Facebook Anonymous anyone?

In just over a month’s time ( cripes it’s November 25th!) we’ll be planning new year’s eve parties. Or hogmanay if, like me, your surname is a Mc or Mac or from north of the border.(Don’t mention borders!!)

And it’s customary, isn’t it, to devise new year’s resolutions on December 31st. 

Amongst my list for January 2018 were

1 Keep fit ( ie do my exercises)

2 Swim more ( ie go more than once a month)

3 Get building work done ( ongoing in an old house)

4 Book a trip on The Orient Express

5 Get my manuscript out to agents

6 Get off facebook

For most of January I did 1,2,5 and 6.

All was going well. Then my back went. And what do you do when you can barely get out of bed for a pee? 

I’ll tell you:

You lie in bed or on a sofa or stand (eventually) and don’t exercise. You take 13 painkillers and associated medication and don’t concentrate on a thing. The sitting-to-write or edit or send out to agents becomes impossible. If you don’t believe me read Anna Burns - Booker prize winner. She’s had a terrible back and couldn’t, at that time, get any writing done. 

One thing you can do, however, is walk. But we had thick layers of snow in February and March. The cold winds play havoc with my back and make the muscles tense which leads to more pain... So I didn’t even get out to do any walking. And I was frightened of breaking a limb on the ice.

Furthermore, as a result of ongoing back pain and an inability to move (or deal with luggage) I didn’t book our trip on The Orient Express (surprise, surprise) and had to give up our walks until the snow receded. By April this year I wasn’t fit and got more and more sluggish. I couldn’t change into a swimsuit or get into a swimming pool until June of this year. That’s how feeble I had become.

Moreover if you cast your eye over my list above and reacquaint yourself with my resolutions the only two I haven’t considered are 3 and 6. 

When your builder doesn’t want to do ‘little jobs’ you can wait an awful long time to get things fixed. Now, November 25th - almost winter in meteorological terms - it’s too late to have our outside tap fixed. We hardly need to use our hose on overwintering broad beans and spinach! But having had a heatwave this year it was exactly the time to have a long hose pipe properly fitted in order to reach all corners of our largish garden. But no. Fixing our hose pipe was too ‘little a job’. 

I did manage to keep the spinach going by shading it with a parasol and mulching heavily when we went to Ireland for ten days. But I lost crocosmia and kaffir lilies through the heat (or the snow?) It was a pity as the dead plants were from my late mother’s garden. I do have a few left but it’s not quite the same. We all have to live with loss. 

That leaves resolution 6. Again - it seems simple now - what do you do when you can barely do anything apart from take painkillers? You watch tv, sometimes standing, sometimes lying flat. And you click on things on your iphone... That doesn’t bode well for resolution 6 - get off facebook.In fact I’m probably looking at fb more now than ever. 

I will have to hide my iphone. After all it’s not life-saving equipment. I don’t need it like an asthmatic needs a nebuliser. It’s just habit. Like alcohol or smoking. It may suit the predicament if I form fb-anon. A quitters group for the ‘I’m addicted to fb’ gang.

But, seriously, resolutions are about forming new, good habits and ditching the old ones, aren’t they?

I have, since my back healed, managed to resurrect resolutions 1 and 2. In fact I do more than that. I get in 9000-10,000 steps daily and am much fitter than even this time last year - way before I had a bad back.

Richard and I have both decided to postpone our Orient Express trip until the end of 2019. And I have joined another writers’ group to help lick my manuscript into shape. After the group has made its suggestions I’ll take heed and get it out to agents once more. Plus I’ve found a builder who says ‘ no job too small’ on his advert.

That just about takes care of new year’s resolutions 1-5 above. It’s only taken eleven months to get there.

But I’ll have to be lifted, kicking and screaming, off fb. My iphone is with me all times like a heart pacemaker. 

Resolution 6 will need the big guns to get any action in 2019.

Facebook Anonymous anyone?