The world from my window

It's ten days into the new year and ten days since I've blogged. I'm ashamed of myself, I really am. I hope all is going well for you so far in 2014. Me, I'm abstaining from alcohol this month and still struggling with writing my book about our year in Corfu. Should I be humorous, like Peter Mayle in A Year in Provence , or navel-gazing like Elizabeth Gilbert in Eat, Pray, Love ? I just have to be truthful, I guess, and tell it like it was. An amazing, incredible experience but tempered by heart wrenching and unexpected homesickness. I have so many notes and photos to put into some kind of order. But bits of our big, fat Greek gap year write themselves, like the wonderful landscape and the warm, generous villagers who became like a second family to us. The climate, the blue skies and the food. Ah, the food. Oh how I love those Sunday lunchtimes of tasty, succulent roast pork in our local taverna. Or stifado next door or the best big beans in the world at the old...

It's New Year's Eve, and this year I'm spending it in Lush Places. Not for me a pomegranate smashed near the door to spread the seeds of good luck on New Year's Day. I don't think they stock them in our village shop. In any case, last year, back in Corfu, it took us ages to get the stain out. Tonight, we'll be hanging out in Lush Places, where the Dorset villagers will be dressed in 70s and 80s for a vinyls night in the local pub and we'll be noshing on a bring-something-to-the-table get-together for thirteen, or, as I'd rather call it, twelve and one for luck. Superstitious? Me? Of course I am. And then we'll all get together for a few drinks in the pub before spilling out into the Square for Old Lang Syne, random kissing and a game of Let's Stop The Traffic . Before that, I need to decide what hat to wear tonight after rashly sending out an email saying our theme should be Get Your Head In Gear For The New Year (as mine most certa...