The 2018 lookback

This is my review of 2018, and the eighteenth year that I’ve filled in this questionnaire at the end of the year. Which means I’m double that age. Also, that I’ve been an adult for as long as I was a child. Good grief…

1. What did you do in 2018 that you’d never done before?

• Owned a driving licence.
• Worn boxing gloves.
• Learned about three words of Scottish gaelic (random chain of thought + anxiety + procrastination on YouTube = fun new discoveries)
• Felt I’d truly and finally broken free of some difficult former influences. Not all of them entirely, but certainly of the worst one by far. And the others are dead, so they can’t do much from where they are…
• For one of few years I can recall in my adult life, feel I might be starting to live, more than exist.

2. Did you keep your new years’ resolutions, and will you make more for next year? I wanted a functioning business and to send my first book out to agents. Both of which happened, of a fashion. Of course, it’s a little more nuanced than that, but isn’t it always…

Next year I’d like a business that’s still functioning, a permanent home of some sort, to write my second book, to get an agent (more likely with my second book than my first, I’m told…), and to feel like I could fall in love with someone again. Or at least have some more clarity on the future feasibility of all these things…

3. Did anyone close to you give birth? One of my oldest friends had a baby I’ve yet to meet.

4. Did anyone close to you die? My last living grandparent made it to 97.

5. What countries did you visit? Mum and I were treated to a girls’ holiday in Cannes, where we ate and drank ourselves silly. Despite being near the end of September, it was still baking.

6. What would you like to have had in 2018 that you lacked? Only the usual alternate universe where things which have never been simple for me are simple, and where I don’t have to think about Brexit. Or death. Or any alternate universes in which my life could look very different. Getting turned down flat for a Fellowship didn’t bother me in the end as I’ll probably be too busy anyway…

7. What date from 2018 will remain etched upon your memory, and why? The meetings I had when I was setting up my business – less dull than it sounds, I promise. My driving tests (all four of them…). A gin tour near Whitchurch. The week in Cannes. My work visit to Manchester and Liverpool (Loved Liverpool – especially seeing my friend, and having dinner at Down The Hatch). A belated birthday day out with my best friend. A coffee with a writer friend who’s 50 and single and furnished me with much food for thought.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year? Launching Genuine Copy. Sending my first book to agents. Passing my driving test. Making freelancing start to work for me. The publication of and wonderful response to Finding The Words, a new resource I co-wrote aimed at supporting people bereaved by suicide. And seeing a leading actor holding it on stage with him at a conference, while giving an immensely moving talk about a personal tragedy. Continuing to try and make my body do new and different things without feeling awkward, namely horseriding and kickboxing.

9. What was your biggest failure? I’m entering my third year or thereabouts of internally speculating over whether someone is avoiding meaningful contact with me on purpose or just due to life being life. Relatedly, see also, my love-hate relationship with Twitter.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury? Most happily, no.

11. What was the best thing you bought?  During the heatwave, after narrowly failing my second driving test and doing worse in my third, I took the train out to a gin distillery in Hampshire and had a guided tour in the afternoon sun, followed by a gin cocktail the size of a human head. It was blissful.

12. Whose behaviour merited celebration? Anyone who went out of their way to make a positive difference in the world. Which, happily, is an awful lot of wonderful people I know.

13. Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed? A veritable shower of politicians.

14. Where did most of your money go? Learning to drive, or into savings.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about? An incredibly late invoice for the last of my money from a summer project being paid just before Christmas.

16. What song(s) will always remind you of 2018?

• Girlfriend, Doesn’t Matter and Goya Soda by Christine and the Queens.
• Bones of Ribbon by London Grammar.
• Star Roving by Slowdive.
• Red Rain, In Your Eyes, Steam and Big Time by Peter Gabriel who consequently has spent more time in my head this year than I knew any middle-aged married man healthily could.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you…?

– Happier or sadder?  Happier.

– Thinner or fatter?  Similar.

– Richer or poorer?  Richer.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of? Being a confident driver. Being a confident anything.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of? Procrastinating. Fearing admin. Being mistaken for the wife of people I’m not married to just because I’m A Bit Intense.

20. How will you be spending New Year? I wanted to make my peace with Durham and go back for the first time since my 30th in 2014, but making peace with Durham turned out to be immorally expensive. So my friend is coming here instead. Hurrah!

