THIS time last year I was midway through Veganuary and doggie paddling in an ocean of chickpeas. The others who share this space – let's call it Alcatraz – would have been forgiven for investing in gas masks.
Suffice to say that chickpea curry is not to everyone's taste and they were so so glad to kick Veganuary in the ass. Indeed, so was I.
This was a passing phase but, it must be noted, the past is a foreign country and it was one where I was a stone lighter and the idea that the vaccine was in sight lifted my soul.
Think me and Richard Parker – the fictional tiger who is a neat metaphor for Covid – adrift on a boat in the wide ocean and hey, is that land ahoy? Is that a merciful release provided by a vaccine?
That was then.
Now, triple-vacced, why is the tiger Richard still on board the raft and why have we not quite hit dry land? Perhaps because like in the film Jaws, just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water, Omicron hit and it wasn't.
Suddenly the dogs on the street got Omicron and, for various reasons, we went back to the old closed door policy.
We've given up on washing the shopping – life is too short to wipe a pepper – and we do our own shopping, but early in the morning. That woman in the Co-Op who didn't wear a mask, coughed loudly at us and then asked "do you not like the sound of my cough?", had an impact.
But this year, it feels like life is hurtling past and we are standing on the sidelines, missing out. If this pandemic has taught us anything, it is that mankind is a social animal and womankind is a champing-at-the-bit social animal.
When our boy was a toddler in a pushchair, the joke was that he wouldn't pass a coffee shop. He'd stick his little leg down on the ground and brake the pram to a halt outside the nearest hostelry. He got that from his mother.
Now, even coffee shops seem dicey, so that I'm chatting to my friends on the phone and yearning for the eternal queue at the M&S coffee shop in Forestside.
Remember those halcyon days?
The phone is not enough. Walking in the park is not enough. Sitting in my sister's garden on a cold wet Christmas Day is not enough… even if she does offer the best home bakes.
Coffee in a special portable 'bring your own' pot is never enough, but that's about the limit.
"Just a few weeks more," says my friend. "We'll just have a walk in the park."
I'm far from the Veganuary of last year's New Year's resolutions. Now it seems that it is the small steps that matter.
Leafing through books on resilience for tough times, I stumbled upon recommendations for keeping going. The prescription involves two bouts of exercise; two periods of meditation and completing a journal entry once a week.
In past years, I was out to lose a stone, out to change the world. Now, every step is a small one.
There is little to whinge about in the face of other people's lives and daily challenges. But what I miss about life over two years spent home working is my workmates, early morning chats, coffee in the crush bar, friendly faces, a sense of belonging.
Fingers crossed this too shall pass, as my mother often sighed.
Having spent two years working among the debris of our lives in what we notionally call a "study", I took to clearing it this January. Bottles of wine and gadgets are all finding new homes.
There is the year-old coffee maker that hasn't made a coffee yet, the dry fryer that had a short innings and the juicer which promised us health and would have delivered had we only got into using it.
The clearances have begun. I can see the study floor and I have shredded my way through bundles of old notes.
My resolutions are to get through this year, to set my eye on a far horizon and maybe get back into the office. I shall, of course, go armed with my travelling banana.
"You bring it into work, then you bring it back home again," my other half used to joke. Now I just bring it up the stairs to the 'study' and talk to it.
It's 2022. I'm channelling my inner "One day at a time, sweet Jesus,".
