my favourite things..

i think my emailed top fives of the year should, matt-like, also be recorded here..for prosperity's sake...or something...
ok, my top five moments, memories and well, favourite things of the year that was 2005..just as its about to end..

1...edinburgh on july 2nd, the white bands, the silent marching, the shame of finding oneself on said silent march holding a starbucks frappucino and wondering if the police themselves might turn on me for my traitorship to the cause..hanging out in the big dress, and winding up at the cottage..good times..
2...the cold of this winter...i am loving loving loving the cold. my purpose-made, ridiculously long scarf is doing me proud.
3...the first manchester family holiday in wales, in may, at the house with the scary lady, the barbeques, the beers, the "blast-furnace"(sal, 05/05) tans we earned, bh monday lunch, gettinglost EVERYTIME i tried to find my room, praying for the teachers, the drive there with sal, the drive home with russell, and especially tom's now much-used idea of "see you monday", watching garden state with our duvets, singing on the last morning to mrs p's legendary "let my people go" with more five-syllable words than even ric could get into song lyrics..with fin playing the drum..and emma with her purple ribbons..! all good..
4..my shire summer...lazy afternoons and evenings of heading straight from work to the lovely cafe rene, assured of company, cold beer, sunshine, crosswords and laughs...haven't had the early and best part of summer in the glos since i was 18 and hated the place, so it was a whole new time..
5..learning that loving means something like..being nicer to people than they are to you and not waiting to be liked before i like first.or something similar but with more order. or not...in fact, also learning that love isn't patterned or formluable, but earthy and vital, springy and terribly hard work sometimes. i think it laughs though: that satisfied, at-ease laugh that you only really let out when you're shot of fear. am enjoying seeing it at work in me and in my life and knowing its all straight from jesus and that he'll never run out, so neither will i....wowzers! how amazing is that!!
cheating
..6...claire and george's wedding..never did a girl look so at home inher wedding dress, or a boy look so unashamedly but quietly inlove..the rest of us had big fun on the bridge too..

it really was a good year. nothing spectacular, and not all that much real excitement or change. but god did say at its beginning that i was about to be divested of all my dreams. i can honestly say that it has taken him more or less the full twelve-month to accmmplish that. so now i have none. not a one. except of more snow.....