Back in February, there was a rather wonderful family event.
It celebrated my parents' sixtieth wedding anniversary.
One of my contributions was to buy the champagne for the toasts. I think that I bought three bottles to ensure that there would be enough but only two were opened and so I acquired the remaining one by default. A couple of weeks later my mum gave me the bottle that she had bought (though why she had done so was never really talked about) saying that it could be opened at a later date when there was something to celebrate.
Well, both bottles remain unopened.
I did drink champagne. I shared a bottle with Ross and his parents at the beginning of our mega-European holiday at Searcy's Champagne Bar by the Eurostar Platform at St Pancras.
But I've not felt the call to celebrate anything personal.
The big thing, I guess, was that I did not start studying to become a teacher. It was the biggest let down of the year.
I've also been unwell. I had a chest infection in March requiring me to take antibiotics and I've just had a lesser dose of something similar. I haven't taken as many antibiotic tablets in a single year for decades.
And, though I don't have prostate cancer, I am on tablets to reduce the size of my prostate so that it doesn't completely constrict my urethra.
There have been more redundancies at work. That I wasn't selected is, I suppose, a cause for some celebration but I cannot say that I am working for an invigorated and dynamic organisation.
Projects started and then faltered.
I became a student and then found that the course was simply replicating itself and so I negotiated not attending classes and have disputed paying the fees for the first term.
I obtained clearance for a loan from a Building Society and then I found out just recently that the solicitors acting for Building Society had not received Ross's signed Deed of Consent and so I still don't have the funds which I was looking for.
And finally there has been the weather which started the year with snow in January and ended the year with snow in December.
In between, we had the driest first half of a calendar year since records began so that we incurred a drastic hosepipe ban. Then we had flash floods in Liverpool having witnessed the Danube busting its banks in Budapest.
Partly, I think, my discomfort is to do with the number of different rôles which I am currently playing. I am
It's perhaps no wonder that I'm feeling spread a little thin and why I don't always do enough in each of those rôles. Do I have enough time for myself? I wonder.
You see, I am also aware that it is now seven years since I crapped out and spent over twelve months on anti-depressants to readjust my seratonin imbalance. And I set great store by seven year cycles.
I'm also aware that there were three great pillars on which I rested as part of my rehabilitation - Quakerism, yoga and healing. For the past six months, my attendance at Quakers has been patchy. For the past twelve months, my attendance at yoga has been intermittent. I appear to have given up on healing altogether. This is not to say that I do not now need these three things. I suspect that I do. I'm just not making time for them. I'm starting not to look after myself.
So, dear readers, I am quite glad to put a close to 2010.
Let me, however, end on a small note of optimism.
I have heard that, in the New Year, I have been invited to attend an interview at Liverpool Hope University with a view to becoming a student there in the autumn. Please cross your fingers for me.