21. Did you fall in love in 2018? It would be nice to think I could in future without exacerbating a lot of guilt, grief and might-have-beens, and generally undoing the good work of a lot of therapy.

Oh, and on that note: If you think that a single woman in her thirties constitutes a threat to your relationship, maybe try considering she might be single for a whole host of painful reasons, including being in recovery from years of life-limiting anxiety, depression and complicated grief, and would rather swim through a lake of nuclear waste than go on Tinder, let alone go to the effort of stealing anyone’s partner. Also, try ascertaining this information from said woman herself, rather than from other people behind her back. Also, try growing up.

22. How many one-night stands? What, actually, does this really mean? Is it sex that you don’t want to repeat (because it was bad), that you can’t repeat (because it was taboo), or that you can’t quite be bothered to repeat (because you can’t be bothered with a relationship)? I’ve never figured that out. I always thought it was the first. Either way, zero.

23. What was your favourite TV or radio programme? McMafia, Bodyguard, Killing Eve, Informer and Clique.

24. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year? I try not to hate anyone. But if you think Brexit is a good idea I am ever closer to hating you and find it ever harder to want to know you. Please try to understand why.

25. Do you like anyone now that you didn’t like this time last year? Possibly. I much prefer having been wrong about awful people to awful people being awful. 

26. What was the best book you read? Probably more than one, but I’d single out Small Pieces by Joanne Limburg. Recommended to me as part of the support my Arts Council bursary gave me, and I’m mightily glad it was. Among the best of the considerable amount of writing on suicide bereavement I’ve read. She comes at it from a Jewish sibling perspective, which is not mine. But still so much resonated…

27. What was your greatest musical discovery? For “great” as in “greatly embarrassing I didn’t know before”, I discovered Mabel is Neneh Cherry’s daughter.

28. What did you want and get?  My driving licence. How confidently I use it remains to be seen…

29. What did you want and not get? A literary agent.

30. What was your favourite film of this year? As usual, I wanted to see more films than I went to see.

31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you? I was 34 in mid-June, when it was hot but just before the big mad heatwave. There was a family trip to Kenwood House.

32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying? Less paralysing anxiety over admin and emails.

33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2018?  Dressing up for the evening in Cannes to noughties pop I hated when I supposed to like it was fun.

34. Who kept you sane? If you’ve read this far, almost certainly you. Well done.

35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most? If you wouldn’t give Paddy Considine or Keeley Hawes the night of their lives, what are you even doing in my life.

36. What political issue stirred you the most? Guess…

37. Who did you miss? If you need to know, you probably do.

38. Who was the best new person you met? If you’re reading this and we met this year, probably you.

39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2018:  These three years of weekly therapy have been a great idea…

40. Quote a song lyric that sums up 2018:

“Here am I, home at last with a golden view / Looking for hope, and I hope it’s you / Splitting my heart, cracked right in two / The pleasure of pain endured to purify our misfit ways and magnify our crystal days…” Crystal Days, Echo and the Bunnymen

I did it…

HOORAY AND HALLELUJAH!!!!!!!!!! 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉 pic.twitter.com/0obdcHZZgY

— Maxine Frances (@MaxineFrances) August 3, 2018

…and, unless I sit my Maths GCSE a third time, or have to rewrite my whole book because no-one wants to publish it, it’ll probably be the hardest single thing I’ll ever do. But I knew it would be, and acceptance was half the battle. I was diagnosed with dyspraxia at 21 in 2005. Early on during the assessment, I was asked whether I could drive and whether I’d found learning difficult or frustrating (“Does the Pope pray?” “Is Boris Johnson a pillock?”). All bar one dyspraxic person I’ve ever met has said they found it hard or impossible to learn, and the one anomaly was a master of fake bravado (he later died – bad mental health, not bad driving…). In 2011, during my happiest spell as a journalist, I wrote an article for the Daily Telegraph about dyspraxia and driving; then had to explain patiently to many people that despite it, I hadn’t actually cracked said milestone myself. I took blocks of lessons during my teens and twenties but was curtailed by multiple moves, lack of money and sporadic levels of enthusiasm for driving, and life. Of the five instructors I had age 17-24, only one got me anywhere near to a test. My first could barely get me into third gear and I didn’t drive again until two years later. Two were barely in their twenties. The older one tried to tickle my ribs as I drove down Durham’s main dual carriageway. I learned on Saturday mornings during my first graduate job and gave up because I was far too tired and consequently far too dangerous.

