In answer to the question “How about a ‘what would Anna do’ list to help the rest of us during those tough moments in life?”, as asked by Invader Stu, in response to this post.

Oh, how My Beloved laughed when he saw this question. “How together do they think you ARE?” he gurgled, rather unfairly, as I, in response, burst into tears and burrowed under the nearest duvet.

Bursting into tears and burrowing into duvets is, by the way, number one with a bullet on the list of ‘What would Anna do?’. I am prepared to admit it doesn’t actively help the situation very much, it does help by removing the problem to the other side of a duvet, and that can only be a good thing.

Baking is number two. And cooking in general. That is proper calming therapy. When I’m particularly worried about things I end up with a stack of cakes and stews and soups and biscuits and sauces that no two people could possibly get through.

Daydreaming about having more money than the pope and more freedom than a bird and being able to be wherever I please and answer to no one. That’s another good thing to do.

None of these, however, are terribly practical.

I try other things. Repeating ‘all will be well’ until I believe it, and trying to remember that everyone has their own motivations and needs, and that just because mine conflict with someone else’s, it doesn’t mean that mine are more important, and if things have to work out better for them this time, it is only so that things can take their proper course for me in the long term.

Having said that, I also have come to believe very strongly that if you find something you like doing, you work as hard as you possibly can at it until you’re good enough that you get to do it pretty much all the time. Even if it means working literally all the time until you get there. And if you spot a door left ajar, you push on it to see what’s behind it. And then not be upset if it closes again. Because that’s just what doors do sometimes.

But those are the high ideals. Those are the things I believe and have to force myself to do. The things that are easier? The things like hiding under a duvet and making an enormous pan of caponata and some carrot muffins? Those are the ones I end up defaulting to.

Mainly the duvet thing.

In answer to the question “What is your favourite sort of sky?”, as asked by Pigwotflies, in response to this post.

It is too easy an answer to say “blue, cloudless, and stretching from horizon to horizon, disappearing into the sea at at least one end”… But, frankly, that is just the truth. That is the sky that (even thinking about it) makes me feel all peaceful and happy and like the world is filled with possibility. A low, heavy grey sky, and I’m literally the polar opposite. I’m basically a human barometer.

I like skies from the top, too, though - as I mentioned before Christmas, being above the clouds, looking down on an ocean of candyfloss while the sun shines, unfettered, above? Seeing that makes me feel lucky - to be alive, to be where I am, to be able to enjoy it: I feel lucky for it all. Every single time.

The sky at dawn - that’s another.
And the sky over San Francisco, with its fast winds and fog flying off the top of mountains.
The sky over Brighton at dawn is good too - though I don’t have as many pictures of that. But for the first two categories, I am grateful for my friend Heather’s set of time-lapse videos of the dawn from the window of her apartment in San Francisco. My favourite is this one, all tiny fluffy clouds, blowing over the rooves of sleeping houses.

I like the sky, basically, pigwotflies. I like being able to see the sky. Little fluffy clouds, I am alright with.
It is the big, flat, sky-eating greyness I do not like.
That barely counts as a sky at all.

In answer to Berlin, Brussels or Budapest?

As asked by Tuuli, in this post, where I asked people for questions.

Tuuli, apparently noting that since I live in Brighton, and have previously visited many other places beginning with B, (Birmingham, Bruges, my Bed, other places beginning with B that I can’t think of right now) I will almost certainly wish to visit more in the near future.

But which? Berln? Brussels? or Budapest?

To be honest, I was thinking about visiting Barcelona, but that’s just not on the list. SO.
Budapest.

Berlin, I’ve been to, and I like very much. I like walking around it, I wrote at the time about The Zoo and other bits, I like the feel of it, and the cafes and the museums and the difficult mixture of life-carrying-on and contrition-for-generations-past that run through a lot of the monuments and public art. Also I love German food.

Brussels? Well, I don’t want to say “I’ve been to Bruges and therefore I’ve done Belgium”, but the thing is, right, I went to Bruges, yeah? And… to be honest that was just enough beer, chocolate, lace and moules frites to last me a decade. And those are all lovely things. But the thing about Bruges was that it was wonderful if all you wore was lace, all you drank was beer (and that didn’t turn out well on our weekend in Bruges) and all you ate were mussels for starters and chocolate breasts for pudding. But otherwise it got a bit much, quite quickly. And until someone tells me that Brussels offers a completely different, utterly unique and remarkable experience VERY DIFFERENT FROM BRUGES, then I’m afraid Brussels and I are not to be.
I remain, meanwhile, an enormous fan of their sprouts.
They make good sprouts.

