Week 6: 4 – 10 January

Who’d have thought it? Snow at Christmas, a new Doctor Who and the England cricket team winning in South Africa after beating the Australians last summer. Truly, as the old ballad has it, the world is turned upside down (“the poor old cook, in the larder does look/ Where is no goodness to be found/ Yet let’s be content, and the times lament, you see the world turn’d upside down”). The story goes that the British soldiers played the tune when Lord Cornwallis surrendered to the Americans at Yorktown in 1781, so astonishing did that seem, but really I think the cricket is the more remarkable event.

And here we are, Christmas well and truly over, the decorations taken down and put away and the Lord of the Rings dvds back on the shelf to gather dust for another year. The new year always has the feeling of The Morning After the Hogmanay Party The Night Before, a bit tawdry, a bit stale and hung over, wondering quite where that underwear came from (and just who put it there…). Edinburgh’s citizenry seem to be collectively avoiding each other’s gaze right now, just in case they recognise themselves (“It was you!”).

It’s not a pretty sight, believe me, but then neither am I, since I’m still clean shaven. I’ve remembered now why I usually affect a beard – it’s not because I cut myself, which was what I thought, though I do that too – but something much simpler: I just get bored. Plus I have to get out of bed 10 minutes earlier, which seems a bit much on a cold, dark January morning.

Not much to report on the knitting front, just steady progress. It’s slowed down a bit now I’m back at work, of course, and no longer shuffling about the flat in my slippers, but I’m still keeping up with an hour a night or so, which equates to 2 rows, more at weekends. In a couple of weeks it will be time to start the yoke, I expect, which means I’d better think of a pattern soon.

Still, look on the bright side – there’s only 348 sleeps till Christmas!