Now

10 seconds to Midnight 

In the secret hour between Midnight 2014 in Germany and the first minute of 2015 in England I began to collect my thoughts on the events of this year which has given me cause to pause and reflect: how fast turn the hands of the clock that measures my life. Once I was the youngest, always a child, but now I am grown up and soon will be grown old. I stand on the threshold and look both ways - back into the old year and forward to the new, forward to the rest of my life.

The first of 300 dusty boxes of paperwork

Like the Spirit of Christmas Future my big brother Peter shone a light on my future life. Seventeen years my senior, he reached a crisis and was forced to open the boxes he had been filling and storing throughout his long life. And as I watched him fall deeper into reverie with each paper he removed and page he turned I felt the leaden pull of my own treasure.

Others grew impatient because he would not, could not recognise his hoard as a pointless stash of worthless words, but he saw it as a process caught on paper, not the end result but the journey. And every journey was of interest.


I began to feel protective for my own mountain of paper, less organised than this, waiting to be sorted and stored for the day when, for the day when, for the day.  For Peter that day did not come.  The paper is still there and Peter is gone. And now another few, new, pages have been added, containing the extraordinary promise that his lifetime collection of the printed word in its many forms, the books, the notes, the posters that formed the basis of his career through the world of the practice and teaching of graphic design, would be packaged for transit halfway across the globe to a university in Beirut.  And so it would be saved and would be of benefit to others. But at what cost and by what effort and by whom.  Will Peter be loved the more for this generous gesture or will it prove to be a curse?

Before

For me it must be a prompt to change my ways. This is my big chance to turn my life round and become someone else. I must cast off my bad habits and become organised, methodical, adopt a routine and above all go to bed early, for surely in my night owl habits and chaotic lifestyle I am slipping down the slide into a Bohemian nightmare that can only lead to a future of boxes, of unfinished projects, artwork existing only in the imagination and a list of unachievable intentions that goes on and on and on and is never complete.

After

But no... I am the Penny Rea who comes up with the goods, meets deadlines, completes tasks because I know that the Show Must Go On and that All Things Are Possible.  I can get my act together and so I did. I transformed the disaster zone into a neat and tidy bedroom for my little Lizzy. But where did the paper go?  Did it reach the bin, the tip, the fire? No, it reached my kitchen where it stayed a while, before moving on into my bedroom where it waits to be sorted and stored for the future - maybe.

Welcome 2015

I am in Bonn this New Year, staying in the home of my second cousin Sue and her lovely husband Klaus.  Their life seems calm and well ordered. Their apartment is a tranquil haven, a fascinating gallery of books, artwork and souvenirs collected during a lifetime of work around the world.

 I have had a precious few days here hiding from the world, eating healthily and sleeping at the expected times, recovering from the past year. We raised a glass to the New Year as we looked out at the crackling fireworks shimmering over the Rhine. Forget the future, forget the past. Life is the best gift this Christmas. 2015. Now.