Funny Old Year

I don’t really go in for omens or portents or any of that stuff, so I read nothing into the fact that during the last forty-eight hours of 2014, large technological chunks of my life seemed to be cracking up.  The tumbler dryer broke down.¹  The mysterious orange fault light in the car came on again.²  The central heating boiler refused to light when instructed to do so by the time switch.³  And my expensive new glasses broke.⁴


I don’t really go in for the word ‘happy’ either.  Françoise Sagan, in Bonjour Tristesse, noted that happiness is like a flat plain without landmarks, an observation I have often used to drag myself up out of some state of misery or other, though I don’t think she meant it for that purpose.  But for this New Year, for myself, I’m wishing for a few more flat happy plains.  For anyone else who reads this, I think the best I can wish you is a year full of fulfilment, adventure and discovery.  Or whatever makes you happy.

Tomorrow I’m going to tell you about the weirdest, wonderfulest New Year’s eve ever, if I can make sense of it by then.

 

1. It’s only fifteen years old, FFS!  Is nothing built to last nowadays?  I can apparently spend anything between £250 and £1,250 at John Lewis for a new one.
2. I’ve learned to ignore this.  I’ll take it in, they’ll tinker around for a few hours, switch the light off and tell me it’s mysterious.  I keep telling them the fault is that the fault light is on, but they don’t believe me.  I think I’m going to get a new car. 
3. I can make it come on by twiddling a knob on the front, but getting up on a freezing morning isn’t exactly fun.  Homedare* are coming to fix it (or tell me it’s mysterious) on Monday.
4. To be exact, one of the arms (is that what they’re called?) fell off.  The tiny screw which holds it on had somehow worked loose, and is of course lost forever.  The opticians don’t open till Monday.  So I’ve learnt a new skill, that of invisibly repairing a pair of glasses with sellotape.  Always look on the bright side, eh?

*That was a typo which I thought was worth leaving in.