2011: A year of sorrow and various afflictions, Arthurian legend, poverty and absence of newspapers. A year of watching smurfette movies just to be near a certain man. A stay-at-home year when after two decades of foreign travel I did not go beyond 75 miles from home. A year that included four summer weeks of non-stop sun and family and happiness. A dull year often shaken up by whirlwinds of obsession and emotion. A year of being vaguely aware of revolutions in Arab countries and the imminent collapse of the euro but in my little street there were only dog fights and in my purse there was a constant lack of euros anyway.
* Started the year with grief, good friends, fireworks and Harry Potter.
* Found a way into my enchanted forest again.
* Suffered through a winter of repeatedly digging my father's grave out of the snow and lighting candles with frozen fingers. Pain had never before seemed so real.
* Dated a man with licence to kill. Probably should be grateful he chose to dump me only in the metaphorical sense of the word.
* Received a personal delivery of parmesan cheese from Sicily and salami from Hungary.
* Tried a combination of wine-tasting and volleyball with positive results.
* Dedicated a holiday week entirely to three seasons of a TV-show. Which caused some despair but also inspired me to be strong and brave, to fight, to seek supernatural power, to go back to the British Isles and find me a prince. Finally realised having kids and a house is not my thing.
* Found my first geocache underneath a jetty, within spitting distance from my own home, and learned that there are 500 of these treasures within a radius of 50 kilometres.
* Celebrated my birthday by trying new things: using an automatic car wash and changing tires on my car all by myself.
* Spent May Day weekend with fine dining and then a hike to the end of the world. Picnic on the beach while watching eagles, hearing the snow melt and feeling winter turn into spring.
* Experienced nausea, extreme weakness, dizziness, fear of death and even a few days of sick leave. Drew a skull and crossbones on my cough medicine bottle.
* Explored a mansion complete with ghosts and dungeons.
* Sold all of my stock (I had four shares in total, 6 euro each).
* Spent Midsummer's Eve with the Midsummer people, lilac juice and caraway fields. And Midsummer Day navigating the labyrinthic archipelago in an old wooden boat with a baby on my lap, feeling wonderfully lost in a water jungle.
* Felt responsible for the entire English-speaking world while arranging interpretation for a conference. Not many of them showed up.
* Savoured another summer in the serenity pool with the sticklebacks (who put on a show) and fantasy novels, and on the beachvolley courts with the beautiful people. The price: two lost toe rings.
* Watched a house move - literally.
* Found out I have a sibling in heaven.
* Attended a lovely wedding in a very bad place.
* Breezed through my first job interview in years and even succeeded in naming all the planets in the solar system.
* Got even more internationally involved.
* Enjoyed a Chinese tea and dumplings party which evolved into a wasabi-eating contest and story-telling of babies born in bank vaults.
* Experimented with towing a car.
* Subbed for the secretary of the CEO of the city's biggest construction company - for all of two hours.
* Edited a text for an Israeli writer but was interrupted by Yom Kippur.
* Practiced spending entire evenings with strangers - at a cottage at world's end and in a posh penthouse apartment.
* Had my whole world put in order by a virus and an Irish philosophy.
* Closed the grief door and opened the happy memories door - once again with the help of Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.
* Danced in black lace and fell in love with a man in pure white.
* Was given a set of Torah scrolls and helped a celebrity sell books.
* Attended the most chaotic christening ever in an Alvar Aalto church.
* Visited a friend who had a dead puppy on the coffee table.
* Lent my voice to a Christmas performance where the archangel Gabriel had a sizeable beer belly and the wise men of the east were very proud of their asses.
* Washed my phone in the washing machine. Both broke down.
* Swapped one obsession for another and was inspired to know everything, play the piano and love.
* Skipped work, for the first time ever, to stay at home and watch TV.
* Enjoyed a very lonely and lovely New Year's Eve with lots of red wine.
* Couldn't decide which dream to go for: Power-dressing, cocktail-sipping white-collar worker in flashy London/New York offices or boho chic aid worker running soup kitchens.
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