THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT

I can’t quite believe it, but today marks exactly 10 years of writing this blog.

It doesn’t feel like it. I mean on and off, I’ve written on most days over that time period - an almost continuous stream of nonsense - and also across continents. Canada! Israel! Milton Keynes! I’ve been everywhere, me.

And yet, the nature of time somehow makes November 2013 feel like just a few short steps back down the path. Sigh. That’s how it goes, I suppose: blink and you’ll miss it. Oh and also, it’s been ages.

I thought, given that it’s a whole decade, I’d pick some of my favourite posts - one from each year. I don’t know; call it sentimental, call it nostalgia if you like. I just think there’s a whole lot of ocean, a history of tides that have swept in and out, and it’s great to look back and be thankful.

2013 - my six year old nephew learns how to play drafts. He’s not six any more, but I’m still just as proud of him.

2014 - I realise I don’t much like the experience of eating an ice cream.

2015 - a quite perfect afternoon on Streatley Hill with my Mum where I reflected that memories were made of moments like that.

2016 - I was a butler for a cat.

2017 - In this classic episode, I’m in London when disaster strikes outside Buckingham Palace…

2018 - I contend that you can do anything if you focus on it.

2019 - My friend Paul and I spend a day in Jerusalem in this one, and I get cross because of religion.

2020 - This is the last thing I wrote before the global pandemic and it’s a bit of a ramble on how big questions can help solve smaller ones.

2021 - In this one I go further north than I’ve ever been, having a great travelling day in the outer Hebrides.

2022 - A trip to Windsor in Her Majesty’s jubilee year turns splendid when we see her being entertained by a steel band.

I am thankful. A lot of things I’ve written have been ‘middle of the night’ posts, thoughts and fears swirling in the valley and the doubts. But like the poem says…

‘The sun was shining on the sea,

Shining with all its might

He did his very best to make

The billows smooth and bright

And this was odd because it was

The middle of the night’

• The Walrus and The Carpenter, Lewis Carroll