What is making me happy: a new year just begun

Lunch and salad and beer and books

The main thing making me happy is the fact I’m still on holiday. Bliss!

I have been making an effort to be social which has been pretty great - so, Skyping with Bex, coffee with Mum, catching up with lovely Ange and family, and plans to visit my grandad on Saturday. I’m also hoping to see Liz while she is over here from the UK.

The question then is: will I be able to maintain this level of socialness when I am no longer lounging round the house? I’m not unhappy with how social I was last year, but I’d like to do a better job keeping in touch with certain people. Perhaps this should be another New Year’s resolution.

READING: I am blasting through things, and making some mature decisions about putting aside books that I am not interested in finishing (looking squarely at London: A biography).

• I have been reading many Phillippa Gregory books because it’s summer, and thus the best time to read something a little trashy. I finished the Wideacre trilogy which is spectacularly silly. All incest and frocks and mysteriousness and horses in the Sussex countryside.
• Affinity by Sarah Waters, which I am loving. I wanted to read The Paying Guests but I’d need to buy that, and I already had a copy of this lying around that I’ve never read.
• Still trucking with the Portable Dorothy Parker and Middlemarch (but I feel Middlemarch is a bit worthy for summer holidays).

WATCHING:

• The Staircase and all the DVD extras. Mon lent this to me after a very long discussion about Serial, and it’s a pretty amazing series. We watched the whole lot in one evening which meant that we went to bed after midnight, but it was well worth it. I urge you to seek it out.
• Midnight in Paris - pretty silly, tho' I thought the Hemingway characterisation was on point.
• Only Lovers Left Alive - Katherine recommended this to me (it was one of her top movies of 2014). A super stylish movie that features Tilda Swinton as a vampire which is A+++ casting.

FAVOURITE PODCAST EPISODE: It’s a little late (and off-topic?), but the Christmas episode of the Truth was great and I experienced some LOLs while listening.

KNITTING: Making great progress on my Madeline Tosh Featherweight cardigan. I also made a wooden yarn bowl using a second hand fruit bowl and my own ingenuity. More information to follow.

SEWING: I made yet another dress with no waistband (a current passion) and a top I adore out of apple print fabric. Again, more information to follow.