Oh January, I used to think you awful. You used to be plain and boring after the excitement of December, November had Bonfire Night, October is our anniversary and Halloween, and before that is the general excitement of Autumn. January used to just be exam time at University, or thawing snow.
This year is really quite different. Not only is there no snow, but the garden is completely untended to, and although it’s mild, oh my gosh is it windy-and the whole place looks a mess. This is not helped by the fact the fence is half blown over, the gate has been whipped off, and rubbish is strewn across the place from toppled over bins and recycling totes, and a busy, busy Autumn meant the place was never really tidied after Summer in the first place.
This means that on top of the normal things like sowing sweet peas (if you want to get lovely strong ones), I need to dig everything over. I would like to grow my own potatoes this year too, so will have to get a move on and start to chit some of the many varieties taking up vast corners of garden centres at this time of year.
January is actually quite exciting this year. My friend Holly who was involved in a terrible accident has an amazing outlook on life which has completely rubbed off on me. I feel like last year was a bit ‘Urgh’, I think lots of people have thought that. There seems to be a general consensus-certainly around the coffee table-that yes we did get through it, and yes we should learn whatever lessons it’s taught us, but it was a bit of a long hard slog.
I think we are still in comforting food mode, but a bit more ready for fresh things with bite too. Re-heated second helpings of Christmas and New Year dinner are long forgotten! We’re planning on going on holiday with my family this year and getting a villa in Cyprus for two weeks, so like last year I think I'm going to be having lots of Greek and Cypriot food as we’ll be booking our flights early and I tend to get in holiday mode early…very early! There is loads of gamey foods available, and we’re incredibly lucky that our local butcher has such a wide supply of really good food. Living by the sea means that we’ve got a massive choice in fish namely; John Dory, Mussels, Oysters, Scallops and Turbot. There are bundles of root vegetables about for filling up on, and the clementine’s are always there for a burst of colour. I'm living by the BBC foodie website
here which is full of really great ideas from a range of really great names.
Most of all I think its time to get like Paddington Bear and make some marmalade with Seville oranges!
I'm hoping to have a busy year, I'm planning to go out and do more, this means lazing about less, but with working one normal job means I spend less time travelling. I hope that I'm busy actually doing fun things, or at least a chore I need to do. I don’t want to fill my time with travelling, I don’t want to fill my time with nonsense I don’t want to do, and I don’t want to spend time with people that drain my energy. Those are pretty much my new year’s resolutions-but probably something that you should subscribe to in general-and something I should have had the sense to actually act upon long before now.
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