2012 in review

Unusually for me it was events on the national and international stage that made 2012 particularly memorable. The 2012 London Olympics were a great triumph and proved to the world that we can run major events spectacularly well. The doom-and-gloom merchants plus those who exhibited total indifference to the whole event must be fuming! Later in the year the defeat of Mitt Romney in the US presidential election was a relief but the thought he was even considered to be a viable candidate by mainstream Americans fills me with horror.

It has also been an eventful and successful year in both my birth and extended families. Two babies, Grace and Nancy, have joined us and it has been lovely to see how rapidly they change in their first few months. Baby Firth is already overdue so there might be a third new arrival in 2012.

Eve and Ella (adult care-leavers I mentor) have also had girl babies – Nicola and Alice – and from what I read in the weekly email Eve sends me both youngsters are doing well. S, the university student who lost both her parents in a car accident, is my third mentee and she too has had a better year. Events with her vile Granddad are moving towards a climax and he should be appearing for sentencing at the Crown Court this spring. I genuinely hope that he gets a custodial sentence.

2012 will also go down as the year when I dropped out of one hobby (amateur astronomy) but returned to another (philatelic exhibiting) after a long break. I don’t regret either decision even though I accept that the first of the two decisions was long overdue!