Happy New Year, and good blooming riddance to 2020, which wins the award for Most Minging (Mingiest?) Year Ever.

I spent a lot of 2020 worrying about Covid and most of the rest in a fury about government incompetence. And then in late summer I started worrying about myself, because I didn’t feel well at all.  Towards the end of lockdown I’d started to get irregular bouts of abdominal pain. It took me a while to decide that this wasn’t anxiety or food poisoning, but eventually I went to the GP and was diagnosed with gallstones. Two weeks before a scheduled operation, the pain and sickness were so severe I ended up in A &E, and needed an emergency op to remove my necrotic gallbladder (so gross). The op was followed by a fortnight of self-isolation as someone on the ward had been diagnosed with Covid. While it was quite a worrying time, I did make myself very comfortable!

A few weeks later I was back in A &E in awful pain, and had an MRI scan to check for stones in my bile duct. Happily, the surgeon decided that the stones were so tiny it would be safer to leave well alone, so I didn’t need a pre-Christmas endoscopic retrograde cholangio-pancreatography (how do doctors remember those words??) and fingers crossed, have been fine since.

I will be eternally grateful to the wonderful staff at the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Paisley. The NHS have been absolute heroes throughout this crisis. My daughter Sal works in Acute Medicine and this a photo of her on Christmas Day when most of us were tucking into our turkey and pulling crackers at home. Almost inevitably, she got Covid in mid-October and that was a whole new level of worry, but thankfully she is fine now.

All the stress (and occasional agonising pain) made it difficult to focus on new ideas in 2020, but luckily I’ve had the merfolk book to work on and the edits are almost finished now.  I’m really looking forward to seeing the cover design and am feeling positive and energised about beginning a new story early this year too.

In other happy news, The Titanic Detective Agency finished 2020 as an Amazon bestseller in its category and I’ve had lots of positive feedback on the novel from teachers this year, as well as requests to do virtual Titanic chats and Q & As. I also really enjoyed doing a virtual creative writing workshop with Dervaig Primary in Mull, a zoom chat with Inverclyde Libraries Children’s Library Club and another in conjunction with Modes Vintage, a gorgeous shop in West Kilbride.

So looking back, 2020 wasn’t all bad. Other highlights include chairing the launch for Joan Haig’s gorgeous Tiger Skin Rug in February and visiting Amsterdam in March. My mum’s dementia is steadily worsening but at least I was lucky enough to be able to spend lots of time with her and Dad during our sunny spring and summer lockdown.

Ian and I went on lots of walks locally and made the most of the lovely weather. This photo was taken in Largs at sunset, on a fish and chips and ice cream kind of day.

We even managed a short break in Grantown-On-Spey in the October half-term and visited the fabulous Highland Wildlife Park, where the resident lynx showed off his hunting skills by leaping on an unfortunate bird which had flown into the enclosure. It was useful research for The Rewilders!

Christmas wasn’t anything like our usual big family gathering. Sally was working and I really missed the boys too, but Emily was home from university and we managed a 2020-style celebration.

For me, leaving the EU was a dreadful way to end a terrible year, and I’m still reeling that it has actually happened, when I was so sure that we’d realise before it was too late that it was an incredibly stupid idea,  apologise sincerely to Europe for our bad manners, sit back down at the table and never mention Brexit again. But at least 2020 is over, and in the coming months the world will hopefully become a safer, healthier, happier place. Happy New Year!