Happy New Year - mind the strange smell and watch out for the pins. Also cellophane.

Welcome to the new series of digits! Apparently this is the first time in..ooh, ages, that all the four digits have been different - amazing, eh?  I have to admit that I'm not good with numbers, to the extent that when I read out a phone number I'm fine up to about three digits in, and then I just start making mouth noises.."oh one nine oh flap budget, twibble argh drool crumb neap" is my son's phone number, apparently.

Anyway.  This new series of numbers is supposed to herald a new beginning! Not just of the year, but we are popularly called upon to make a new start on things when a new year rolls around.  Fortunately I've got wise to the whole thing now, and I can spot a new year coming from months away.  Around about October I start planning new things, getting them in order and lined up ready to go, so that, in January, I can start doing them - this is a cunning plan that you may wish to adopt for your own use.  It fulfills that need to begin new things without them actually being so new that they are alarming and shiny and all stiff and crackly as new things tend to be.  Also full of pins, or is that just shirts?

It looked far too new.  Honestly.  Needed...testing, yes, testing, to check that it was going to be all right.

I do the same thing with years.  I've been breaking in 2013 since last August. New things tend to have a distressing tendency to be a bit strange - they smell weird for a start, normally of cellophane and glue, if you don't believe me just go and have a sniff of that thing you got for Christmas that you haven't got round to unpacking yet.  Go on, I'll wait.

See?  Cellophane and glue.  And sort of stiff round the edges.  So, new years need a bit of wearing in, roughening up, to make them nice and floppy and user-friendly.  I'm sure that 2013, once we get a bit of wear on it, will be just fine.  By the time we can bend it in half we will be perfectly comfortable using it, unfortunately this tends to happen around about November, so you may wish to adopt my habit of starting to use a new year in the summer months of the previous year, you know, at a time when it's not absolutely essential that you use it, so that you can just use it occasionally.  Maybe, say, one day a week.  Then you can begin to use it more and more often, so that, by the time you have to use it, it's nice and broken in and comfortable.

Hang on.  I might be thinking about slippers.  Oh well, never mind, the same principle holds true, if you save things for 'best' you only have yourself to blame if they are uncomfortable when you actually come to use them.  In fact, I'm going to start breaking in several years at once now, just so that they've lost that 'new' smell by the time I need them, so...

HAPPY 2013, 2014 and 2015, everyone!  And if you like, you can start unpacking 2016 and giving it a bit of a wiggle to loosen its digits - you'll thank me in the end...

A retrospective on 2012, with pictures. Nice ones.

2012.  For some, just a collision of appealingly bendy numbers with a nice little straight line in for emphasis.  If this is how you feel about 2012, then may I suggest cryogenic suspension, because you are really going to love 3030.  But for others, by which I mean me, because, despite my many qualifications (I am also allowed to use a chainsaw, handle a bat, milk a cow and I have a certificate that says I can swim the length of a swimming baths, but don't hold me to that one), I am not qualified to speak for anyone else, it was a year.

A year of stuff.  A year in which I won some awards that look like this -

only with more dust.  My wonderful publishers Choc Lit published my book that looks like this -

and my wonderfully chucklesome grandson, Phoenix James, made his arrival into the world.  He, his parents and his aunts and uncle (that being my children, in case you'd got confused and had to resort to doing diagrams on the back of an envelope) spent Christmas chez moi, where I, and the increasingly mysterious Mr Q, entertained them with gifts, a series of inedible nibbles and Doctor Who.

We also went for walks, accompanied by Phoenix and his mum Becci and dad, Tom.  Here, Becci is indicating to me how big my bottom looks, when viewed from behind, Phoenix is admiring any scenery which does not contain my bottom, and Tom is trying to see out from underneath his hat.


And now that year is over, well nearly.  It is being carried to its end, borne on a litter of crumpled wrapping paper, the spat-out nuts from Quality Street, gnarly old ends of cheese and more pine needles than you could swear one tree could carry, and I find myself infused with a kind of ennuie.  You see, last year - well, it's still this year really, but it isn't looking at all well, and may not make it to the end of the week - was so successful, so damned fantastic and filled with wonderfulness and gorgeosity and amazing new happenings...how can 2013 possibly compete?  How is it not going to come off looking a bit sad and saggy in comparison to a year that held Olympics, awards and new arrivals?

I considered the option of spending 2013 sulking, kicking table-legs and muttering "whatevah" when asked to do something, although I didn't rule out stamping upstairs, slamming some doors and refusing to tidy my room.  But then I went on a walk and looked at scenery like this -

all right, so we couldn't get the dog-kite to take off, but even so, it was lovely.  And I realised that, just because 2012 was an unsurmountably fantastic year, one which will never be bettered (unless someone actually does manage to dip Tony Robinson in caramel and gift wrap him), that doesn't mean that 2013 will not have its own spectacularness!

So, dear blog-reader (or, in reality, more likely someone who googled 'rubber knickers' and ended up here by mistake, looking through my pictures in search of something a little more...ahem...adult), those of you who have been following my adventures thus far - stay tuned!  For I can feel it in my water that 2013 will offer us yet more adventures, and I take this opportunity to thank you for your strong-stomached attendance upon this blog these many past months (except you with the rubber pant fixation), and to wish you

                                                            HAPPY NEW YEAR!  

A Christmas Card to all my lovely friends - you are also allowed to read if you don't consider yourself either lovely nor a friend. Although, if you are an evil harpy, bent on world domination, please skip this page...

Come in, come in, pour yourself a glass of egg-nog.  Well, I call it egg-nog, even though we ran out of eggs, and I'm not entirely sure what 'nog' is, so I didn't put any in, so it's mostly water with a bit of yellow food-colouring in.  But pour yourself one, anyhow.  There's probably a slice of Christmas cake somewhere too, if you want to help yourself but...well, if there's any teeth marks in it, I should pass, if you know what I mean.

Anyhow.  I have gathered you all here today in order to raise a glass and toast you all with a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year...oh, whoops, sorry, don't worry, it's mostly water and the food-colouring will wash out eventually.  This has been a most auspicious year for yours truly, with awards and events and things happening all over the place, although I have been a little quiet on the SHOUTY front for the last few weeks, what with trying to get some actual work done, plus all the preparations for a family Christmas and the day job and everything, so if I have missed out on congratulating you on a personal triumph then I am very sorry and I shall raise another glass to you later. Without spilling any this time.  But you have probably used this period of uncharacteristic quietness on my part to remove your earplugs, breathe a sigh of relief and get on with normal life without having to worry about me suddenly SPRINGING UP and yelling at you.

I have been working on the follow up to Vampire State of Mind (currently entitled Love Like Blood, but that's just its working title, it's probably going to end up called something like Five Little Ducks Go Shopping, or something, because I'm rubbish at titles).  It's full of trouble, zombies, family arguments, and there's one or two sexy vampires thrown in to the mix just to add a bit of je ne sais quois in the bloodsucky department.  Sil's in trouble, Jess is under stress, Zan is being unexpectedly nice - and Liam has bought an inflatable Cyberman suit.

I'm also working on my Astrophysicist book, about a really accident prone astrophysicist, his best friend who is, inexplicably called Link, a slightly traumatised young woman with a horse called Stan, and local folktales.

So, that's what I'm up to.  But, for now, I'm busy wrapping, peeling, cooking, propping up the cards that keep falling over in the draught, cleaning out hens, dispossessing many, many spiders of ancestral webs, scraping stuff off every surface, as, I suspect, are most of you.  So it only remains for me to wish you all

HAPPY CHRISTMAS!

See you on the other side....