Last year I resolved that we would a have a dinner party every month. This was a spectacularly poor resolution which was only intermittently successful and nearly sent us to an early grave. We made a list of all the people we wanted to have over but far fewer of them than expected made it off the list.
This year, I have two more modest and, I hope, achievable resolutions. The first is to try to meet again people I have lost contact with – I have already had a notable success in January finally managing to meet an old friend with whom I soldiered in the salt mines as an apprentice solicitor more than 20 years ago. She lives in a distant southern suburb of Dublin and mostly doesn’t work outside home. But I went as far south as I could and she came north and we managed to meet for an early lunch in the city centre before she had to go and collect her youngest from pre-school. I was pleased. She is from Cork and it was nice to compare notes with another exile married to a Dubliner. Her marriage is further mixed in that she is Protestant and he is Catholic and both of them seem to care (which in my experience is rather unusual). She tells me that they alternate between Catholic mass one Sunday and Protestant service the next. This is an arrangement which I imagine is not entirely satisfactory to either and somewhat confusing for the children but marriage is all about compromise and I suppose it is all part of life’s rich tapestry. Anyhow, I digress. 2016 will be the year for digging up long lost friends and I already have January sorted.
My second resolution is to try to spend more time alone. I am mostly with people: working, lunching, bonding with my loving family. But I love to be alone. I am aiming for half an hour a day, we’ll see how that goes.
I am not fooling myself that my third resolution will be easy but I want to try to do something about the piano this year. Wish me luck.