Lucky Girl

So – spent yesterday trawling through the 40 or so folders on my home laptop, all containing piles – and more piles – of photos from 2012. I meant to do this pre-Xmas (started a nice tradition last year of looking back at the year's top photos on Xmas Day, and have since managed to bog it already by running out of time in December).

But it's still such a good thing to do. Yes, we all live in the world of mo-dern digital (blaaaaah), but I do still like an old school glossy 4 x 6 photo in one of my (anally, matching) albums. And while it's a ball-ache on one hand to trawl back through a year's pictures, it's also incredibly nice – and you realise what an amazing life you lead.

It went something like:

Oh look – here's the Thailand & Myanmar photos… fantastic, so glad we had the chance to go there.

And Hawksey's birthday party in our new kitchen (why do he & John Nurse slap each other's behinds when they've had too many espresso martinis?)….

Our trip to Skye, rescuing the fallen-over motorcyclist and where the grey seal stared at us for ages

… A boozy late night dinner party…

Helen Vickery having her haircut….

The turquoise fantastic-ness of the Maldives (including the slow motion shots of H diving / belly-flopping into our rather small plunge pool)….

Hossegor in France with some beloved chums – it honked with rain but we still had a ball (almost burning down the house we were in – never leave a crisping baguette unattended!)

Le Touquet – a feast of baby pink and pale blue Puritans hockey players, and even Mr H flying horizontally as stand-in super goal-keeper

A lovely UK spa weekend away, complete with Windsor marching bands

The Queen's Jubilee street party in the pouring rain in our road, soggy flags a-flapping

Sets of mates with us on the boat for weekends – Hatch/Rich and the boys; Vicki, Tina, Jules & Batch; Pam, Jude, Swight & Woodsie – lots of salty spray and laughs

Harrogate, where we trialled life with a Springer Spaniel, by staying with friends who have two (MUCH better behaved ones, ah how foolish I was!) 

The Three Peaks Challenge weekend – my brilliant girlfriends who climbed, drove, slept, ate and ached, all for Myeloma

Getting Scrumpy – the then tiny scrap of black & white mischief. Man, those dogs grow fast…

Aruba and Miami in the summer sun – aaaah, what's not to love?

The Olympics – tickets scrounged, begged and borrowed, what an awesome couple of weeks

Sailing the boat in La Rochelle, its amazing how the French do seaside stuff SO much better than us, sigh.. and you've gotta love a whelk or six, haven't you?

Seeing Stewart and the family in Annecy – from the ice cave and glacier to my first garlic snails in years.

Indoor skydiving with Liz – what a total hoot, recommended for anyone

Tunisia with the hockey girls – seeing Sophie sliding backwards off her camel bemoaning 'this is the worst day of my life' was priceless. And the endless playing of Star Wars noises & famous phrases phone apps as everywhere there was used in the original films. Except perhaps the one the girls said was Chewbacca's famous noise, but was actually a recording of my snoring….

Mum's birthday, then my birthday in Cornwall – what a great place we stayed in, until H flooded the bathroom by putting a whole bottle of bubble bath in the jacuzzi thing and turned it on..

Argentina and Uruguay – an entire album's worth of photos and even one or two that don't have Hawksey looking deliriously happy doing yet another wine tasting.

Holland for Xmas, seeing the two small nieces, one of whom was developing chickenpox spots as a looked at her (hmm, time to go!)

And Xmas at home – Woodise's 40th birthday and a meal for just us Hawksey chickens.

Plus some other fab stuff besides…

Phew – a whirlwind of a year, but one that makes me feel I'm doing my utmost to merrily squeeze the life and joy out of every day. Talking of which, must go and email the travel chap in Kathmandu now – it seems we are no longer going to Tibet but possibly Bhutan instead – in two week's time!

Eek – time to sort out some more memories, happy sigh x