Thank you for being around this year, which has been one of those ‘annus horribilis’, beginning with the death of Lilian, a much loved and eccentric mother. As the year has gone on I have been struggling with the loss, guilt and sadness involved in her loss, and the way the family did and didn’t cope with her death. We were all trying to cope with the most difficult circumstance anyone ever has to face.

My own year has been extreme, with heights (Taking part in ‘The One and Other’ project, poetry activities, travelling, staying in opulent hotels with marble floors, habituated by government spooks, lots of contact with government ministers and the media) and depths (a cancer scare, medical worries, attending an Employment Tribunal) that have made me deeply grateful for the love and support family and friends offer so unstintingly.

I have been involved in: disabled student support, because I have dyspraxia, which has highlighted the duty universities are under to meet their obligations under the Disability Discrimination Act and the Disability Equality Duty with rather more than fine words and policy statements(particularly in the midst of financial crisis since these inevitably highlight quite how much importance a higher education institution genuinely attaches to Human Rights and Disability Rights);a domestic violence Sculpture project; the Bhopal Support group, and I have just started to find out about the Edhi Foundation, which supports abandoned baby girls in Pakistan. 90 million baby girls have been lost in Asia over the last twenty years.

 A turbulent year gives anyone the opportunity  and indeed duty to reflect on what is  truly important, and I really valued during this very difficult year the opportunity to watch ‘the Age of Stupid’, which makes a good case for everyone of us to get up and get involved, since we are busy making, or unmaking, the future world by what we do now: our decisions or apathy. We end up with the world we deserve. As the Archivist in the Age of Stupid says: Post-Apocalyptic flood...'Why didn't we save ourselves? Was the asnswer that we weren't sure we were worth saving?'