Hello 2011! – 1 January 2011

This is it. 2011! The dawn of a new year, and – to use a cliché – a new start.

If you read my last blog of 2010 – a round-up of all of the things that my immediate family and I have been getting up to over the last 12 months – you’ll see that I wrote about the fact that the world is, at this stage, totally unaware of the perils that will take place in the next 365 days. If you haven’t scrolled through that blog, it is worth a look – I took the time to include some pictures to add some colour!

“Back on 1 January, the world was full of optimism after the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century – which really did become known as the Noughties. Oil was being happily extracted from the Gulf of Mexico, Derrick Bird was a friendly taxi driver in Cumbria, and Raoul Moat was a humble tree surgeon living in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. But the world was blind to the dramas that would unfold over the next 365 days: too busy with the hangovers felt on the morning after the night before.”

– Andrew Burdett, blog post, 31 December 2010

Anyway, enough. That’s it for my scepticism. I look forward to 525,600 minutes where the number 2011 is at the end of the timestamp.

Who knows? This year may be my last. I may not reach 1 January 2012. Therefore, I shall continue to (as in previous years) live every minute to the full: through the mind-boggling exams I face at the end of this academic year, my three-week Jamboree adventure in Sweden next summer, and every other thing I do this year.

Which leaves me just one thing to say… Happy New Year!