My iron determination to try again and finally see it through kicked in after I ran the London Marathon two years ago. A few people seemed to enjoy the diary I kept here during the training so I thought I could similarly keep one of my learning to drive. But, while it’s normal to publicly celebrate running a Marathon, driving is…well, leaving it late or finding it hard’s not really something you’re supposed to talk about, is it? Like admitting you’re bad at sex, or struggling to get pregnant. Or grieving (You should totally talk about those, by the way. I’ll help you do it). More importantly, though, learning to drive is really quite dull. The basics can come fairly soon, even to a dyspraxic, especially if you’ve driven before. After that it’s just endlessly, boringly making new mistakes and repeating old ones for a long, long time until you get there. I’d expected it would probably take me two or three tests and 12 to 18 months of lessons to pass. It took me fifteen months to drive to test standard, another four months to book a test, and after another four months I still hadn’t passed. I failed the first due to two epic nervous brain farts at the beginning, with just two other minors. The second test a month later was infinitely more pleasant and I thought I’d done well, only to discover I’d failed for wrongly using the left-only lane at a roundabout, and not looking left before turning right at a junction where I thought there was only unused industrial land that side. After the third, another month on, I came back and lay face down on the grass for half an evening. Now well into worse-case scenario territory, I decided it might just help if I expected to pass next time rather than hedging my bets, and tried to put it to the back of my mind rather than overthink every permutation of test route. My driving instructor who overthinks and takes his job nerdily seriously (funny how we got on…) has spent two years emphasising the importance of keeping a positive attitude to driving. He would praise lessons where I had a serious fault but exuded confidence over those where I made no mistakes but drove as if I was driving through Pyongyang in a New York taxi. Sure enough, being quietly confident about my next test – quietly being about about as good as it gets – did seem to make the run up feel easier.

And so, attempt number four. The test centre was much less busy than on previous visits – a big help to begin with. Driving test centres, you may recall, have the combined atmosphere of a hospital wing and the worst places you’ve ever temped. There are lots of signs imploring you to relax and, usually, lots of smart, under-confident young girls being comforted by their gormless, over-confident older boyfriends. Everyone sits in the waiting room nervous-laughing and deep-breathing as they wait for the examiners to come down in their high-vis jackets and call out the names. I was first up, and remembered the examiner from my second test – another good sign. (“We’ve met,” I said, a bit too eagerly. He remembered I was “A writer of some sort.” I remembered he was called Ian). The cardinal rule of driving tests everyone tells you is not to worry about things you think you’ve failed for as you go along. Guess what, this is easier when you’re not on your fourth test during a heatwave. I hoped that I’d be given parallel parking as my manoeuvre, which I am inexplicably very good at, thanks to the one good instructor I had in my youth who made me practice it for an hour at a time. I hadn’t had it on any of the previous tests, so it was likely. Instead, I was told we were going to do the manoeuvre first and do a bay park in the car park – my least favourite manoeuvre and possibly least favourite anything. “God, I’m sorry, I’ve lost this, how many go’s am I allowed?” I said, convinced I’d already failed and strangling the urge to run out of the car weeping before we’d even left the test centre. But then I remembered my instructor’s advice to me umpteen times that manoeuvres are very difficult to fail for. Examiners are lenient with them as most people cock them up simply due to nerves, especially if you have to do one first thing.

The drive seemed a mixed bag. Definitely some comfortable stretches, definitely some Moments. I was convinced I’d failed for at least one other thing, possibly a couple. I faffed about a bit trying to change lanes early on. Later, a car came flying uphill at me just as I’d passed a give way line on the blind spot of a notoriously dangerous winding road where no-one who wants to live should attempt the speed limit. I yelled something plaintive and was told politely but firmly to STFU and concentrate. There’s a small mosque on the outskirts of town and I had to drive up a street rammed with Friday lunchtime worshippers. (No racism from the passenger side, however. Hooray!). Further up, I had to pull in close behind a car because of an illegally parked van obstructing the road and was convinced I hadn’t left enough room or would be marked down for being prompted to reverse back/edge forward/generally stay calm. I knew the point at which we were going back to the test centre, and those last few minutes passed by uneventfully. I waited in the driver’s seat, slugging from my water bottle and trying not to look across. Ian did not seem especially as if he was about to impart good news. He seemed as if he was sweating and wanted to go home, which, strangely enough, I could empathise with.

