We have woken up not only to a new year, but a new decade; and we did so under the light of a real blue moon.  As 2009 drew to a close I asked myself “What have you learnt this year?  What are the key changes?”   And I have to tell you I found the question very hard to answer.  This is in part due to my nature, which tends to be ever-focused on the present, and the past rapidly loses definition on the past, but also down to the fact that this was a year of gradual rather than radical shifts.

For me, this was the year that saw my eldest graduate and move back home, trying to launch herself on the ‘real world’.  My middle one, change course and realise that she wished to be a teacher and enter university, and my youngest finish his art course and decide what he wants to do.  So significant directional changes for all my children.  For me it was pretty much ‘steady as she goes’.  We weathered the financial crisis moderately well, but it feels a bit like like maintaining one’s heading through thick fog and just hoping there are no icebergs out there!

  Good books always have strong storylines and it is far easier to write gripping stuff when lots of exciting things are happening but Life has a lot of moments that are more like long motorway journeys, where one just sits there and the world hurtles passed.

How was 2009 for you and what did you learn?

I wish all of you a very prosperous, happy and enriching 2010.  Why not start this decade as you mean to go on?  I intend to;  I’m off to a lovely little country pub, with a roaring fire and a good lunch with the lady I love.

“The object of a new year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul”     G. K. Chesterton