As I copy some hastily scribbled appointments into my new diary for next year, I am shocked to discover I have somewhere I’m supposed to be exactly a year from now, in December 2016. Once, the future held only mystery and possibility – in 12 months, I could be living a new life in a new country, possibly with a new identity – but no more. I already know where I’m going to be on this day next year. I’m going to be in Sevenoaks.
With the future pinned down, now seems a good time to go back over the old year and tie up any narrative loose ends I left dangling, either through error or exigency. It’s my way of pushing the wonky shopping trolley of 2015 into the canal of Whatever. Bear with me.
Back in January, I wrote a rather comprehensive account of a dispute between my wife and the oldest one’s girlfriend about Instagram privacy settings, on the very day that the coffee scoop went missing. What can I say? Sometimes interesting things don’t happen to me when I need them to.
I later discovered that a teacher chose that particular column for an online comprehension skills lesson. This included some distressing how-well-did-you-read questions (“Why is the wife not happy?”), but even more shaming was an exercise that required the students to put the “events” of the narrative in order: “The author decides to prepare some coffee”; “The wife enters the room”; “The girlfriend sends an Instagram request to the wife”.
Anyway, I apologise if I left any schoolchildren on tenterhooks: the coffee scoop turned up back in its tin three weeks later. You couldn’t make it up.
Early last summer, I wrote about the old dog having some health issues, and then wrote nothing else about it for months, causing some readers concern. Given the dog’s age, I didn’t feel I could report that it was recovering well without adding the words “at the time of going to press”. But the dog was completely fine until last week, when it suffered another downturn. Now it’s fine again, more or less, but I’ve got a feeling it won’t be coming with me to Sevenoaks.
Earlier in the year, I found myself sitting at my desk, waiting to do a radio interview by phone. In recounting that lonely, anxious moment, I wrote, “Presently, I will be obliged to transform myself into the sort of person who has interesting answers to boring questions.” Then the interview was cancelled at the last minute and I admitted to being thrilled.
Unfortunately, the column I wrote about it appeared a week before I was obliged to do a radio tour to publicise a book. It wasn’t the sort of tour that involves travel; I just sat by the phone again and did 17 interviews, one after the other, over the course of five hours. But I hadn’t reckoned on the thoroughness of the average American radio presenter’s preparatory research. Most began their interviews by saying either, “We’ll keep this short, since you hate radio so much”; or, “I hope my questions won’t be too boring for you”. I was obliged to issue a dozen on-air apologies. I’m still sorry.
And on the occasion of my wedding anniversary, I wrote about taking my wife to see the film 45 Years, a portrayal of long-term wedlock so bleak, it could probably threaten the relationship of any couple dumb enough to mistake it for a date movie. I would just like to say that we’ve seen lots of relationship-busting films since, including The Lobster (it’s good; just don’t sit together), and our marriage is still perfectly happy and solid. At the time of going to press.
Merry Christmas.
