish the cheese, drink the wine. Be kind to yourself in cold and dark January. I am off to interrogate the psychopath who left the empty wrappers in the Quality Street tin.
******
Writing this made me think of these:
Be taken to coastal waters and drift off to sleep to Sailing By by Ronald Binge.
Poems inspired by The Shipping Forecast on Radio 4's Poetry Please
For more Shipping Forecast trivia; Shipping Forecast Notes
Find out more about Dave Crocker, his cancer story and his paintings.
I love this Bird 💛