“Well, Maxine, that’s the end of the test…”

I waited for the “I’m afraid/I”m sorry…”

“And I’m pleased to tell you that you’ve passed.”

I’m afraid it all went very X Factor and weepy for a moment.

“How many minors did I get?” I asked, when I could speak. I got seven, mostly for the bay park – as many as I had in the other three tests combined. You’re allowed up to fifteen minors on one test, the average is 8-10. They’re all indicated on your test report. “Have a look; but no need to dwell on them,” he added – the sign of someone who either knows me too well or not at all.

That was last week. Since then, I’ve had one very jittery little drive with a scared mum and a few much more pleasant little ones with a less-scared dad, where I realised my seat had probably been too far forward the first time (slow clap Max). My instructor left me with two pieces of advice: To self-monitor my dyspraxia (Essentially, don’t drive when tired, angry or hungry. You know, like everyone else on earth) and to push myself beyond easy familiar routes. I’m torn between thinking it’s perfectly OK to be a timid local driver forever, and agreeing with him that I have not put all this time and money into learning just to tootle to Tesco and back. After other milestones – degrees, diplomas, shortlistings – I haven’t always had the confidence to unlock the doors those milestones were supposed to open, and it wasn’t until I ran the Marathon at the age of 32 that I really learned to appreciate the magnitude of something I’d done. I don’t want to repeat the past with driving. Speaking of running, I have wondered whether a similarly methodical approach to driving would help, building up to more ambitious drives in a similar way my training plan built me up to running more ambitious distances.

Next up, I have a motorway lesson in September (I’ve already had one as the law very recently changed to allow learners on), and probably another night lesson as the nights draw in (I’ve driven in darkness before but I can’t even remember whether it was this winter or last…). I am old enough now to know there’s a pattern to my achievements: One, I can go into an anticlimactic slump afterwards. This needs to be carefully contained so that it doesn’t go on for months (Or, indeed, years. Hello 2011-14). Two, I daftly make a mental note of those who haven’t been in touch to congratulate me for it, as well as the 100-odd people who have, including people I haven’t spoken to in decades, and The Dyspraxia Foundation. In this instance, the people who haven’t made contact haven’t because they’re dead (definitely), or on holiday (probably). Nothing much to be done about either, is there? As I said on Twitter recently, I’m not just happy about passing my driving test for what it is. I’m happy because it’s the first achievement in all my adult life I haven’t clouded by wishing someone would and/or could get in touch. At least, not to the point any pleasure is removed from it. This feels rather lovely. Oh, and now I have a free hour to spend applying for this and a spare £162 a month not to spend on lessons and tests. That feels rather lovely too. See you on the road… 

Also, if you have recommendations of any advice/resources aimed at new drivers who aren’t teenagers, please sling them my way!

Helpful places that could do with your help this Christmas

Dear writers, journalists and whoever,

If you’re lucky enough to be in the position that you and your friends have everything you need and don’t have to worry too much about money, giving to charity instead of buying Christmas presents is a lovely idea. As my (probably) last blog post of 2017, below are some great causes I have given time or money to in the past, and/or which have helped me in difficult times, that you might like to consider helping. If you know me but not well enough to see me or buy me anything for Christmas, I would also be very honoured if you would donate to any of them in my name.

A disclaimer: I can be cautious about cheerleading too much for any one organisation, as different people’s experiences of using the same one for support can be very varied. However, if you use a service as a vulnerable person and get someone unhelpful it’s always worth persevering and asking for someone else. I had a so-so experience with Cruse Bereavement Care and another extremely helpful one when I reluctantly went back three years later. While I wish I hadn’t needed it twice, the support I got the second time was amongst the best I’ve ever had for anything.

Here’s the list…

Mental health support

As well as national charities Mind, Heads Together, Rethink, Young Minds and The Mental Health Foundation consider donating to small local charities providing counselling and therapy for free or at reduced rates, such as Number 22 in Berkshire. While the Samaritans do great work for a lot of people, their volunteers aren’t trained mental health professionals. With NHS services thin to the bone at the moment, local dedicated charities are pretty much the only qualified support available to anyone who can’t afford anything from £50 to £500 an hour to see a therapist. They need all the money they can get. Organisations that train people in mental health first aid and suicide prevention are worth your time too.

Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM) are specifically a male suicide prevention charity I do volunteering bits for, and they’re lovely. Their helpline also uses trained counsellors.

Support for people on low income 

• Trussell Trust – the main provider of food banks in the UK.
• Shelter and StreetLink  for homelessness.
• Arts Emergency – An alternative to old-school-tie networks, supporting young people from underrepresented backgrounds making a living in the creative arts.
• Regional writing organisations provide Arts Council bursaries to talented low-income writers – the Free Word Centre has more information and links – they are also office neighbours with the lovely TLC, who’ve supported me.

Human rights 

• Reprieve – Provides free legal and investigative support to those facing torture, execution, rendition and extrajudicial killing or imprisonment.

Bereavement support

• As well as Cruse, mentioned previously, Winston’s Wish support bereaved children and families, including specifically those who’ve experienced sudden, traumatic bereavement. As do Child Bereavement UK and Grief Encounter. 
• Survivors of Bereavement by Suicide (SOBS) are a network of regional support groups where those affected can meet others like them. I haven’t personally found these especially helpful, but some people very much do.

Woman-focused organisations

• Refuge – support for women affected by domestic violence, including gift parcels for families spending Christmas in refuges.
• Women’s Equality Party. What it says on the tin. You can join if you’re a member of another party.
• Bloody Good – offers sanitary products to those who can’t afford them, including refugees, and campaigns to end period poverty.

Other organisations close to my heart

• The Dyspraxia Foundation are the only national UK charity supporting people with dyspraxia.
• Bliss supports premature babies and their families. I bumped into one of their trustees by chance when I was a spectating at this year’s London Marathon and told him I was one. That was a nice conversation.

Thank you for reading and have a lovely Christmas.

An little update on my book’s journey

(…for some reason I always imagine “journey” said in an elongated Scouse accent although I’ve never heard any actual Liverpudlians say it – and I used to watch Brookside unironically…).

Book feedback – the first set of editorial notes on my first ever completed manuscript – came through a couple of weeks ago and, as you may have gathered, I haven’t taken myself off across the country and locked myself in a Premier Inn for several days crying as per my worse-case. i.e, it was more good than bad. Not only good but very encouraging and at times even profoundly moving. A book report is something of a combination of editorial feedback and a therapy session – helpful if, like me, you’re an old hand at both.  Like an editor in journalism or copywriting, the reader will have tastes, instincts and market awareness. Like a therapist, they won’t explicitly tell you what to do. They’re just there to ask questions in order to draw out what they see as being important from what you present to them. It’s likely there are things you need to do to make things better that you’re too tired to fix and having someone else point them out, along with what’s working well, will help.

My reader has had some remarkably similar life experiences to me around invisible disability and grief, which she shared beautifully. She especially related to what I expressed in the book regarding both, about having a tendency to over-explain myself in order to be better understood and more believed, and the sad irony that it sometimes seems to repel the very people it most wants to convince. Being of a different generation (She’s a boomer; I’m a Xennial, apparently, FYI) she was also particularly interested in the aspects of the book relating to the internet and online friendships (and the way modern technology particularly indulges the thirsty temptation to keep plugging away the more you sense someone withdrawing from you…). She feels that the relationship between my dyspraxia and the internet/blogging/social media could be the book’s timeliest selling point.

There are still a couple of problem areas I need to look at before it’s ready to go out to agents; hopefully fairly early next year. My reader and I both agree on what they are and why they exist. So with that I will resist the temptation to write more about writing and actually get on with doing the edits. Things all got a bit poignant on Saturday night when I was mulling over a new edit schedule while watching the film Spike Island on BBC2. (Read the book and you’ll know why…).

