It is a very strange feel­ing indeed to increas­ingly shuf­fle towards adult­hood whilst also hav­ing a young child of your own. Time twists and stretches, unsure of which way it ought to bend. There is the adult mind for which time is speed­ing up, one year blur­ring into the next until each is indis­tin­guish­able from the last, and then there is the child’s devel­op­ment pulling the other way, slow­ing things down, big changes hap­pen­ing in weeks instead of years.

Snow in Bournemouth Gar­dens, February

2009’s begin­ning feels like an eter­nity ago now, even though events of 2008 seem like they hap­pened only yes­ter­day. As the year began, Joseph’s speech was just start­ing to change from baby-speak into proper lan­guage, and yet now I can barely imag­ine him in a state in which he couldn’t speak in multi-word sen­tences. A cake was baked for Eric’s birth­day, we tried to go to a zoo and failed, so went to the aquar­ium on a damp Jan­u­ary day instead. We cel­e­brated Obama’s elec­tion as Pres­i­dent of the USA, a pres­i­dency that started full of promise for the world like no other we’d known. And with that a mild Jan­u­ary gave way to a frozen Feb­ru­ary, icing up the roads and mak­ing us trudge to work through inches of hard-packed snow. I worked on soft­ware I barely remem­ber, and dreamed of ful­fill­ing my ever-present wanderlust.

Lit­tle did I know that that feel­ing would be squashed sooner and much more impres­sively than I could have imag­ined. In March, and again in May, I trav­eled far­ther across the world and across cul­tures than I ever had before. As I blogged from the plane on my first trip out:

McDon­alds in Fana­teer, Saudi Ara­bia, March

“I have watched the sun set over Iraq, seen the lights of cities glow beneath me, and fur­ther out the flouresc­ing mil­i­tary bases, square and uncom­fort­able amidst the desert. I have watched the first stars come out over Kuwait, reflected in the orange plumes of oil plat­forms in the Gulf below.

I am sit­ting in an aero­plane 33,000 feet from the sea below, eat­ing salmon and cucum­ber sand­wiches, and I’m on my sev­enth cup of tea.

And, in thirty min­utes time, I will land in a coun­try that doesn’t speak my lan­guage or even use my alpha­bet, where I am alone, three thou­sand miles from home.

My wan­der­lust is sated, and I am lov­ing every minute of this.”

As it turns out, for a trav­eler, that part of the world is not all that dif­fer­ent to home — no mas­sive cul­ture shock awaited me, rather, it was the smell of Costa Cof­fee and Cinnabon that awaited me at Bahrain air­port, and the sight of McDon­alds’ golden arches that first greeted me when I trav­eled over the King Fahd Cause­way into Saudi Ara­bia. And of course, naval bases are naval bases. Only the pre­dom­i­nance of dust and sand over wet earth and of palm trees over low bushes hinted that I might be in Jubail rather than Portsmouth.

In April I turned more polit­i­cal, blog­ging about police bru­tal­ity and the right to bear arms, and writ­ing my first of many let­ters to my MP. May brought with it a new mobile phone, and thus a new source of obses­sion for me. It’s prob­a­bly the first time I’ve pre-ordered a gad­get and not been burned by the high prices and poor reli­a­bil­ity that nor­mally plague the early adopter.

May, June and July meant time to catch up with old friends, tak­ing Tea on Southamp­ton Com­mon with the remain­ing Southamp­ton Con­tin­gent, then Bournemouth Extrav­a­ganza 3 a few weeks’ later with yet more, then RABIES 5 at which a whole mob of Southamp­tonites past and present dis­ap­peared into the Hedge, and reap­peared only slightly weirder. All of it was topped off by Pimms on the Com­mon as June turned into a blaz­ing hot July.

Tea on the Com­mon, May

The Geeks Do Bournemouth, June

Late July and early August were spent vis­it­ing Eric’s fam­ily in Spain, where the weather was typ­i­cally Gali­cian — i.e. not par­tic­u­larly bet­ter than what we’d have had back in Britain. Part of me longed for the heat of the Gulf again, though by that time of year Jubail would have been swel­ter­ing in 50-degree haze. Per­haps a bit too hot. My Span­ish was embar­rass­ing, as always, though I made it through with­out caus­ing too much offense.

The River Eume, July

We cast our net fur­ther afield this time, hav­ing extracted all the fun that could be had from within 5 miles of Sada last year. Mostly this involved beg­ging lifts off var­i­ous fam­ily mem­bers, as dri­ving licences have eluded both of us this year. We hiked to the monastery on the River Eume, toured the city and cathe­dral of San­ti­ago, and atop the cliffs of Seixo Branco, I pro­posed to Eric. We are to marry in the year 2012 — shortly before, she says, the world ends.

