They started at 6pm here.

I called her. She said her dog was ill. I said knowing her, I was surprised she hadn't simply murdered it. You're a horrible girl, she said. I said, open a window and solve all your problems - chuck yourself out at the same time and solve everyone else's. Porni, she said, porni, porni, porni - louder and louder until I told her she was a mouni and hung up.

That's her new year greetings done. On to find another person to call.

How can I be about to enter into my fifth decade? That is too depressing. I'm going to call the mouni back. I've just had one of her sons on the phone telling me to leave her alone. What a laugh. Apart from her, I'm the only person married into that gang of a family that's still alive.

I'll call her now. Just googling electrolysis providers in the Greater Athens area first.

Oh, this looks promising...

https://www.afroditispa.com/en/

Right in Kolonaki so not far for her to shuffle along to. Five euros for an upper lip is a very competitive price. Hers is of a particular thickness however, so they might charge more.

Her number is engaged.

I've just had my two minute phonecall from a Bosnian mountainside. Most of that was the father of the boy my son is friends with and staying with.

I've always felt rather jealous of the bond between fathers and sons. It seems rather special, all the more so for being a huge breach in a macho wall. I think it's very beautiful.

I was thinking that just there as I watched Billy Elliott. I remember my grandfather telling me that when he was demobbed he sent a telegram with his time of arrival, and found his own father had deliberately gone out. He waited up for him to get home.

They sat in awkward silence with a bottle of something. Eventually his father cried, and apologized, for a Second World War that took place in a world where he'd been in the First (as well as lost his younger brother in, father descended into fatal addiction, mother committed suicide immediately after good reviews of a postwar stage comeback). They'd also had to switch a couple of vowels around on the surname, what with Italy being on opposite sides in the first and the second.

I've always found that very touching. My mother told me she found her grandfather to be a bit of an old git and hadn't mourned him. Because I'd been told this very particular thing, I had great respect and sympathy for him.

Nightjar wrote:Fifth decade?

I thought you were in your thirties.

80's/90's/00's/10's/20's...

Looks like five decades to me.

By which count, it must be seven decades for you!

I am still very much in my 30's but yes, 40 is the next major one thank you.

Would you survive but with trauma, die in the heat of battle as a gunner, drink and drug yourself to death, or do yourself in - but with a sense of satisfaction after you've read the printed reviews of your last act in the following days papers?

I can't decide myself. I'm rather proud and a bit arrogant that all options have converged upon myself. I feel an equal tendency to each.

What about everyone else?

Happy New Year to all Wendigoers. May this new decade bring each of you everything you wish for yourself and those you love. Tanya X

This time exactly one year ago I was looking at another (completely unwanted) child. A fitted Balmain blazer I'd spent a fortune on was taunting me from its bag. I'd had a big blow out in Mayfair just as I became suspicious. Thankfully matters took care of themselves - and ruined a fine set of sheets while doing so.

I'm almost certain the father was a guy I'd employed rather than Sean. I'd have found out either way because they are different colours. I just texted a happy new year to almost certainly daddy - and it's bounced back. I gave him such a good reference after kitting him out in the best togs.

What a c**t. I'm obviously too nice for my own good. I don't blame the married little sh*t for blocking my number. I only wish I had done it first. It never occurred to me that he would've until I saw it just now. What a cheap little coward.

His wife was an absolute f*ck*ng hound - a pinched faced little communist, with typically right wing social mores. Very unpleasant company - rude in a sharpened sort of way. I doubt I'm the first she's seen off. She struck me as the kind of person whose teeth were locked onto her target like a rabid dog.

Some people have no class. I even listened to her droning on about a 19 year old girl she felt threatened by - and rightly so, because he was well into her after me. Sadly for him she was a lesbian. I just noncommitally hmmmd and ahhhed and said "don't worry" as she told me she was on the lookout.

To think that right at this very moment I could be stuck changing the nappy of something just a few months old, of an ethnic background that would've been a surprise to all concerned, instead of opening another bottle of champagne. What a thought.

Happy New Year to you all!