In other “life goals now scarily and excitingly closer to real” news, I’ve booked my driving test for early February. Similarly, I would rather get on with prepping for the test and training for the Berlin Half Marathon right now than write about it, but I expect I will at some point before it happens (not 11pm the night before, ideally…). Less of the Christmas, more of the 2018 please…

As an old friend used to say:

The 2017 lookback

I know it’s only the beginning of November but I’m getting this annual ritual in very early because the first professional feedback on my book is due any week now and I don’t want it clouding over all my answers if it isn’t as encouraging as hoped. Life has made me acutely aware of how much can still change between this point in the calendar and Christmas. Three years ago this month, I went from just-about-hanging-in-there to one of my lowest ever points in a snap. A year later I had one of the best Novembers I can recall. This time last year, Brexit and the election of the tubthumping tangerine were killing my post-Marathon buzz and a company director advised me to write my book instead of accepting a City salary as a copywriter and qualifying for a mortgage in mid-Wales. Afterwards someone called the police because they were worried about a “female in distress” near Farringdon station. A bit excessive; quite embarrassing. Right now, anything nearest 2015 would be great…

1. What did you do in 2017 that you’d never done before? 

Finish writing a book. YES, FINALLY. A WHOLE, COMPLETE, ACTUAL BOOK, with support from TLC and The Arts Council. Twice. The whole business meeting-followed-by-police-incident was an incentive. And nobody died while I was writing it! Super-splendid.

2. Did you keep your new years’ resolutions, and will you make more for next year? 

• Finishing the book – yes, see above.
• Taking up a new hobby (Most were too expensive because of learning to drive, so one for next year, even if I can only manage it sporadically).

Next year:

• More stability in all senses of the word. I say that every year but I hope that at last having written the book which says what has long needed to be said actually helps achieve it.
• If the above happens, other hopes may follow. I’ve never had a relationship worth shouting about and have consciously chosen not to for the last three years so the idea feels like contemplating a dark room full of nettles, but it would be quite nice if it didn’t.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth? One of my oldest friends is due soon.

4. Did anyone close to you die? My favourite question to answer “No” to.

5. What countries did you visit? None. Forget being able to afford a holiday while you’re learning to drive.

6. What would you like to have had in 2017 that you lacked? A driving licence.

7. What date from 2017 will remain etched upon your memory, and why? 

• The annual Time To Talk service at St Martin-in-the-Fields Church in Feb. I met an older woman there when I went along alone for the first time in 2015; since then we’ve made it an annual meetup-followed-by-lunch. Not exactly a fun and funky place to hang out, but in this era of connections being propped up by social media, it’s weirdly nice just to have the certainty of seeing someone whom you can comfortably label as something.
• The London Marathon. Watching not running this time, but just as emotional. Well done Bryony!
• Handing out Oyster wallets at Waterloo and Canary Wharf for CALM’s Mind The Chap campaign.
• Doing yoga on Clapham Common with Mental Health Mates.
• The writing retreat.
• Listening to Green Light by Lorde alone and surrounded by green fields and rolling hills.
• Visiting or being visited by friends.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year? Other than the book:

• Learning Beginners Italian (Ropey – it’s Duolingo; I can hardly put together a sentence and I mix up the plural and singular – but it’s good to learn something new and I want to get to 100%).
• Being – almost – able to drive. Test in early January I hope!
• Kicking travel/social anxiety in the proverbial and making it away onto the writing retreat.
• Being introduced to the media head of a national mental health and suicide prevention charity close to my heart, following a copywriting project I worked on last year. Which, when other people get to see it, we hope will help a lot of them…

9. What was your biggest failure?

• Money, but most of what I did attempted to address that situation in one way or another so as the past six years go, a success.
• Not sorting my complicated relationship with Twitter.
• Wondering whether Brexit views would have ended relationships that could never have happened regardless of Brexit (Excellent use of time, Max, bravo). 

10. Did you suffer illness or injury? RSI while writing the book. Minor head injury.

11. What was the best thing you bought? A cloudy lemonade on one of the hottest days of the year. (The other choices in the vicinity were a selection of spirits, or a Jane Austen centenary mug; same price).

12. Whose behaviour merited celebration? Yours, if you voted Remain last year.

13. Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed? Yours, if you voted Leave.

14. Where did most of your money go? Learning to drive.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about? Finishing the book (among many emotions). Going to places I’ll be able to drive to next year – hopefully on warm summer days, feeling accomplished.

16. What song(s) will always remind you of 2017? Sounds Good To Me by Thea Gilmore, from the new album, and Beautiful Day from the one before (I haven’t listened to Songs From The Gutter quite so much this year…). Green Light by Lorde. Cali by Ride. Oh Woman Oh Man by London Grammar. Solsbury Hill and Sledgehammer by Peter Gabriel.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you…?

