Multiple uncertainties on one level; enduring continuity on the other. I suppose it always was so.

It is always difficult for us to imagine what people must have felt at the beginning of other difficult years so, for instance, I cannot imagine what my parents were feeling the year I was born just about 6 months after the great Wall Street crash. My Dad was never unemployed - his great boast - but he worked hard for what he got

Then the years I do remember. Ten years later the world was at war and I do remember entering 1940 apprehensively as a fearful small boy just entering “big” school where we practised wearing our gas masks in the school air raid shelter; ten years later the world was  slowly recovering and I drew my rations at the College Buttery. Many shortages still but Bath Oliver biscuits the great treat and college port (at a price - how modest it seems now) in plentiful supply. Ten years after that when I was married and needing to get to the first rung on the housing ladder. So it went on into the years of plenty.

 Who knows what 2009 will bring? We can old as the hymn says “redeem our mis-spent moments past and live each day as if our last”. Enjoy!