A Cough and Cold Christmas

It is usually about this time over the festive period that my feet get itchy. I'm bored now with the fairy lights, tinsel and too much food. Now I want something more austere. I want space, clear rooms, new toys to be put away in their new homes. I need fresh, light healthy food, and I need exercise.

This Christmas saw us all fall prey to colds (if we're female) or flu (the one isolated male). We've been coughing all night and sleeping all day. Luckily the TV has provided plenty of entertainment to keep small, poorly children occupied while the adults nod off on the sofa. Christmas present DVDs have assisted too, but there's a chunk in the middle of Shrek the Third that I have yet to see - I slept through it when we saw the film at Theatr Mwldan and I slept through it again at home on Boxing Day.

The house reeks of Vick, we've used up bottles of Calpol and Tixylix Night and snowdrifts of used Kleenex are piling up in the cimne fawr. The main victim of this illness has been the food, which we haven't really felt like eating, so much of it has been cooked, picked at and then frozen.

But we've had nice visits from jolly friends too - most of whom arrived with their own version of the cold/flu, as well as gifts and bottles of wine. So we coughed and spluttered and picked at food together over convivial glasses of wine in front of roaring fires to warm our aches and pains.

So it is now time to think of 2008 and and make a few resolutions. Last year's were to lose weight, get fit and write my novel. For once I actually achieved two of those: The getting fit part failed, but I did lose a stone in weight and write the first draft of my novel.

This year's resolutions are to lose more weight (and get fit), rewrite my novel, tidy up the house and redecorate it, and tidy up the garden and plant it.

But there are still two days to go before I need embark on my grandiose plans for 2008. Two days of eating, drinking and being merry, although I'm not at all a New Year party type of gal. I prefer to be on my own or just with my husband on New Year's Eve. The days when I hauled myself out to the local pub to be forced to kiss God-Knows-Who drunk on Heaven-Knows-What are long past. I'm not the sort to join the throngs to watch the Big Ben bongs either. I'd rather do that from the comfort of my sofa.

Except when 1999 became 2000. I did venture out then to watch some fabulous fireworks, then returned home to watch the New Millennium being born on TV. But then, clutching my glass of champagne, I heard more bangs, and ran outside, into the field outside the house and upwards to the highest point of our land. All around me the sky was flowering with fireworks and I got an almost 360 degree panorama of a display, only the hill behind was blocking out all but the most exuberant rockets in the direction of Cardigan. Down below us, towards Tenby, Haverfordwest, Pembroke Dock and Milford Haven I could see hundreds of fireworks being let off. Then I realised it was raining, it was muddy and I was wearing my slippers. I was still carrying my glass of champagne too. I toasted the fiery sky, then headed back inside to my husband who rolled his eyes at my muddy socks and opened another Budweiser.

I'll leave the last words on New Year to Mark Twain:

"New Year's is a harmless annual institution, of no particular use to anybody save as a scapegoat for promiscuous drunks, and friendly calls and humbug resolutions."