Well the time has almost come to close the book on 2007 and file it away in the library that is life!

The question is where to file it? Shall I place it on a low shelf where it is easily accessible so that I may revisit it often and relive the adventures of the year gone by? Or shall I place it high and at the back where it will quickly become dusty and covered in cobwebs and forgotton amongst chapters past?

I guess you could say that, thanks to this journal of mine, my life is an open book and I have enjoyed sharing my life with you all over the past year...the ups and the downs...the peaks and the troughs. The beauty of documenting your life in this way is the ease at which you can revisit the past and remember the events that have made up your year....even the smallest insignificant detail preserved in the annals of time...

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The JANUARY sales saw me purchase a rather dubious new coat that the Sarge and the children said made me look like a dead-ringer for Kermit the Frog! Fashion-wise hardly my finest hour but I never was one to resist a bargain. The thing is it wasn't actually a bargain at all in the end as it has long since been dispatched to the local charity shop unworn...and I have a sneaky suspicion even they couldn't shift that BASTARD! JANUARY also saw Rachel studying the Romans in history and producing a Morrissey-inspired Roman shield. It was such a BLOODY masterpiece it lead to me finally working out how to attach photographs to my journal...and the rest as they say...IS history! It has been great sharing our family snaps with you all and hopefully bringing the old journal to life before your very eyes!

FEBRUARY found me in familiar territory...RANTING....this time about household waste and the veritable recycling centre that has invaded my small garden. We also had our first real snow of winter and my new found photographic know-how saw photos of the children building a snowman gracing my journal. Later in FEBRUARY Dan sent his paper FLAT-CAT on a journey deep into the English countryside for his Geography project and he popped up here too visiting the Roman Baths with my dear friend Anais and the family Nin! Valentines day came and went...sadly lacking in romance but for a midnight snuggle under the duvet with Dan as the Sarge worked the night-shift.

MARCH was Rachel month! My little girl got all creative learning to sew as well as producing a rather splendid MOZ-iac from just a few of the many scraps she had hoarded over the year. It wasn't a month without disappointment for the little lady though as she failed in her bid to become a member of the school council having been knobbled by the class bully and a rather large bag of sweets! The end of MARCH saw me writing my 100th journal stopping briefly to lament my own childhood along the way.

If MARCH was about Rachel then APRIL belonged to Dan who had a DINO-TASTIC month finally getting the dinosaur themed bedroom of his dreams...rrroooaaarrr! Two rather fabulous things happened to me too...firstly I got hold of a bootleg of Morrissey at Wembley after much cloak and dagger style wheeling and dealing allowing me the opportunity to relive the experience from the comfort of the sofa....LUSH! Then a little more wheeling and dealing saw me take delivery of my wonderful shiny new car (although by MAY a BASTARD bird had seen fit to take a huge SHIT on the bonnet and my over-zealous attempts at SHIT removal saw me scratch the FUCK out of my new pride and joy...aaarrrggghhh!)

MAY was a pretty up and down month really. As well as bird-shit-gate we said goodbye to our dear Uncle Ron. Opening the Christmas card from Auntie Chris the other day served to remind us all of Rons passing and that the festive season isn't a time welcomed by those of us who have loved and lost during the year and are alone at Christmas. On a brighter note MAY saw us celebrating Dan's 6th birthday with a day out hunting for dinosaurs at the Natural History Museum in giddy London as well as taking a family holiday in sunny Spain.

Along with the inevitable holiday report JUNE found me FINALLY replacing the family china, writing of Rachels lack of physical prowess on the school sportsfield, and then making it up to her by publishing some of her amazing poetry!

When JULY hit I started my 40th birthday countdown by taking stock my life, deciding being "half a person" totally sucked, and taking the rather controversial step of making myself unemployed! Time to put the children first I figured...and it was entirely WONDERFUL! Skint...but 'appy! We spent the remainder of JULY camping in our newly aquired two-man tent in the garden and playing bubble-tennis with our bubble-making machine in the hot summer sun (although I did take a brief respite to have a RANT about the smoking ban!)

AUGUST was FUN! We welcomed, after a few rather devasting false-starts, two new members to the family. Our goldfish Elvin and Angela are continuing to thrieve and have grown to twice their original size. We have had them over four months now...a Matters family record! Morrissey gave us all a bit of a scare in August with talk of retirement which found me playing the lottery in the hope of a trip to America...and failing miserably! Still...it WAS all talk...he has finally realized that "America is NOT the world"...and I will be at The Roundhouse come January...phew! I celebrated this with a memorable night-out watching The Smyths (I say "memorable"...but I can't actually remember it at all...but you know what I mean...binge-drinking-wise it truly was my finest hour!)

SEPTEMBER started on a low but ended on a high! Our dear Nanny Olive was attacked and robbed in the street and is still fighting to fully recover from her ordeal...it was a heartbreaking time for us all. Cue one rather welcome distraction in the form of my 40th birthday, mine and the Sarge's 10th wedding anniversary and a much anticipated trip to Disneyland in Paris! We had the most amazing holiday...made memories that will last forever...and the sting of getting old was well and truly eased as, for four days only, I became a child again!

I finally took delivery of my birthday gift from the Sarge in OCTOBER (well better late than never!) and was suitably surprized and thrilled by the new armchair he gave me for my kitchen...the boy done good! Wasn't quite enough to stop me RANTING though...this time about carrier bags, Foot and Mouth disease and the hell that is Trick or Treat! Oh...and the children formed their own pop band too which saw me reaching for the ear defenders with a certain amount of gusto!

And so to NOVEMBER and an invasion of headlice which saw us itching for all we were worth as well as scratching around to make financial ends meet here at Chez Alma! Rachel took her first steps towards womanhood trading in her vest for a crop-top and developing her first REAL crush on a boy...heaven help us all! I got a new job too at a local primary school...but sadly no whistle...and no tabard!

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So there you have it!....now what to do with the 2007 chapter of the book?

If you had asked me a couple of weeks ago I would have filed it on a low shelf easily in reach and have revisited it often...a pretty good year. But then something happend that changed EVERYTHING. It is both too personal and too difficult to speak of here (not such an "open book" afterall) but suffice to say somebody close to me has hurt me in such a way as I could never have imagined and left me in the kind of pain that you would not wish on your most mortal of enemies. Funny how life has a way of lulling you into a false sense of security and then kicking you squarely and firmly in the BOLLOCKS (I know I don't actually have any BOLLOCKS...but if I did I think I would be correct in declaring them well and truly kicked) So I may not even place this chapter in the library of my life at all...sadly it is a year I would now much rather forget.

If I was to try and sum up my current state of well-being whilst neatly drawing upon the festive season for inspiration I would liken myself to a Christmas star that has lost its sparkle. But I WILL get through this and I WILL get my sparkle back and shine again. Who knows?...I may even shine more brightly than before! Life's funny like that...not funny ha-ha...funny peculiar...

Anyway...I came here today to say that I hope you have enjoyed reading my journal this year as much as I have enjoyed writing it and to wish you ALL a VERY HAPPY CHRISTMAS and a 2008 that leaves you tickled pink and with memories for YOUR book that you will want to reach for and remember forever.

Love Alma xxx