How do you want to feel in 2025?

Same same but different is the phrase that springs to my mind. Words borrowed from a tapas bar in Bath that feel bang on for the first week of this January

Ilkley Tarn, Wednesday 8th January 2025

To name a place requires us to be in a place. It requires us to resist dreaming of where we should be and look around where we are.”
Pádraig Ó Tuama, In the Shelter: Finding a Home in the World

Happy New Year! How are you?

Greetings from a still snowy, icy, freezing Ilkley. How was your Christmas and New Year?

My response to this question tends to be a less than convincing smile and inarticulate, ‘Pffft, ok, fine, hmphhh, yep good fine’ before deflecting with a, ‘but how was yours?’

Not because Christmas wasn’t good, it was. We were together as a family. There were presents, food and drink, outings, films and Gavin & Stacey but there was work as well. The classic Christmas cold/flu bug and general overwhelm plus a few low energy-grey days too.

And it’s hard to sum up a week or so when real life is suspended and in this home at least, our numbers doubled. Our sons returned from Newcastle and Cardiff and the young person who lived with us during their final year of schooling came back for a few days too, even if they weren’t with us on Christmas Day itself. The poor dog was very confused with all the coming and going but appreciated the extra attention.

That’s a lot of changed personalities to absorb into a home at a pressurised time of year and when energy and Vitamin D levels are low. I felt for our 15-year old who muttered more than once during yet another chaotic ping-ponging dinner time conversation, ‘I like it better when it’s quiet’.

That looks ungrateful written down and I don’t meant to be. Really, I don’t. I love the energy, conversation and music. Christmas Day was a joy as we tried to find the perfect playlist to accompany a glass of fizz while transporting assorted vegetables and turkey to the table. We landed on the soundtrack to Chef. I mean, who doesn’t love a bit of Pete Rodriguez’s ‘I like it like that’ as you carve the turkey and portion out roast potatoes?

Sighs at Salts Mills, deep breaths at Saltburn-by-the-Sea

In a bid to speed up our recuperation from the Christmas cold/flu bug we were passing around and have a short break from the film watching (The Italian Job, Some Like It Hot and Bridget Jone’s Diary amongst others) we headed to Salts Mill and Saltburn-by-the-Sea. Deliberately choosing places we’ve visited many a time so that we didn’t have to think too hard about where to park, the best route to take or where to get food and drink. We could simply turn up and enjoy being there.

28th December 2024: Ceramics, Hockney, the chosen book (mainly inspired by a message I'd received from one of my cousins as we arrived) and all the colours sketchbooks at Salts Mill

I sigh every time I walk through the doors of Salts Mill. I come to a stop in front of the supersized Hockneys before slaloming from one table groaning with books on art and architecture and art supplies to another. I take my time even though I can feel the bookshop and diner calling me. Upstairs I slowly take in the books but don’t commit to buying until we’ve had coffee and cake in Salts Diner, checked out the interiors showroom, the phenomenal Ian Beesley exhibition and stuffed to the gills Carlton Antiques. Then, and only then do we buy.

Sunday 29th December 2024: Saltburn pier, the north sea and the cliff lift

At Saltburn-by-the-Sea we always park on the same stretch of the clifftop and fill our lungs with sea air. Then we head down one of the paths to the beach and walk away from the pier until we feel like we’ve gone far enough (not very far if I’m honest). Then we turn around walk back towards the pier, passing the rainbow coloured beach huts, chip shops and the amusements before walking to the end of the pier so that I can take my accidentally Wes Anderson inspired photos. Then we queue for fish and chips we eat out of the wrapper while sitting on a bench looking out to sea. We finish with a final beach stroll, back up the cliff path and drive home.

Simple, but so, so effective.

29th December 2017 and it's only now that I look at the photo of the snowman on the left that I spot Bella under the table

First week of January energy with a large side of snow

So here we are heading towards the end of the first full week of January 2025 and round here we’ve spent the week crunching through snow and trying not to slip on icy pavements. Sunday’s snow is still here and the temperature is well below zero. I’ve even dug out the big coat that kept me warm on many a Yorkshire rugby touchline on a Sunday morning when we moved up here and our weekends were dominated by sporting fixtures.

It snowed our first December in Ilkley in 2017. We returned from spending a few days with family in Bristol for Christmas to a white out. We played spot the snowman as we tramped up to White Wells, the kids engaging in snowball fights and sliding down Old Keighley Gate road on a borrowed snow scooter while I tried to keep out of the way.

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It’s the light I love when it snows. From heavy, white-grey sky muffling everyday sounds to sharp, clear freezing blue sky and chill air that burns your cheeks.

Tuesday 7th January when the snow lay round about deep and crisp and even

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time. A schedule is a mock-up of reason and order—willed, faked, and so brought into being; it is a peace and a haven set into the wreck of time; it is a lifeboat on which you find yourself, decades later, still living.”
Annie Dillard, The Writing Life

How do I want 2025 to feel?

