New Year holiday

A subset of the full group, at the top of a hill

I've been away - a whole week in Northumberland, with friends, most of whom I have known for nearly thirty years. Walking, eating, playing games, no phone signal, no Interwebnets, and the weather was kind as well. And as I don't have exams in January, this was the first New Year holiday for such a long time when I didn't have to do any revision, and could go walking whenever I liked.

As a group, we have clearly aged, and some of us have mellowed to the point that we hardly did any walking after lunch, and not all that much before lunch either. Just the highlights, then:

• Wonderful walks (with new gaiters)
• Having time to read three whole books in a week
• Playing duets with Lola II
• Meeting up with another old college friend
• Photo-charades (taking a still image to represent a film)
• Photo montage of the last 25 years of these New Year holidays
• Feuerzangenbowle
• Splendid food and drink
• A lecture on the LHC and its uses (courtesy of CERNoise)
• The Indian cafe on the way home.

Looking back on 2012, it has been quite a good year. I finally started working as a Dietitian, and I love the people I work with, even if the job hasn't been ideal. A few highlights of the last year include:

• Starting a job, which happily turned out to be full-time, although in a hospital rather than the community as I had hoped
• Becoming a Friend of the Falconry Centre - should I renew for the next year?
• My solitary holiday, which I am very tempted to repeat this year
• Two days in the respiration chamber (this experience supplied my favourite blog post of the year).
• The family river cruise
• Getting another job, this time in my preferred speciality area of diabetes.

I'm hoping that this year will be as good as the last.