After an absolutely lovely Christmas and New Year period, today has so far seen me doing the school run in the pouring rain, trying (and failing) to unblock the kitchen sink and doing a supermarket shop. Back to reality with a bump.

It would be easy to sink into depression, and wallow in nostalgic longing for the good times we’ve just enjoyed. However, I am going to channel my daughter and focus on the positives. I managed to get out of the most depressing task of the year – taking down the Christmas decorations – yesterday, but my husband reports that Anna spent the entire day sighing contentedly and saying “Isn’t it nice to get the house back to normal?”. And she’s right, getting back to normal should be a positive thing, and I am lucky enough to enjoy my normality most of the time. After all, I chose to call my blog A Life More Ordinary. 

New Year Resolutions have always seemed a peculiar concept to me. Why, in the coldest, darkest month of the year, with Spring still a distant dream but our credit card bill a recurrent nightmare, do we think that we should suddenly resolve to change all the things we weren’t able to manage in warmer, drier, lighter and wealthier times? September is the natural month for initiating positive change in our lives, January is for hunkering, for embracing the normal and everyday. Great expensive blow-out meals are wonderful, but so are meals from leftovers and frugal veggie curries. After a social whirl it’s incredibly satisfying to curl up somewhere warm with all the books you were given for Christmas, and, possibly, a mug of hot chocolate.

There’s a lot of extraordinary to look forward to in 2014 – my second book, To Have and to Hold is being published in June, we’ve got some exciting holiday plans and several of my good friends are expecting babies – but, right now, this afternoon, my chief excitements are going to be rearranging my cookery book shelf to accommodate the new titles I received for Christmas, putting fresh sheets on the bed and inputting all the scribbled info on the back pages of my 2013 diary into my pristine 2014 diary. A life more ordinary. And hopefully I can get the sink unblocked soon as well…