One of the things that occasionally frustrates Jane, my wife, is how I love to stick to routines.  I’m not good with the unpredictable and the unexpected.  Surprise visitors, sudden changes to imminent diary dates, unbidden moves of items from one storage location to another, furniture moves, unnecessary changes to mobile phone features; all tend to cause me more anxiety than they should, especially as they are trivial first-world problems and my wife loves them all.

I think that my craving for plans to achieve calm routines is why my career went best when I was in operational information technology.  There, the reliability of day-to-day computer services is critical.  Having computer services working smoothly day after day was a key aim – not least because running computer services is cheaper that way.  Changes had to be managed very carefully and if an anomaly happened then all efforts were made to ensure they didn’t happen again.  Plans and routine were lovely then and I still hanker for them.

Fortunately, especially since my retirement, my wife jolts me out of this way of being so I am forced to stay on my toes.  She will be the one to suggest that we go to a different pub for our usual Sunday pint and crossword.  She will change the drawer contents around in the kitchen so I can’t find anything for a few days.  She will poke me into holidays and outings.  I think I am better at embracing, and even instigating, change than before – for example, my cooking skills and bravery are vastly improved from a few years ago – but it is my wife who tends to really try new things.

Of course, external events also push me off my routine and disrupt our plans.  COVID almost derailed our family Christmas in 2020 and it did ultimately erase our plans to walk the North Devon/Cornwall Coastal Path earlier that year.  The weather has also intervened to prevent or near-ruin other holidays in the past.

Increasingly too, as I get older, I’m conscious that health issues can mess up the best laid plans and prevent implementation of my normal routines.  For example, I hate it when an arthritic joint prevents me from walking comfortably into town to get the newspaper and daily shopping.  Last month, the blow up of my ankle problem took me off my feet for a few days and this month, a bout of orbital cellulitis (an infection of the tissue around the eyes) did the same.  Anyone would be annoyed at these unplanned health issues but I feel my anxiety about them is amplified somehow by my feeling of missing out on my usual pattern of life.

Those ‘outages’, as we called computer service failures in my working life, help me appreciate the days when I can just get on with the routine and think about plans relatively proactively and calmly.  ‘Seize the day’ as Jane often tells me.  I need to do that more.

The bones of our plans for Christmas and the New Year are pretty much in place and, while weather and health may, of course, disrupt them, I’m very happy with what is in store.  We kick off with carols in a local church then dinner at ours with Jane’s siblings.  Then Christmas Day will be with Second Grandchild (SG), his parents and his other grandparent.  SG is a very happy little boy by nature and I can imagine he is going to be beside himself with Christmas cheer – while not yet fully understanding many of the related concepts.

Boxing Day will be just Jane and I – for the first time ever, I think, we will be on our own.  I am hoping for a sunny, crisp, wintery day and a long walk to a local pub for a leisurely lunch.

Then we are off to Belfast to see Youngest Son and his wife.  To round out the family tour, we are then in Edinburgh for four weeks during which another Scottish grandchild should arrive.

We were last in Edinburgh for First Grandchild’s (FG) fourth birthday.  As usual, we had a great time as we mixed family socials with art and nature.  Eldest Son and his wife always provide amazing hospitality and it was lovely to see how FG had developed since we last saw him in the summer.  His sense of fun combined with his determination and focus on detail were brought out by some of the presents he got for his birthday. It is clear that he is going to love ‘LEGO®’!

The arrival of FG’s new sibling in January is going to colour, enliven and warm our visit next year.  We had hoped to repeat what we did early in 2025 (without, this time, Jane breaking her shoulder!) but the flat we had rented then and booked for this visit was unexpectedly withdrawn from Airbnb last week – a very irritating imposed change of plan! 

We have rebooked elsewhere (inevitably at a higher cost….) and are looking forward to our time in Edinburgh enormously.  We just need to complete the plans for our schedule of trips, restaurants and art intake for the time we are there.  I do like a plan!