Seven Is My Lucky Number

Here it is again, the time of year when we consider all that has happened over the last twelve months, and make several resolutions which we pretend to ourselves and others that we’re going to keep for more than one week.

It’s been an eventful year for Lonie™ Polony (Taste the absence of rectum!). I returned to work after nearly two years’ leave, only to say goodbye after two months to the almost completely new team assembled in my absence, in order to pop out and rear Master Lonie. In March I’ll make my third start in a job I will have held for three years, with only about five months’ actual work. Aah, public service! I’m in the system like a cancer; they’ll never get rid of me now, the suckers!

My mum’s parents died within four months of each other – quite an ironic achievement for a couple who have been not-so-amicably divorced for the best part of three decades. Of course it’s sad when people you love die, but they were both old and terribly ill, and all of us reconciled ourselves to the inevitable in a philosophical, ‘Grandfather dies, father dies, son dies’ way. Rest in peace, Pa and Nanna.

Happily, we’ve had our own personal Lion King circle of life experience, with two little zygotes nestled safely in the wombs of my sisters-in-law (Mr. Lonie’s sister, and my brother’s wife), one of which is due on my very own birthday! As everyone at Lonie™ Polony knows, luncheon meats of the highest quality are produced on that auspicious day. As an added bonus, my father’s long-cherished dream of marrying-off all his children will soon be fulfilled. My sister recently became affianced to someone we’ve all agreed is a nice chap, who what’s more possesses the rare but much sought-after personality traits enabling him to tolerate our family which is, shall we say…idiosyncratic.

The clock has just ticked over to 2007 as I write, which means I’ve missed my chance to cram the last four blocks of chocolate from the pantry into my reluctantly-resolved-to-eat-properly tummy. We all know the ‘eat well and exercise regularly’ New Year’s resolution is doomed to fall by the wayside (after Lonie pushes it off the wagon in the middle of the night when everyone else is sleeping), but maybe I can restrain myself long enough to get back to work without everyone mistakenly assuming I’m going for the baby hat trick.

Me and New Year’s resolutions being the on-again, off-again unfaithful lovers we are, I thought a better list to draw up would be ‘100 Things To Do Before I Die’. I remember starting one over a year ago, but as it was a significant document, it naturally found its way into Mr. Lonie’s hands and thence to an unknown sector of the house (commonly called the rubbish bin). That list, with its mix of the fancifully ambitious (write a book, become fluent in a second language) and the laughably mundane (do a chin-up, see a hedgehog) seems completely do-able at times such as these, when I’m hepped up on last year’s chocolate and rendered unreasonably optimistic by fleeting scenes of drunken celebrities commenting on pretty fireworks. In fact, I’ve already accomplished at least one thing on that list – ‘Write a blog’.

Happy New Year everyone – may you all do a chin-up before you die.