Shortly before Christmas, I rather conveniently injured my wrist again -- the same one that I broke on Halloween 2023. Choosing a muddy, sloping shortcut to the pub after work, my little legs started pumping faster and faster in order to keep up with the forward momentum of my body, before I reached tipping point, sliding into the road, with my bag, phone and work paraphernalia scattering around me on the tarmac piste, which ended just outside the queue for a nightclub.
I stood up in that eager way that one does in order to deflect attention, and a large man at whose feet I'd landed said to everyone in general "it wasn't me."
In my bed later, the pain got too much, and at 4.30am I was in A&E at the Infirmary. It was a busy night, including a troupe of ravers looking after one of their party, who'd overdone the disco biscuits perhaps, but who had something wrong with his stomach. I admired them for not abandoning him: out together, back together, even when Josh and Ali have fucking overdone it, again.
Six hours in to my visit, I was assured that I hadn't broken anything, before the doctor said the words that drop from paradise: "you'll have to take a few days off work." I managed to stretch them out until my annual leave for Christmas began.
For Christmas we rented a Victorian terraced house in Whitby. It enjoyed a view of the Abbey, whose origins date back to a seventh-century monastical riposte to the publication of Bram Stoker's Dracula.
I was allocated a bed in a room with my youngest in the other single and my eldest and her Spanish girlfriend in the double. I was blessed at being with the non-snorers of the clan, but my daughter provided some entertaining, melodically-varied farting.
On the first night, being in need of the loo in the small hours, and my navigation to that room being handicapped by a lack of light, I heard a strange exclamation as I recoiled from touching human flesh. My daughter removed her leg and helpfully put her phone on to steer me away from the wall which I was about to strike with my entire person.
Whilst I enjoy being with my family, I draw the line at Call The Midwife, so on Christmas Day evening I meandered along narrow alleyways flanked by small houses, many of which had plaques attached, listing a cutesy name from the Cath Kidston School of Holiday Home nomenclature (Snowdrop Cottage, and so on), and the details of how to rent it. I ended up on the clifftop, in the bar of the Royal Hotel, where I had a jolly time chatting to a few Yorkshire folk enjoying an old-fashioned Turkey and Tinsel hotel break.
Two of my daughters managed a quick dip in the sea on Boxing Day. I took a supervisory role, selflessly minding my pint, as broken glass on beaches is indifferently hazardous to all.
So only three days late, may I wish all readers and commenters a very Happy New Year. Let's keep this subculture of the internet going in the face of women in gyms and men doing O-mouth shapes on youtube.
