Happy New Year!
The Barracks had a visit - my daughters both came to stay for a while between Christmas and Saint Sylvester's Day. We don’t all three get together all that often, so it’s a joy when we do.
I even took a few days off from being particularly productive. So that was nice!
I’ve always had this thing where I do make New Year’s Resolutions, but I make them a few weeks into the year. I want to develop a bit a feel for the new calendar before I go ahead and make promises to it.
It seems that 2022 is not in the mood to give up its secrets slowly. Setting an immediate marker with the hottest New Year’s Day ever does seem slightly portentous.
Also, I knew in November last year what I need to change in 2022. Two words - More Gardening.
If the weather is going to stay this ridiculously, worryingly, mild, then the job list for the week will look a little like this -
Clean the pig food room before it becomes the mouse food room
Make seed bags
Start work on the loft kitchen
Clean sweep of the wood store
Process all the carriable wood from the forester
Write a blog post about the most radical act you can perform in the new year - to be proactively compassionate.
We have passed the darkest morning. After the shortest day, the sun continues to rise a little later. Around here, the latest sunrise was 08:12. Look! It’s getting brighter in the morning at last. I’m sure we can make something positive out of that!
How about you? I would love to know in the comments if you have set intentions for the year, especially if they are at all influenced by climate change. Or if you think that’s a particularly dumb idea, let me know that as well!
And finally, I said last week that “reading more” would probably do us all good. I’m going to start recommending other Substacks which I follow and particularly like. Maybe if you are reading others. you can let us all know in the comments?
Please like & share!
The Pirate Ben x
I think I’d mentioned to you that I was unsettled by seeing the cherry blossom tree out back blooming in late December, about 4 or 5 years ago. It’s now a normal occurrence for the flora to behave like we have 2 springs, which tends to mean that neither is particularly spectacular.
Anyway, for my 2022, I’d like to reverse the cheeky type 2 diabetes diagnosis I got last year, as well as losing enough weight to make people feel like they can’t let my radical transformation pass without comment. :D
first of all, your daughters look as beautiful as always and I love that they could manage to have a quick visit before the year ends. But yeah, let’s talk about resolutions.. my thing I wanna do for now is to be vegan one month at a time, until I (hopefully) pass the 12 month mark, let’s see :o
I started being vegetarian because of the animals so many years ago but my reasons have slightly changed, and because you asked about resolutions concerning climate change, I thought about it and yeah, actually it mostly is an environmental decision by now I think, and also I just can‘t imagine myself any other way than not eating corpses haha.
Also, tattooing is on the top of my list when it comes to passions I wanna invest myself in this year, and yes, I know, I promised to make a tattoo account such a long time ago ahah, it‘s gonna happen this year!
By the way, please let me know what you‘re reading currently and planning to read, I need inspiration since I just finished my current book :)
happy new yearr