Back in the UK, August kicked off a splurge of com­mit­ment to per­sonal projects, not all of which died off before the month was out. I wrote a team picker for the Pre­mier League Fan­tasy Foot­ball game, and a Twit­ter client, both of which are still going strong. I also promised to reg­u­larly pub­lish sec­tions of For­got­ten Chil­dren in the hope that it would encour­age me to write, though that seems largely to have fallen by the way­side after only four chapters.

The Adven­tur­ing Party, August

The month ended with Joseph’s sec­ond birth­day. Now a year since his first unaided steps, he now has no prob­lem walk­ing, run­ning, jump­ing, slid­ing, and hik­ing for what prob­a­bly totaled sev­eral miles, as his birth­day visit to Hon­ey­brook Farm proved well.

Around that time we also started get­ting in touch more often with Pete, prob­a­bly the most rarely-remembered of the Soton Kid­dies. He turned up as our offi­cial pho­tog­ra­pher (and provider of trans­port) for Joseph’s birth­day, and has prob­a­bly been the Soton Kid­die we’ve seen most of this year.

Joseph in Christchurch, September

In Sep­tem­ber and on into Octo­ber, the world around us grew cold once more. Days were spent on trips with Joseph, explor­ing and pho­tograph­ing more of the county now that he no longer requires an after­noon nap and all the asso­ci­ated infra­struc­ture. Pos­si­bly that’s the best bit of tod­dlers’ devel­op­ment — as time goes by they need less spe­cial con­sid­er­a­tion and fewer bags of Baby Stuff. First goes the pram, then the bot­tles, the jars of baby food, the pushchair, and one day, at long last, the nappies.

Also in Octo­ber, I leaped aboard the Guardian vs. Carter-Ruck band­wagon as it stormed through Twit­ter and blogs, and moved my own web­site from Dru­pal to Word­Press, an achieve­ment that did not come with­out a loss of both hair and post meta­data. My branch of my com­pany got sold — to the Ger­mans, so I guess I now do U-Boats for a liv­ing. Apart from the tra­di­tional recy­cling of mid­dle man­age­ment, very lit­tle has changed.

Novem­ber, as all Novem­bers seem to be for me, was about an eerie feel­ing of not quite gelling with real­ity. To once again shame­lessly block­quote myself:

“Then, as now, it’s most marked by a feel­ing of dis­con­nec­tion – that there’s some dis­tance between myself and the real world. Chores go undone, meals uneaten, impor­tant things for­got­ten, and my brain floats between cre­ativ­ity, blank ‘meh’, and frus­trated bore­dom. Com­bined with the resid­ual Unseelie feel­ings from the Hallowe’en just passed, and the leaves blow­ing past in the wind, it puts me in a strange place.”

Through all that I churned out three short sto­ries, which marks my only lit­er­ary out­put this year except­ing the four frag­men­tary chap­ters of For­got­ten Chil­dren. NaNoW­riMo was deci­sively avoided, thus pre­serv­ing my san­ity (and abil­ity to retain my job). And lastly I sowed the seeds for my next online role­play­ing game, which kicked off in Decem­ber. It has been a year since the end of the Changeling game which had been a per­ma­nent part of my life for rather too many years, and I am miss­ing that feel­ing almost as much as I miss the Southamp­ton geeks that play in these games.

And so the year rolled around to Decem­ber once again. As the weather closed in and ice coated the streets, we hung our Christ­mas dec­o­ra­tions and pre­pared for the Christ­mas Onslaught. This year came with even more cel­e­bra­tion than nor­mal — Christ­mas Eve and Christ­mas Day with the in-laws in Guild­ford, fol­lowed by Box­ing Day with my fam­ily back in Bournemouth. Today was a brief respite before the descent of Southamp­ton and ex-Southampton geeks tomor­row for Christ­mas #4, and then at last Christ­mas #5 with my fam­ily again next Sunday.

Then down will come the dec­o­ra­tions, on will go our scarves and coats, and it will be Jan­u­ary once again.

Joseph vs Grandad’s Face, December

Christ­mas Din­ner with the In-Laws, December

So that was 2009, a year that blurred into days and yet also stretched out to decades, full of changes that remained the same and brief fleet­ing glimpses of a dis­tant past that was not really all that long ago.

A few more days to go, and we shall raise a glass to a 2010 even bet­ter than the 2009 that went before it.

Also, jet­packs and hov­er­cars please. 2010 is the god­damn future.