It’s New Year’s Day. Traditionally a time for reflecting on the year just gone and that to come. By any standards, 2021 has been an odd year, one that feels it was full of doom and gloom. But was it? In this week’s A Little Bit of Blake, I’m doing a round-up of the last twelve months and deciding whether the year has truly been one of unremitting bad luck and rain, or whether good luck and sunshine showed their face occasionally?

January: The year kicked off to a bad start when the UK was put into tier four restrictions on Boxing Day, quickly followed by a total lockdown again the first week of January. Instantly triggering deja-vu and memories of the lockdown of early 2020, the country braced itself for long days fighting cabin fever and boredom.

More bad news followed for me when my lodger moved out and returned to his family in France leaving us without any rental income. As we were then in a lockdown it seemed unwise to try and find another one, so we hunkered down for however long this siege would last.

Miss F was in a state of exam limbo as the government made the decision all students due to take their exams that March would be marked on performance, assignments, and the judgement of their teachers. All students except those taking vocational exams like Miss F. Weeks of frustrating indecision followed before it was finally announced that exams would be cancelled for these students as well.

On the very last day of January, a careless Yodel delivery driver in an extremely large van making a delivery to a neighbour smashed into the side of my little car and half ripped the front wing off. Not stopping to give me his details, instead, this toad of an individual roared away at speed with me in hot pursuit. Only getting a partial number plate, this incident triggered months of wrangling with my insurance company and the police.

February: For some reason, my Instagram account was blocked, and I was unable to access it at all. Devastated at the loss of over four years of posts and almost 6k followers, I had to start again from scratch with a backup account and pray that Instagram would eventually give me back my account. It being impossible to contact them direct all I could do was wait and hope.

Shenanigans continued with my insurance company over the damage to my car. Because the driver hadn’t stopped and I hadn’t got his number plate, it looked like blame was going to be assigned to me and all the insurance would offer me was the price of the car in scrap metal. Mid-month the same driver made a delivery to another neighbour, and I did manage to get his number plate on that occasion, however, because he refused to admit fault it meant proceedings continued to drag.

Still in lockdown, I had the time to start work on updating my website which consumed most of my free time during the month.

Finally, I wrote book four of the Blackwood Family Saga – Kiss & Tell – in two weeks.

March: At the beginning of the month, I went down with a nasty tooth infection that spread to my ear and jaw. Luckily, I was able to secure a prescription for live antibiotics from my dentist which cleared up the problem within a week or so.

I also had my first vaccination for Covid which left me very ill for three days.

Energy prices in the UK shot up and I became embroiled in a dispute with my then utility company who claimed I had suddenly started using four times my normal amount of energy and doubled my monthly bill.

One of the residents of the block of flats at the bottom of my road went on a rampage with a knife in the middle of the night, threatening to cut anyone he came across. The police took him away but a couple of days later he was back.

My vacuum cleaner broke down and I had to buy another one.

Then at the end of the month, two months after they blocked all access to it, I was finally allowed back onto my Instagram account. No apology or explanation was ever given.

April: My new website was launched, then mid-month I returned to work. Incredibly busy, the weeks I’d spent resting during lockdown seemed for nothing as I was quickly run-down and stressed again after being plunged headfirst back into the rat race.

May: Kiss & Tell – my twelfth book – was published.

Miss F struggled with her student finance application – with red tape and misinformation causing problems all around which took hours on the phone to sort out. Finally, all was settled, and she received the full amount.

I had issues with Sky whom we use for our internet, landline, TV, and Miss F’s mobile when they doubled the monthly bill with no word of warning. It took long hours on the phone and threatening to leave before this was settled to my satisfaction.

The issue with my utility company reared its ugly head again, with them taking an unbelievable amount of money from my bank account. Again, long hours were spent on the phone to change providers before the situation got ridiculously out of hand.

My washing machine died in a loud explosion heard by the neighbours, so I had to buy a new one.

The car insurance fiasco continued to rumble on resulting in me having to take many comprehensive photos of my street to show how narrow it was and that locked gates were at the end of it, so when the huge delivery van was trying to do a three-point turn next to my car it would have been physically impossible for any other vehicle to have entered the road and hit my car.

The Amazon Fire tablet that Miss F had bought me for Christmas stopped working. We sent it back to be replaced but it took weeks of chasing Amazon before they finally sent me a replacement one.

Miss F and all the other students on her course were thrown under the bus when the exams they had been told were cancelled were suddenly reinstated – with six days warning!

June: The watch Miss F bought me for Christmas which I hadn’t worn because I’d been in lockdown had never worked. Although we had contacted the Etsy seller and been promised a replacement – nothing had ever been received. More time wasted chasing them up.

I went to buy some much-needed clothes and discovered I’d completely forgotten my PIN. Ordered a reminder which took over a week to turn up. In the meantime, I forgot I had forgotten my PIN and ended up phoning Miss F early on a Sunday morning to come and rescue me in the shop as I had no way to pay for my purchases.

