Us Dixons

It’s that time again when I sit down on a November evening still stunned about how dark it has got so early. Why can’t I just accept it? It happens every year; we get round the horn on the solstice and think we can detect the extra 5 minutes on New Year’s Eve in desperation. Next we’re complaining about losing an hour’s sleep. So, I think, what is this that we called 2019? What happened? Did I use it wisely? Did I carpe diem? Well I carped quite a lot actually. As a country it felt like we were hammering our toes and then wondering why we couldn’t run.

It is unprecedented that I find myself writing this on New Year’s Eve, though not unprecedented was the hopeless optimism that lead to this. We believed the bathroom fitter who said a complete gutting and re-fitting of our en-suite bathroom would take 12 days, allowing a short break in Munich to sample Xmas to the max. We would return a few days before The Day, fuelled with festivity, laden with traditional market wares, ready for our well planned Yule. However, I struggle to convey the madness that comes from three weeks of tasting and sleeping in dust, laying at night next to a hole in the wall with smells of sewage wafting through.