My New-Year Resolution is to Throw More Wine and Cheese Parties

I like wine and I like cheese. What's to lose?

Happy New Year!

This is Stonehaven harbour, minutes before the bells. I'm technically in this photo, I think. Anyone who even remotely enjoys pretty landscape photographs should go follow this guy on Facebook. 

So... this is a post about all the stuff that happened in the snapshot of my world that was 2015. And what might be coming up for 2016, because it's hard to talk about one without the other. Like those round-robin letters people put in with their Christmas cards and no-one reads.

Some are good, some are sad. Some are things I'm proud of. Some are things I might have done differently had I another shottie. But this is the internet, so there's some selective sharing going on here. You guys see the good stuff, and some of the less-than-amazing stuff is prone to getting moderated out of the picture. I'm human too!

Dancing happened.

I taught a term of an advanced Scottish Country Dance class. Share-taught, I must point out, but I was there and I did it. I'm even about to launch in to another term. It's tough stuff, I'll admit. And I'll be honest, I'm still not yet sure whether the enjoyment and achievement factor is enough to cancel out the stress that also comes with the territory. That's a thing I guess I'm about to find out. And to see if I can't tip the balance in favour of the former.
I went to France and did some dancing. I learned the Broadswords. We managed to get through the Kelpie of Loch Whatsits on stage, in front of an audience. Like, properly, without having to rescue anyone. Those of you know understand will understand. Much achievement was achieved. We went to Carcassonne and I wore a hat.

And didn't look at all like a sweaty British Tourist, no.

I haven't played so much music this year. That's a bit of a sad thing. The band that accompanied us to France benefited from other musicians who can play the same instrument as me, but much much better, so I took the whistle along, but resolved to only play it in dark corridors whilst standing on one foot.

There has been talk recently of starting up a "Slow Session", which I think might be right up my street. Like a real session but with sheet music and fewer expectations, so there's hope for me yet.

I made a life-size set of Cluedo.

Then I was so excited about playing it, I wound up so drunk that all I could do was take photographs.

This year we're off on the same weekend away once more and I am very much looking forward to it. I've been looking forward to it since I was dragged away at the end of the last one. The Life-Size Cluedo will be hard to follow, and we'll need to nail down a plan soon. I have ideas, but nothing that could reasonably be defined as a plan. It will no doubt get blogged about after the fact, so you can have that to look forward to in February.

I became a Godparent. 

Godchild slept through the whole thing, which I took as a form of confirmation that we have at least one thing in common - the ability to sleep through Church.

I'm still not sure if I can handle the responsibility. Godparent. It's like someone grabbed the two scariest words they could think of and stuck them together. I'm choosing to redefine the term as "Pseudo-Grown-Up-Responsible-For-Playing-Aeroplanes" which I'm much better at. Eventually I might explore "Pseudo-Grown-Up-Totally-Not-Responsible-For-Acquisition-Of-Slightly-Naughty-Words", but right now Godchild still thinks everything is called Da-da.

I started a Business.

Now I have three massive tents and a bedroom full of air-beds, tent pegs and candles. We have covered many miles and met many interesting people in the name of pop-up accommodation. Here's to another successful year. I can't say I'm any way nearly ready for another season, but we'll give it a go anyway. Time we did some boring planning and stuff. We have our best "business" meetings when we go to Cosmo's for tea on a weeknight. There's a thought...

I got engaged.

Maybe this should be at the top of the page. It's a bit of a big deal, I'm told.

You all read the post, you know all the details. I am very, very happy. We drank a lot of fizz, and I mean a lot. Some very limited wedding planning has since happened. It's a bit sad we can't yet get married at Church like normal people, but it's a huge achievement for equality that we can actually get married, and I'm coming round to the plan that we now have. There might even be lasagne. I should get on to organising that.

One thing that will most certainly feature in 2016 is a wedding. Eek.

And last of all,

I kept on writing this little blog.

Most weeks, that is. Must do better. 43 posts exist that didn't exist a year ago. Those twelve months tally up to 7946 pageviews, if you would like to know. And even if you don't. I wonder how many words...

Who knows? Maybe I'll work it all out one day. Maybe I won't. But I think I might just keep writing them. Happy 2016.