The thing with thirteen

1. It is the end of a year of turmoil and upheaval. There has been loss and illness and grief, and pressure-cooker stresses. It has been a year of endings of various kinds. It has been a year of revisiting the past, of trying to find how I got from there to here. This has not always been comfortable (although sometimes it has been amusing: see 6. below). Among it all, the things that matter are revealed: the connection, affection and kindnesses that comprise love.

2. I am writing, slowly and without ambition: writing to exercise narrative muscles. And considering new projects that will take me to very different places.

3. In 2013 I have triumphed over certain types of fear: I've learned how to ride a motorbike (kinda sorta), been in a helicopter and multiple times in a small plane.

4. There have been beautiful places: I have been surprised by the glories of Western Australia.

Spot the Fitzroy wallaby

Broome from above

In which there were sharks

5. Winston Churchill once said, 'Success is not final, failure is not fatal. It is the courage to continue that counts.'

6. The past persists in the present. Sometimes this is not all bad.

Broome 1984

Broome 2013