So yes. With Berlin done for now, Brussels crushed by Bruges and Barcelona not in the running, I think, of these three, I choose Budapest.

Should I go? When should I go? What’s there? Is it nice? Do they have Budapestian Sprouts?

In answer to the question: What one thing can’t you quit but you know you really should…
(As asked by Emily in this post)

Hell’s TEETH, but I love pizza.

When I am tired, when I am stressed, when I am sad, when I am happy and just happen to be in the mood for a pizza, if someone puts a pizza in front of me, if someone just says the word “pizza”, I will almost inevitably fancy a pizza.

I won’t always have one, of course. If I had pizza every time I wanted one, I would be 47 times the size I am now. And I’m not exactly tiny now.

The crispiness and hard bubbles along the edge of a good super-thin crust, a proper tomato sauce, not too much mozzarella, but good mozzarella, fresh basil, and only a couple of simple toppings. Spicy salami and peperoncini, if you are me. And I am.

And this is why I should, in all reasonableness, give up pizza. I’m always trying to be fitter, healthier, thinner, and, frankly, there is no ‘Pepperoni Pizza Plan’ in any diet book I’ve ever seen. Because it’s just not good for you.

But damnit, it’s so good.

So this is why I won’t be giving up pizza. Can’t bear to, shouldn’t even joke about doing so, it’s too horrible.

No, instead, I have to do the only thing I’ve found is a good substitute for giving something up - seek out the one that every other will pale in comparison to, spend enough money a couple of times to develop a taste for the very best kind of something, and then not want to eat another pizza unless it is that one, or better than that one.

Good plan, eh?

(Actually, frankly speaking, and between us, it is not that good a plan. Because you have to taste all the other pizzas along the way to check, but at least you therefore only try those once, right?)

So yes. It’s pizza.

Well, that and alcohol. And wanting to be where I am not. And being scared of money. And doing myself down. And smoking (in winter, while drunk, or when stressed). And oh good garden seats, there are about forty-seven things I should give up.

But the first one - and the main one, and first one that I won’t be giving up out of all of them - is pizza.

Possibly just coincidence, but, you know? I really fancy a pizza right now. Who’s in?

So I was making a list of things to write about last night, and then discovered I was going round in circles

If anyone has a question, you could put it in the comments, so I could answer each in a separate post?

No more than two questions per person? (Of which I might only answer one). They don’t have to be ABOUT ME, either, at all, really. Just anything. On as random or as diverse a topic as you might like. Or not-a-question. Just a title. Whatever, really.

I can’t promise to do them quickly, but if it gives me something to do in my not-work moments this week, restarts my brain a bit and means that I can write on this here blog of mine, I would be very happy and grateful.

SO. Anyone?

Questions? Titles? Thoughts to riff on? Words? Requests? Or, basically, Questions?
Any questions?

Napping is one of the greatest things ever invented. It is an unarguable fact. It is a ritual, an almost sacred act, and a tradition that I have believed strongly in ever since my teenage years.

Saturday afternoon napping. Post-Sunday-Brunch napping. Weekday napping. Napping hidden in the basement of a post-university job once I clearly wasn’t throwing my heart into. Pre-big-night-out napping. Post-nap napping. There is very rarely such thing as a bad nap, frankly.

(And yes, I do realise that friends with, and readers with, kids will probably be hating me for my self-indulgent nappability already. I can’t apologise. I love napping too much. It would feel like I was cheating on napping.)

It has come to my attention that some people disagree on the rules surrounding the nap.

For instance,

1) it has been suggested to me on more than one occasion that a nap is only a nap if it takes place on a sofa. Which is untenable, as I can’t sleep anywhere but a bed (well, a bed and/or the basement storage area of that workplace in Manchester that should probably go unnamed, in case they want some of their pay back).

2) Others say that a nap more than half an hour long is, strictly speaking, a whole other night’s sleep. Which just isn’t trying hard enough. AND makes me worry about how much sleep they get during an actual sleepytime.

3) Timings of naps. I mean, I personally have a rule that no nap can start after 4pm, or cross over into sundown once it has started (but let’s face it, that’s because if I had my way - in the winter - I would happily sleep through about 20 hours a day from now until April) but if a nap is required and it happens to fall outside those boundaries, there is really nothing I can do but give into the nap.

