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This post was going to be about New Year's Eve, and how Mum, my friend Mels, the girls and I went to the beach and had a picnic tea. I had photos and everything. But tonight was another eat lots get fat caterpillar night. Paddy has been doing the shift I dread the most. He leaves home at 4pm and finishes at midnight. I'm not complaining, because that would be boring for you and a waste of my energy, but let's just say I'm over it.

So to tell you all about how we went to the beach on New Year's Eve and ate takeaway chicken and mum's potato salad and a green salad from our garden, and then played at the edge of the water and talked about 2011 would be facile and insincere.

The soft-boiled eggs were way too close to hard-boiled eggs for any one's liking. Isobella had the wrong kind of toast on her plate and she was sour about it. It was hot and humid. Every window in the house was open but it made no difference. Greer yelled through the bathroom door from time-out "I'm thinking I'm going to change houses again! I'm thinking I'm going to change houses again!"  Abigail went around hitting us all in turn to see what kind of reaction she would get, and after that she tried to climb out the window.

The dog was happy. He got fed. I hung out a load of washing as dusk settled and the air suddenly cooled. The sky was blue with wispy pink stripes at the horizon. Up on the ridge a big house had all its lights blazing. It's windows were bright eyes shining out. I looked up and thought about living there one day. Up high. Looking over the city and across to the harbour. Maybe both harbours.

And then I turned back inside past the cat eating and across the door mat getting dust between my toes and then back in here, to this dimly lit small room. Where I sit, writing. Behind me the island bench waits, covered in dishes. Outside is black now, other than the streetlights, glowing asterisks in the night. The headlights of a car moving up the hill.

There were words, but they had no substance. I pressed down on them to see if they would hold and they collapsed under my weight. I can't write about potato salad. I can't even write about the Whiskey and Raisin Cake which we ate later as the clock moved us steadily towards the end of 2010. I wanted you to ask me for the recipe. I would have got it off Mels and made it for you, taken photos from every angle. But my words need to hold more than cake. I am heavier than that.

I can't write for you. You all want something different and, in the end, none of you will be pleased. You will sit at my table and your lips will curl up when I serve you over-cooked eggs on the wrong toast. You will love me one day, and loathe me the next. And when I'm not looking you will climb up my walls and out the window. You'll be gone.

Don't try and tell me otherwise. I've seen it before. My words won't be yours. They can only be mine. I write for an audience of one.