2014

The new year started like it always does, at midnight with fireworks going off in the distance. Nothing special about that but it feels like it's never happened. We talk about change and for a bit we feel like we can change, like we will.

We went out, off into the dark, laughing and playing with our torches like children, slipping in the mud as we climbed up the hill to see the fireworks better than anyone in the city would. We sat in the wet grass and talked about what the year had been like and our resolutions for the next, and somehow what easily becomes just empty boasting was surprisingly sincere. Things we thought we could really do. When we walked back we turned off our torches just to breathe a moment in the dark, in the first moments of the new year, to spend a moment with ourselves, wondering. Another year gone, like that. What even happened? When you think about it, so much.

And then we got drunk and it was brilliant, as you do.

We went back to the hills the next morning, slightly hungover and a lot feeling like we want to walk and breathe and talk. We talked a bit. I got excited about a half torn-down building looking a bit like a death trap, and every sign that told me I shouldn't do something made me wonder what would happen if I did. And I was once again like a child jumping in the puddles and walking in the stream instead of dry land and it was wonderful.

Walking back home in Glasgow rain in silence I felt good. I had a waterproof coat and good shoes on and I just listened to the rain, looked at it fall, and the city might as well have been dead for all the people I saw. It was beautiful. Now I'm turning on the first page of my calendar and curling up with a cup of hot chocolate and a good book and be with myself.