New Year Review

No matter how old we are, we all are works in progress.

I’ve been changing the pages in my filofax and I’m very aware of how yin and yang this last year has been.

 

Covid restrictions being lifted should have meant everything in the garden was rosy but travel chaos, flight cancellations and rail bollocks has put paid to my trips to Rome and Barcelona and London whilst the recession, fuel crisis and financial crash has sobered us all up from our post-covid frivolities 

And so, let me get 2022 into some perspective 

Let’s look at the positives

I’m on the tentative journey towards a new career.

Not bad at 61  I think.

My family met up for a delightful and oh so necessary reunion in Sitges where we sat together into the small wee hours talking and talking and talking about family shit. 

Sadly my nephew divorced but we bonded more over something sad in common.

My love affair with London and with theatre blossomed again, not only, with my touchstone meets with Nu continuing but with catch ups with friends Alex and Jon and Janet of course, and visits to my “ second “ home of the Z hotel, which is tucked carefully behind Covent Garden. 

To Kill a Mocking Bird, Cabaret, The Corn Is Green, Six, The Royal Ballet and the dearest of them all Come From Away it’s been a fabulous year for theatre in London and at home.

London eventually meant meeting nephew Leo too whose absence has broken my heart a little more than I ever realised it would .

Zoom meets have dissolved into real meets , Jane in Manchester, Ruth in the wonderfully bizarre and welcoming Findhorn , The Northern Belle with Nu and in Sheffield with Mike and John and Katherine very soon

Dim witted but sweet Roger arrived chasing autumn leaves like a loon and with the thanks of a cheerful and tone deaf builder my new bathroom arrived with a wall mounted heated towel rail to go weak at the knees for . ( I had 232 comments on that blog when I finally unveiled the splendour) 

Blogging has provided a mini life line as it has always done and in 2022 I’ve had over 2.5 million hits on Going Gently  alone….go figure that one….contrary to some, I must be doing something right.

On a personal note , I will ask for an armistice on troll comments .seriously they do nothing but poison the air that we breathe and after all of the hard few years we’ve had  I really don’t need the bother……

Helping with the TCA Trelawnyd Community Association has given me some more direction and purpose and sense of community again and my part time status at work has given me more space for college and home. Both have been incredibly welcome .

It’s all still a work in progress, especially with some health problems lurking in the shadows. Shadows that can’t always be shaken with positivism and humour and which are always sadly there when you live alone. 

In the new fanatical crisis we have all found ourselves in, I , like everyone else need to reevaluate things but I’m lucky I have a family that loves me, friends that do the same and I live in a village that cares for me.

Thank you to them and to Trendy Carol and Ewan,…..without them I could never have kept my dogs. 

Their support will never be forgotten.

The news that my ex husband is getting married again slapped me across the face much harder than I expected it too but bra straps have to be hoisted  and I have to get on with things.

It was one of the last hurdles to face , come to think…

I find life lonely at times and I will not apologise for saying so.

“We feel what we feel “so says Carl Rogers 

But like all of us it’s one foot in front of another and don’t beat ourselves up when we get things a little Wrong.

Thank you dear readers , readers who keep coming again for snippets of everyday life of a sentimental gay bloke living in a Welsh Village. Your kindness, occasional sycophancy , good humour , and friendship means a great deal, especially when the shadows gather in an often unkind world

I’m rushing now, I’m covering a late shift at work and it’s already 1 pm 

I’m working tomorrow too but have just been invited to the luscious Velvent voiced Linda ( and Nick’s) for drinks later tonight, so that will be a first in decades

Going out New Year’s Eve…….

Bloody hell

Look at me ?