– Happier or sadder? A low bar, but happier. Hopefully book feedback won’t alter that. (My big dread is being advised to crowdfund or self-publish – there’s a stack of reasons I don’t want to do either of those things).

– Thinner or fatter? Inexplicably thinner. Last year I ran a Marathon. This year I did a slow 10K and ran once or twice a week instead of thrice. Losing half a stone in the last three years is one of the few socially-acceptable reasons I don’t feel like a 33-year-old…

– Richer or poorer? About the same (not a good thing), but see Question 9.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of? Reclining in the sun.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of? Applying ice to my neck and shoulders.

20. How will you be spending New Year? I hope, in my friend’s flat with bad films and good food.  Last year I was meant to be hosting but my stomach said no and I ended up on my own with dry toast for dinner. After a bit of a mooch, I watched Dawn French’s Thirty Million Minutes on iPlayer in a candelit bath, which turned into an inexplicably awesome evening. Over the years, I’ve memorably spent New Years Eves: On Hampstead Heath, getting crushed in Trafalgar Square, all-night raving, shivering at house parties, at a Sri Lankan beach hotel on somebody else’s dime, and in High Wycombe lying to people so I could go home early because I hated my life and didn’t feel like celebrating anything. If you think of all someone’s New Years as an overall reflection of them, that sounds fair.

21. Did you fall in love in 2017? There are probably alternate realities I need not to be able to picture before that happens. Such as where I’m 27, and Brexit isn’t even a stupid word let alone a stupid reality.

22. How many one-night stands? I have audio smut for those needs. Unlike one-night stands, no dressing up required – literally or metaphorically. Like one-night stands, the quality varies. I mostly remember what sex is thanks to Night In My Veins by The Pretenders…

23. What was your favourite TV or radio programme? I loved Apple Tree Yard, Clique,  The Man In The Orange Shirt, Strike, Trust Me, Doctor Foster series 2, GameFace, Love Lies and Records, Motherland and The A Word. I also watched all of Veronica Mars S1-3 and rewatched the movie.

24. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year? No-one I can think of.

25. Do you like anyone now that you didn’t like this time last year? Not as far as I know.

26. What was the best book you read? Didn’t have as much time as I’d have liked due to writing my own and now have a teetering pile of recommendations.

27. What was your greatest musical discovery? Five years behind the rest of the country, I listened to London Grammar properly. If was a twenty-year-old undergraduate in the middle of a Durham winter right now, Hannah Reid could have my soul silver-plated.

28. What did you want and get? A finished book.

29. What did you want and not get? Paid enough.

30. What was your favourite film of this year? I didn’t have a favourite but I loved having a midweek film day with a friend.

31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you? I was 33 and there was a heatwave. I went for lunch and to see La Traviata with family because it was too hot to do much else, they wanted to see it, and I’d never seen it. Despite being a theatre nerd I’d never been to an opera: it is quite the treat.

32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying? Not opening Twitter or watching the news and feeling like I’d just walked into a room full of smouldering rubbish bins.

33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2017? Gradually getting the hang of introducing more colour to my non-running wardrobe but still resistant to ditching my swampy footballer’s-widow sunglasses.

34. Who kept you sane? My family, TLC and the Arts Council, whose support and agreement that I should do it in order to move forward and have any chance of returning to normal life (or journalism, if you can call that normal life…) made writing the book possible. Also my friends, and the makers of the very funny My Dad Wrote A Porno podcast.

35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most? (a.k.a “the section that gets sadder every year.”) Let’s not talk about what Nick Clegg looking tired and forlorn did to me at 3am on election night (Apologies to his wife, and to anyone who’s eaten recently…).

36. What political issue stirred you the most? Too easy.

37. Who did you miss?  You don’t need to know that. You do need to know this Thea Gilmore lyric:

“Fingernails, thorn trees, my fickle heart too. So many things in this sad little world grow back, except for you…” 

38. Who was the best new person you met? It was brief but lovely to meet Kate and Jess from the new Oxford branch of Mental Health Mates, which has grown from its London origins into an awesome worldwide phenomenon.

39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2017: Most of them are in my book.

40. Quote a song lyric that sums up 2017: “Honey, I’ll be seeing you down every road.”