I guess where I’ve got to as I herd my thoughts into something that flows, is that the start to 2025 has been less about what I want to do this year than how I want to feel.

I figure if I can work out how I want this year to feel. If I can paint a picture and be clear about the kind of energy I want to be around and create, the easier (famous last words) it’ll be to work out how and where I want to spend my time.

And I guess the reality is that I want this year to be like last year, yet a little more so and a little different too, but not too different.

What do I mean by that?

I guess the big thing is that I want to lean into living here in Ilkley even more. That might sound odd given we’ve been here since September 2017 but I finally feel like I’ve finally given myself permission to say that this is home after years of change and second guessing what might be round the corner. Previously afraid to fully commit to this Ilkley life despite loving it surface level, now I feel it, snow and all. I feel at home here.

I felt the shift a few months after writing ‘Hello to now and hello to daydreaming’ back in April 2024. I felt myself body drop, rooting itself in this landscape more deeply than I have before, accepting that as much as I love being by the sea and the freedom I feel under a sea-sky horizon, I also love it here. Love it enough to declare it my home without looking over my shoulder at other homes and places we’ve lived in before.

Hello to now and hello to daydreaming

I don’t want to even contemplate starting again

I don’t want to move, I don’t want to even contemplate starting again. It’s hard. Really hard and I’m not sure it’s something we talk about enough given how many of us has done it, whether within or across borders. The word relocation itself inadequate, reducing a huge emotional and mental upheaval to a clipped transactional word.

There are seedling friendships that I want to nurture, more established friendships I want to lean into. I want to carry on being able to walk everywhere even if it’s to pick up milk at Tesco. The Grove Bookshop is brilliant and I’ve found a fabulous community of writers. Plus, have I mentioned the cinema?

And then there are the cafes, not just for coffee but community hubs. I love working in a shop - Oliver Bonas - that might have branches across the country but ours is very much a local shop. A place where conversations a plenty take place and connections made.

But as much as it’s about the landscape, community, shops and cafes, it’s more about me allowing myself to feel more settled and comfortable here. Bien dans sa peau as the French might say.

Hope and optimism

I’m also reminded of a clip from Woman’s Hour that I spotted on Instagram earlier this week with comedian Mel Giedroyc. She shared that every January for the 38 years she’s called her friend and fellow comedian Sue Perkins to declare, ‘I think this is going to be a really good year for us.’ ‘Even in the bleakest time,’ she adds. She can’t not be optimistic about the year ahead and I love that.

I had coffee with a friend earlier this week who shares that same optimistic, hopeful outlook. She fizzes with energy even as we chat (and moan) and it’s not naive pollyanna head in the sand blind optimism. It’s not ignoring the challenges - big and small, local and global - that are out there but it’s choosing to approach them from a position of hope. There’s enough rage and anger out there already.

This is easier said than done, and it’s only now that I find myself in the space where I can feel hopeful and optimistic. Where I can let go of all the things I’ve been holding onto so tightly, as a counsellor once accurately spotted. And that was in the introductory email exchanges before she’d even met me. Hangover from cancer, from relocating, from the intense early years of grief, from childhood stuff.

Same Same but Different

Yes, there will be change ahead, there will be tweaks. There’ll be unexpected left and right turns. There always are. We’re hours away from our families and I’d like to get better at leaving this cozy bubble behind more often, but I guess that falls under the ‘but different’ part of the ‘same same but different’ tagline.

I want to lean into this newfound feeling of belonging so that I can, well I don’t know what, enjoy how it feels I guess. I’m still susceptible to emotional surges whether it’s sadness, frustration or joy but I recognise them as being completely normal and I’ve noticed them pass through me before more quickly these days, more smoothly before settling into something more content and comfortable. I guess I’m more comfortable with feeling - full stop.

It also hasn’t gone unnoticed that the knotted stomach and shallow breaths that have been a permanent fixture for the past I don’t know how many years have almost completely disappeared. Maybe because I’ve given myself permission to accept that this is home and that I belong here. That, and having found a fabulous reflexologist (more on that another time).

How do you want 2025 to feel?

There is more I wanted to share with you today, and this has gone in a direction I didn’t entirely anticipate but that’s the joy of writing. You never quite know where it’ll take you. I’m also conscious that it’s the first week of January and this has ended up longer than I thought it would plus, there’s always next week, and the week after that.

So I’ll sign off with a question for you to ponder, and please share in the comments if you feel comfortable, how do you want to feel in 2025?

Thank you for reading, Harriet

PS Here’s a link to that tapas bar Same-Same But Different in Bath, if ever you’re passing. It’s in a great spot, just down from the Assembly Rooms, The Circus and Royal Crescent and while I haven’t eaten there in a while, it was always good when I did.