I love January. The whole year is ready to unfurl before us. Almost imperceptibly, the days are getting longer. The daffodils have appeared in the florists. And while the weather is cold, there are odd moments on a bright day when you can enjoy apricity – the warmth of the sun in the Winter. Soon, there will be an afternoon in February which feels like June and we will be struck by the promise of another summer approaching.
Last year saw me make 60, for which I am deeply grateful. I am halfway through exhausting my second pacemaker battery, so I have a keener sense of my own mortality than those who haven’t lain wide awake on an operating table as a surgeon feeds electrical wires down your pulmonary vein and into the chambers of your heart while you watch it all happen on a huge x-ray screen.
On 6 February, incredibly, it will be forty years since my dad died. How did it get so late, so soon? And last year saw the passing of our great friend Anthony Knowles, whose huge, generous heart beat for the last time on 9 March. He was just 50 years old.
We are lucky to have a large group of close mates and losing Ant has had a profound effect upon us all. I have known people in the past who have died suddenly, and for a week or two have thought about changing the way I live, but then altered nothing as the current of life has carried me unthinkingly onwards.
But when Ant died, all our lives changed, irrevocably.
Reading Oliver Burkeman’s latest (and brilliant) book, Meditations for Mortals, has confirmed so much of what I learned from my mate’s death, namely, that there is no point waiting for the perfect time to do something, because that perfect time will always elude us. We’ll always be waiting to do what we have always wanted to do, because stuff gets in the way. And, actually, there is no guarantee that we have anything more than the current second we are alive. It’s 7:50 am. I don’t know if I am going to make 8:00 this Sunday morning. How can I? As Will Self says, “It’s always, always, NOW, isn’t it?”
So, that’s why I got up early and wrote this short post. Writing salves my soul. It’s time to do more of it, resurrect my blog, get on with finishing the novella, scope out my next book... There is no point waiting around!
And carving out time to do something you love – as I have done this very morning – should be guilt-free. Abstinence is over-rated. During a podcast on well-being, some time ago, I was asked to give one piece of sage advice to listeners. I was reminded of my answer when I saw this Tweet last week:
My podcast advice was to stop saving your best towels for guests who come to stay, but to use them for yourself. Go on…
