Anna Wood looks back on 2025 from a house full of poems.

_{By Ian Hamilton Finlay, from Anna’s dad’s bookshelves}

It is obviously a shame that we set new expectations for ourselves in the middle of winter, when we should be tucked up cosy in a cardboard box like a Blue Peter tortoise or at least giving each other gold medals (perhaps Quality Street toffee pennies) for finishing another short damp day. But 2025 is done, and I am done with it. I struggle not to hope for more in 2026.

My dad died at the end of June. This writing is not about him, because it won’t be good enough, but that was my year’s headline. My dad is gone. We sat with him in his final weeks and he remained himself, which is a magic trick really and a blessing for him and for us. He was at home, too, another blessing. When he died we sat and drank some whisky (some very delicious whisky) with him and I read us all a poem* and stayed with him a while. I don’t quite believe we are immediately gone, when we go, and so I didn’t want to leave him alone. (Others of course feel the same way. When the district nurse arrived to take out his morphine driver, she knocked on the door of the room where he lay, alone and dead, before she walked in. And then she sent me upstairs to get him some warm socks.)

This Christmas I’ll be up to his house to spend some time and clear some rooms before the new owners arrive in spring. I’ll be going out with old school friends in Bolton on Saturday night, and for Christmas day I’ll be back in London with my former foster daughter (I’m still working out how to denote her – again nothing is good enough) and her birth family. Bouncing about like a pinball, a very lucky one, with less kinetic energy.

And next year, 2026, I will have more fun.

The day after my dad died I got the train to Glastonbury festival where my dear friend met me at the gate with a ticket. I saw lots of good pals and acquaintances there, and was probably a bit glassy-eyed and needy. I almost got into a fight with a guy who was, objectively, a massive dickhead. I slept in a tent with my friend and her husband after the tent earmarked for me turned out to be occupied, at 4am, by someone’s teenage nephew. I got a hug from three of my greatest pals, all at once, and it was like a practical measure: a recharge, a grounding, a calibration. Then a friend and I walked from rave spot to rave spot, in the southeast corner, dancing and then bouncing to the next tent. I don’t know if it helped but it definitely didn’t hurt. Dancing is not just for the good times.

And now, still, it’s nearly next year. I plan new career moves, home redecorations, fitness goals, sunny holidays. Who cares? I hope no one dies.

*My dad’s house was (is) full of poems. The one I read was at hand, literally — it’s by Jackie Kay, and it was printed on the bottle of whisky we were drinking from.

I raise my glass, my dear,
Wherever you now are,
North, south, east or west
Under the nearest or furthest star
Slàinte!

There’s love in this wee dram,
In the purest form
To greet you my fiere, my jo,
Nippy, heathery, warm.
Slàinte!