Spacephiller with Phil Creighton
HOW’S YOUR resolve at this time of year?
A long time ago I made a New Year’s Resolution that I have resolutely stuck to every year without fail. It’s a brilliant one and I thoroughly recommend that you do too.
It is, as the internet clickbait parlance goes, one easy change. And you’ll be able to stick to it. It won’t cost you a penny, and it will make you smile.
Back in the black and white days, when television sets were steam powered and the radio played records recorded on wax cylinders, the Radio Times marked New Year’s Eve with some illustrations on its listings pages.
It featured a baby and an elderly man with a long white beard, a scythe and an hourglass.
Being more baby-faced than elderly, it was the first time such an image had appeared before me. Who was this strange old man. He might have a white beard, but he was no Santa, that’s for sure.
And lo, the concept of Old Father Time was introduced to a small boy in short trousers.
Fast forward a few years and another kind soul introduced me to Minnie Louise Haskins’ poem The Gate of the Year.
It’s a verse that looks to the future, starting: “And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year: ‘Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown’.”
2022 is certainly an unknown. Well, apart from death and taxes.
Here we are with the bright, bouncing new year: a mere slip of a 12 months and raring to go, covid restrictions dependent.
For many of us, the diary pages are blank. Making plans in the middle of the pandemic seems foolhardy.
For others, we’re looking at the dates with expectation, be it a new arrival, a marriage, a dream holiday, or a new chapter in life.
In a normal year, those would be what many of us will be anticipating, but uncertainty lingers. Old Father Time from 2020, never mind 2021, is still hovering in view while our lives are in a kind-of limbo.
At the same time, it has always been thus, pandemic or not.
A number of years ago, my new year’s resolution was to keep a diary. A page a day, plenty of space to record all manner of trivia and nonsense. It was never going to be Samuel Pepys, nor would it reach the literary heights of Kenneth Williams, but it was a peep into teenage angst.
A number of years later, my new year’s resolution was to shred every page. It took ages, but believe me, it was worth it. No Old Father Time, you’re not letting me relive in that awkward teenage past a moment longer. And thankfully no one else will be privy to the early scrawlings of a Spacephiller.
On social media across New Year there were photos of people who had written something they were grateful for every day of the year, folded it up and put it in a jar. This was to be reopened on December 31, so they could spend the day reflecting on 12 months of gratitude.
It’s a lovely idea, and certainly a better way of keeping track of time above my sub-Adrian Mole witterings.
Perhaps, if anything, this time, this fleeting moment, when covid is lingering and lingering like a bad smell that just won’t go away, it’s actually worth doing. Every cloud always has a silver lining they say, and it’s good to say something positive happened each day, even when it feels like it hasn’t. It could be mundane – the milkman coming, the supermarket having a special offer. It could be unique, it could be a memory, but surely there is something to look forward to each day.
What about that resolution I made? Never make another new year’s resolution.
See, told you it was easy.