I commenced writing book thirteen – the final instalment of The Perennials Trilogy. Although knowing it would be a big book, I was confident of a November publication date.

July: Miss F and I took a road trip up North to tour her new university and treated ourselves to a night’s stay in a local hotel plus dinner. The room was lovely but sadly the beds were rock hard and neither of us slept at all. We toured the university the following morning and drove home in the afternoon happy with her choice.

It was my 54^th birthday and I had a week off work which was full of lunches, treats, and presents.

The UK was hit with a brutal heatwave that lasted ten days over my birthday and sadly proved to be the only summer we Brits would get that year.

The insurance claim on my car was finally sorted, the other insurance company admitted blame, and I was refunded my £100 policy excess. It took over seven months to sort even though the cost of fixing my car was only £260.

August: The house was infested with a plague of moths which ate holes in most of my new clothes and destroyed areas of the carpet.

Miss F celebrated her 18^th birthday modestly not wanting a large party or any extravagance other than getting her first tattoo. A week later she received the wonderful although not surprising news that she had passed her exams with flying colours so her place at the university was secured.

The same resident of the flats who had run amok with a knife in the middle of the night decided to go postal and throw all his belongings out of his second storey flat one afternoon – including a washing machine! Again, the police took him away. This time he didn’t come back.

September: Miss F moved away to university and the house was suddenly very quiet, albeit tidy. Out of the blue, my replacement watch turned up long after we had given up on it.

For no reason, Amazon unpublished my novel Becoming Lili because they said I didn’t have copyright on the cover image – of course, I did – but it took over three weeks, forty-seven emails, and four phone calls before they re-published it. Again, no explanation or apology was offered.

A petrol crisis hit the UK and it was impossible to buy petrol with long queues at garages and some garages even being forced to close.

Once Miss F had left for university, I advertised for a new lodger and found one within two days who moved in at the end of the month.

October: My car passed its MOT even though I got the dates muddled and drove around for three weeks without one! Luckily, I didn’t get stopped by the police and it only cost £65 to get it through.

I had two theatre trips during the month – one to see the comedian Ed Byrne and one to see Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde at the local theatre. I enjoyed both trips very much.

Miss F came home from university for six days over the half-term holiday. Busy week, we packed in a lot, saw friends and family, and she returned on the Friday before Halloween.

I went to a fancy dress party on Halloween. It was a late night and rather a lot of Prosecco was drunk so when I didn’t feel too clever the next day I assumed it was tiredness and a hangover.

November: Over the first three days of November which were my days off work, I developed what I thought was a nasty chest infection and a brutal cough. However, my lodger came to me on Tuesday with the news he had tested positive for Covid. I took a test, I was positive. I called Miss F; she was positive as well even though she had no symptoms. She was placed in isolation in the university. I had to isolate for almost two weeks. In the end, because of the severity of my symptoms, I had three weeks off work and did not return until the last week of November.

During the three weeks I was off work sick I finished writing book thirteen, all 181,500 words of it. I also began editing it, and then sent the first draft to two of my beta readers.

December: At the beginning of the month, I had the Covid booster jab which made me very ill and caused me to have another three days off work.

The rest of the month was taken up with work, preparations for Christmas, and getting ready for Miss F to come home for the Christmas holidays.

The Friday before she was due home on the 15^th, I went to spend the day with a friend and when I left was horrified to discover the back windscreen of my car was completely shattered! Phoning my insurance company, they were unable to do anything until the following Monday, so my friend and I had to tape lots of bin bags over the back of my car and I had to drive carefully home.

On the 15^th I drove to Miss F’s university with a rolled-up mattress in the back of my car – it was my Christmas gift to her as the one in her university dorm was horrible and was giving her backache because it was so hard.

Then it was Christmas. I had to return to work on Boxing Day and worked five very long and stressful days until New Year.

And now it’s New Year’s Day and I’m writing this before going to the shop to buy something delicious for dinner because Miss F will be returning to university in two days.

So, that was my year. Did the bad outweigh the good? Or did it break even? I think, on reflection, if you discount the lockdown which affected everyone, not just me – and, to be honest, I quite enjoyed anyway – it appears an even split between nice and nasty. Although, I do wonder if my poor car is cursed because I’ve had more issues with it in one year than in the whole ten I’ve owned it put together.

Facing the year to come I feel there will be more issues with Covid – it doesn’t seem to be going away – and as the cost of living in the UK continues to soar I think some serious belt-tightening will be in order.

On a more positive note, book thirteen looks set to be published in February and I will then start work on book five of the Blackwood Family Saga. That will be a much shorter book, so I am hopeful of writing and publishing at least another one, if not two, books in 2022.

I’m not making any resolutions this year or fixing any goals other than working to write and publish as many books as possible. I am planning to publish some of my books as hardbacks and explore the possibility of bringing some of them out as audiobooks – but we will see what the year brings, and these plans aren’t set in stone.

I am hopeful of a better year for us all because at the end of the day hope is all we can do.

So let me wish you all a very Happy, Healthy, and Peaceful New Year, and I will chat with you next week.

Julia Blake