Because really, the best thing about napping is that there are really no rules. And if there ARE rules, naps break them all. Sleeping? In the day?!? What kind of anarchy is this? What is the world coming to, etc

The best kind, I say. The very best kind of anarchy there is. The kind you can do while sleeping.

Yesterday, as I may have mentioned, was a bad day. Today, however, was a much better day.
And so it goes.
I cannot speak for tomorrow, but I will find out when I get there.

I should have some resolutions, though. I know it seems silly to some, tying all your willpower to an arbitrary date - so I won’t do that. Regardless, the days are getting longer, the sky will clear a little at a time, and it is very much the best time for me to think about things I will do this year, at some point, and can work towards.

In the knowledge that fixing things as absolutes is almost certainly the surest way to fail, I will therefore simply group the things I have been thinking about into broad categories: THINGS. STUFF. OTHER. PROSE, CONS, RANDOM and YES.

THINGS
For a while I’ve been meaning to do a series on this blog here - which is, and has always been, a matter of things mainly personal, and will be ten years old this coming year - about the little objects I carry around with me from house to house. Just because (not to be morbid), I am aware that if I suddenly wasn’t here anymore, and someone came into my house, they would have absolutely no idea why I held onto some things over others, or have a sense of what they meant. And they do have stories. Not great, world-changing, important stories, but their own stories, and I like that.

Also, once I’ve told the stories and realise which ones are more important to me than others, it might be easier to get rid of a bit more stuff. Which is a generally good aim for people who will be moving again before another six months have passed.

STUFF
I need to get rid of more of my stuff, and save a lot more money. Part one of this plan, in the shape of a spending ban, is already in place. I will mainly, then, be aiming to get rid of stuff by using things until they are all used up. Not buying clothes when there are clothes I could wear, not buying books when I have piles of books unread, not buying three new notebooks (one of my worst whims) when I have thirty at home with only the first five pages used. And not picking up a basket in the shop if I’m ‘just popping in for a couple of things’ so I don’t end up picking up extra, not getting carrier bags, all of that. Make it so.

OTHER
I need to exercise. That’s not just the general post-Christmas lament, it’s the realisation I’ve come to over the last couple of years that when I exercise, my mood improves considerably, my sleep improves exponentially, my energy and enthusiasm for work expand, and I treat myself with more respect.
I also, however, know that the longer I don’t exercise, the harder I find it to restart, and the more grief I give myself about everything in the meantime, including beating myself up about being lazy to the point that even beginning exercise seems ultimately pointless and therefore never happens. So I just pull my socks up, sort it out, and just go and do it. So I will. Going back to bootcamp is not financially viable this next couple of months, but after that? Almost certainly.

Also our next scheduled visit to San Francisco is being timed to coincide with the Bay to Breakers race, so that’s something to aim for.

PROSE
I hereby resolve to write almost exactly the same number of books this year as I have every other year . I mean, if pushed, I could try and stretch to ‘one’, but I really don’t think that’s for me. Not this year. Actually, my aim this year is more to expand the various interesting avenues of writing creatively that I’ve somehow found myself wandering along. And to experiment with how to continue doing them consecutively. Since 80% of the contract work I do at the moment is from home, and since I sometimes have huge difficulty focussing on one thing at a time, I may make myself a different hat for each current project. It almost certainly won’t help, but it will be a brilliant piece of procrastination.

Still, as I’m now, it seems, working in the games industry, advertising, and little bits of semi-journalism, doing really good, fun things in all three, I’d like to continue doing those, and do them all a bit more. There’s a couple of personal projects to be getting on with - this blog, reviving tellywonk, and finally finding time to gather together all the Snailr material. I think that should keep me going.
Going, actually, looking over that list, until my fingers fall off.
Good. That is how I like it.

CONS
I will be attempting not to become a convicted criminal this year (like all other years, obviously) and to that extent should probably sort out my bloody taxes. I will also endevour not to go to prison for anything else, while I am about it.

RANDOM
I will eat nice things, and cook them. All. Some of them I will cook and eat for other people. And see people in other situations, and do other stuff with them. I was thinking of a film club, I think. I mean, I want to have a bad movie club where I can screen all my favourite very bad movies, but I can’t do that until I have a television (or something) for people to watch it on. But I also want to get together with people and talk about films. Or books, but I’m terrible at making time for reading. Clubs though, definitely, that is the way forward. Not in the loud banging music, sense. In the ’in your thirties, sitting around with a glass of wine discussing middle class pursuits’ kind of way. Obviously. Seeing more friends, and answering more emails.

