Pepper of the Earth – The Home Office Record & Mostly Daily Gazette

A safe healthy happy riotous ribald cheeky sexy flirty inspiring notorious warm rousing peaceful tasty potbellied zipper of a night to all, and Better Letters to the Scrabble players among us — and may the 007 to come be James Bond to all of our creaky leftover supervillains.

Last year at this time I was just learning how to push all the little buttons on my new camera, and wasn’t I lucky to have Miss Harvest Moon to point it at along the way? Does wonders for a learning curve, if you know what I mean. And I know that you do.

This is prime time for musing on where I am and where I’ll be, what with that New Year’s Thing coming up fast, but there’s sun outside — pale sun perhaps, but sun nevertheless — and I think it’s calling to me. Which is, pretty much, where I am and where I’ll be, if you’re looking later on.

Moving by degrees to the blank reach of 2007. I like it. Those ripe green ones that still have juice in them.

This year has been one of hysterical extremes; I’ve gone through more of what I like to call road learning (as opposed to “book learning,” and I forget who used to say that to me back when but it came up often, book larnin’, yep) than I expected. I’ll be glad to put it down at the last of December, look up, and whisper my goodbyes to the year that was.

(Lame duck. See? Tottering duckly? Hmm … more coffee might be just the thing, now that you mention it.)