So, Christmas Day 2007 - already! What a nuts year; personally, one to live in the memory for so many reasons. A lot’s happened in 2007 for me - leaving the country to go back to Germany again, bringing the missus with me; my first Valentine’s Day free of being an emo idiot lamenting singledom; coming home to watch the woman get elected; her 21st; taking a year out for a job with the Union… my own 21st… becoming financially independent… bringing the missus to Germany with me; bring the missus to New York with me; and yet to bring the missus to London with me…

You get the idea, basically. It’s been a year of many downs but just as many ludicrous highs, and from reading that paragraph (not that I needed to), I know that the woman in my life is the one who made the year so challenging in so many ways, but so ultimately rewarding in so many others.

I know I don’t post to this thing nearly enough - believe me, it’s with the best of intentions - but with the day that’s in it, I wanted to write a little Christmas note about my beautiful Ciara, to whom I owe everything and more for what I have and who I’ve become in the last year, two months and 13 days - and one of the few things in life that I feel I have absolutely no need to feel anyway shy about.

My lovely, lovely, missus.Ci, I don’t know if I’ll ever find a way to tell you enough how much I admire, appreciate, and love you. You are far and away the most capable person I’ve ever had the privilege of knowing, and I know times of this year have been tough, but you’ve always gotten through them, and I hope that with my help you’ll get through everything else life might throw your way.

I cannot ever begin to tell you how proud I am of you; the mind boggles sometimes in not only everything you’ve packed into your life up to this point, but in how you can still be so brilliant and optimistic and as effortlessly wonderful and humble about it as you are.

It’s been a long year but one I will never regret, and I only hope I’ve spent enough of it telling you how much I love you, and being as wonderful to you as you’ve always been to me.

So here’s to us, turtle - to this Christmas, and to all the ones yet to come, and the ones we’ll spend together with our own clan, whenever and wherever that might be.

I love you, princess. Merry Christmas. :) xxx

*

…and a happy holidays to all the rest of you too. Stay safe.