YES
I have no idea what I was going to put in this section. In retrospect, I possibly should have thought out the contents before the titles. Still though, YES. It’s as good a thing as any to say for the year.

(Also: I’m going to win the lottery, lose 20lb in the next two weeks, and become a Much Better Person, and give up anything bad for me, and take up everything good for me. Just like everyone else.)

And I’m sitting at my desk, looking out of the window as cold people huddled under hoods, shuffling up the hill through the mizzle and the dark early evening to wherever they reside, ready to shuffle down the hill to the station in the morning and go back to work.

My mood, as may possibly be obvious, is not great.

I knew that moving back at nearly the middle of winter was going to be a bit ropey, with my AMAZING, almost-professional standard history of seasonal depression. But the decision had to be taken, and the move had to be made, and that was all very good, and so it was. And here we are. And I should have expected how crushed I would be, how exhausted, how teary, how brain-frozen and writing blocked. If I’d wanted proof, I should have just looked back at the nine previous years of winters recorded on this blog alone - or the seven before the last two - for proof positive. Or negative. Whatever.

It is not good.

Still. It is the beginning of the year, and things have to keep moving, and work has to keep getting done, and we have to keep keeping on. In a couple of days I will make a list of resolutions. Or revolutions. Or whatever. And we will all go on as we do every year. But my growing fear of not just this winter but next is gnawing at my brain right now. And my impulse to run away - anywhere, really, anywhere sunnier, friendlier, less covered in cloud - is stronger than ever.

Nevertheless. I am here. We are here. Things are as they are. And all will be well. Sooner or later.
Right?

In which I list my top ten top tens of 2010, or meant to, until suddenly my house was filled with end of year guestiness and food and laughter, and I didn’t have time for the tenth ten

My top ten things to do at new year, based on things that I have done
- Stand up, shouting, in a bar full of braying ninnies, wondering why you bothered.
- Be asleep.
-Watch people pretend to be all jolly on the televsion when you’re perfectly aware they filmed the thing you’re watching in about August.
- At a party filled with people you don’t know.
- Eating a lovely romantic meal you can’t really afford and is merely icing to the thirty-tier cake your stomach has consumed over the last week.
- In a hot tub, while tiddly. Against the manufacturers instructions.
- On the toilet. I’ve only done this once, but I’d been queueing for AGES and it was totally worth it.
- With friends, around a table.
- In a very packed crowd, trying to see over people’s heads in case something is happening.
- On a beach. I had not done this before. Or even considered it, apart from the kind that is covered in white sand and has balmy waters and cocktails. But last night, our assembled party left the house at quarter past eleven, headed on the road down to the sea, realising quite quickly that 80% of the people on the streets were doing the same thing.

When we got to the sea, we sat down on the pebbles - it was warm - and took out our wine and glasses and talked. People kept coming. People and people and people. When we arrived, at half past, it wasn’t so busy - by quarter to, the beach was buzzing with people. People were setting off fireworks, people were having bonfires, and more, so many more, were sending up paper lanterns - the South-East Asian kind that float gently up, like slow stars, then burn off and disintegrate. I love them.

I loved it. I loved cooking good food and having nice dinner with close friends and playing board games, and then being on Brighton Beach, talking to strangers, watching lanterns and drinking champagne. It is basically the pinnacle of the new years I have been trying to attain all these years.

Some idiots sung. Some other idiots went swimming, naked. Some strangers I offered to send a photo of them at new year turned me down on the basis that they ‘weren’t meant to be there together’, but gave me half a bottle of champagne anyway. Lanterns floated, and people laughed and cried, and fireworks popped.

I have a feeling that in other, future years, I could say “Remember that year we just hung out on the seafront at Brighton for midnight on New Year? It was great. I wish we were doing that.”

I’m glad I did this time.
It was lovely.

NB: The thing I forgot this year: “Anywhere, as long as you’re wearing red underwear”, as my dearest late Italian-living aunt instilled in me. I therefore resolve to wear mainly red underwear throughout january to make up for my non-red new year faux pas.

HAPPY NEW YEAR, LOVELIES.