Farewell Teens!

Twenty twenty is just around the corner - you may already have seen your national firework budget exhausted in a colourful cacophony, ours is yet to prove whether it be a damp squib or the first bang of the boris bureaucracy,

Frankly, the Millenniumnum feels only quite recently passed; perhaps I've always been partying like it's 1999... But how would you call the teenage years of the twenty-first century? It's certainly not the century I was expecting back then.

The late teens have been full of challenge. The rise of unashamedly mendacious right wing politics, the dominance of the media machine over public opinion, the ineffectual nodding of the world toward the impending climate catastrophe... Not to mention the minor inconveniences of wobbly kidneys.

And yet, it's been fab too. The late teens saw both Janet and I take unexpectedly early retirements, which we've enjoyed hugely. It saw Charlotte excel in her studies and travel the world in a voyage not yet over, and we became doting grandparents, thanks to Cheryl and Gareth.

And for nearly five years I've been here, blipping nonsense and waffle at you alongside variably dreadful photography! I really do enjoy this community, and while I am rubbish at responding here or commenting on your own pages I do love reading all the journals and viewing the images.

Janet has one oft-played party piece. It's called "position one", and it's a random test of my camera settings or perhaps my ability to change them at the drop of a hat. Here she is in Westridge Woods, still full of energy, albeit it is irregular and easily spent.

Happy New Year folks. We've mostly survived the buggers thus far. May we continue into the roaring twenties redux...