Tagparty

3BT – blue dawn, to feel human again, bright on white

Hurrah for 2010!

1. Instead of the usual light pollution glow of night, we go to bed when the rich velvet blue dawn light is rising upward from the trees.

2. We wake slowly, awkwardly and, frankly, far too soon. We stretch out amongst the devastation of the night before and laugh again at funny moments from the party. With bacon butties in hand and a selection of cartoons playing on the TV, we enjoy the downtime until we start feeling human again.

3. The purple port stain on the sink, the discarded citrus fruit nearby.

3BT – dishwashing symphony, plans, new decade

1. The pots and pans peal sonorously in the ceramic sink.

2. The end of the year & decade encourages me to reflect, to plan. A number of friends are doing “101 goals in 1001 days” but I think that’s too many and too long for me – I’d either end up listing things I didn’t really want to do or lose momentum and fall short. I decide to come up with 10 for 2010 instead.

3. We don’t have TV (no one thinks of the radio) and all our watches & phones are out of sync so there is no countdown to midnight. When we guess it’s about the right time, we exchange ‘happy new year’s and when I open the balcony door, the cacophony of bangs & whoops tells us we’re about right. I step out onto the balcony alone but Dathan & Olli soon join me. While fireworks boom and Chinese lanterns rise in the distance, we discuss our thoughts on the overriding themes of recent decades*, Jordan Catalano & trench warfare/the Somme. The great silver moon watches us throughout.

* Negatively, I agree with the Hadley Freeman article in the Guardian about the Noughties (oh, how I hate that word) being a decade defined by fakery – fake reality (such as reality TV), fake reasons for going to war, fake science and of course, a fake election to start with – but more positively, I think it’s been a decade of reversing the planet (and people) abuse of the previous decades. It obviously started well before 2000 but it’s gone mainstream this decade – more people care about finding ethical and environmentally-friendly alternatives now than they did in the past. There is still a long way to go of course.