My study, 14.38

more rain, more rainbows.

From the window, hail; the sound of it hitting the window almost drowning out Angel Olsen on my headphones. It drips white from the gutter. Earlier, a rainbow stretched across the width of the garden. I have been reading a book written by a friend that opens with him dancing in a rainbow with his mother. It is a scene so vivid that now, when I see a rainbow, I think of him rather than Noah. I think this is called progress.

Last day of the year; auld year’s night as my grandmother used to call it. I like the idea of the night being two things: auld year’s night/new year’s eve, looking forward and back, a fitting start to January, Janus’s month, the month of two faces.

Only this year, I will not be looking back. I spent a good deal of the year looking back. Looking inwards. I will spend a lot of the next year writing about what I found. I have no desire to come off well in this. But for today, out with the old and in with the new.

I have spent the day working, a pleasing way to end and begin a year. Finally getting the picture of a manuscript that for a long time seemed more like a horse that would bolt if I approached it the wrong way. I used to be good with horses. Recall still the sensation of jumping fences on their back. Think sometimes of doing it again, if the fear of falling was not there. I will not resolve for the coming year, other than to keep going as I start it; working. I would like to be the kind of person who resolves to become better. To drink less, to weigh less, to spend less, but who wants to be less? Or to read more, to work more, to work out more. But I am content with how I am. Everything conspires to make us discontent this time of year. So no resolutions. Just work. Just the companionship it brings. Just the satisfaction of trying to do a job well, to enter into a battle with language and come away scarred, but better those scars than others.

(Which is to say, HAPPY HOGMANAY, and thank you to everyone who’s read and shared this experiment over the last few months. My debut novel, Ava Anna Ada, is out next month. I will try not to be overly self aggrandising about it. I thought it an ok book when final edits were in, now I am not so sure. More concerned with the what next than what’s been. I might post reviews, I might post how strange publication is, I might talk about it, I might not. Here’s to next year. If you’ve had a good 2023, wishing you more of the same for the coming year, and if you’ve not, the world turns, and will; here’s to 2024, to brighter days. Once, when my eldest daughter was very little, I told her about climate change, how we would have rainier days in the future. She thought for a moment, and then said, well, more rain, more rainbows. I’ve never forgotten that. Here’s too to more rainbows.)