MMVII

Categories: uncategorized

Date: 01 January 2007 20:02:11

Every year, after you've heard Big Ben strike midnight, and you've kissed everyone you need to, you know it's really New Year when the 'seeing the New Year in' telly programme finishes, and at the end of the credits it says 'BBC ...' and a bunch of letters, and you go 'oooh, look, it's not <last year's letters> any more'. The oddest-looking in recent years was 'MM', coming as it did after the great long string of 1999. If my primary-school history lessons serve me well, that would be MCMXCIX, but I could well be wrong as whatever it was, it was too long to read before the screen went blank. And they ask what the Romans did for us ...

Well, MMVII is here, with all the usual plans (I'm not doing resolutions) to lose weight, keep my house tidier, keep in better contact with my friends and family, not to leave undone those things which I ought to have done or to do those things which I ought not to have done etc. As I've alluded in my blog before, MMVI was largely a year of losses and setbacks, although it improved towards the end. There's lots to hope for in this new year, some things I'll keep to myself for time being but, God willing, there are a number of important dates in my family: at the beginning of February my dad will be 70, at the end of March my parents will celebrate their ruby wedding anniversary (40 years!) and at the beginning of August my grandad will be 90.

I suppose maybe I should strive to show some maturity, so I plan to: i) start planning meals ahead rather than picking up bits and bobs each evening on the way home from work, ii) make Spike take down the sign he acquired when he was working as a gasfitter's mate, which says 'Danger! Noxious and Flammable Gas Outlet - No Smoking or Naked Flames' and which - yes, you've guessed it, lives above the lavatory, iii) when watching TV or films with my brother (which we don't do as often as we used to nowadays) and you get the bit when the hero and heroine, who tend not to see eye to eye, are alone together, and they look at each other for just a fraction too long, and you can feel the air crackle with suppressed sexual tension, we will not ruin the atmosphere by yelling SSSNNNOOOGGGG!

On reflection, maybe maturity's not all it's cracked up to be.

Talking of watching telly (she says tangentially), we will be watching The Vicar of Dibley tonight. In a recent blog post, my brother talked about denominational identity, and I will post my own reflections on this sometime soon (no, really). But having watched previous VoD Christmas specials, you know you must be an Anglican when you squawk 'Huh! Like that would ever happen! Is outrage!' not because Rev Geri took the Christmas night service drunk, but because she was wearing a GREEN stole! But in this episode, the Rev Geri will be wearing white, so that's all liturgically correct. In real life I'm not sure a priest would agree to marry an atheist she hardly knows, just because he's gorgeous (well, she thinks he's gorgeous, I acknowledge he's tall, dark and handsome, but not quite tall, dark and handsome enough to cancel out the most outrageously smarmy smugness since Anthony Head went to borrow some coffee from his neighbour), but hey. It gives us another Dibley wedding, and if it's half as funny as Alice and Hugo's wedding my sides are going to hurt.