When I was a child, I used to think about how old I’d be at the turn of the century. 46, which was about as far as my imagination would stretch. What I never considered was ageing beyond that. Twenty years on, darlings. I still can’t take that in. The 1900s finished twenty years ago, and counting.

I’m generally too anxious to go for the whole HNY thing nowadays, so I will repeat what I said last night on Facebook. “We’re approaching the time to proffer hope over experience wishes. Good luck, darlings.”

Anyway, in other news, all is well here and I hope it is with you. Wink came for Christmas and Dora, Ro and Rufus came for the day. We had goose.

Goose is expensive, it cost over £100 for the very good experience. However, LT and I have reasoned it out – because that’s what I do and he goes along with me – and have brought it down to twenty meals plus stock and enough fat for roast potatoes for the entire year. So we choose to call it a bargain.

I’ve probably told you that grandbaby number 7, and the final one probably, is due in the last week in February. She’s a girl, and Ro and Dora have not yet decided on a name – when they do, they won’t tell us until she’s safely with us, because something has to be Announced. Dora is very well – she’s tiny, quite a bit shorter than I am, and slender, so pregnancy makes her quite rotund – and has three weeks of work before she starts her maternity leave. Ronan’s firm is enlightened enough to treat paternity leave in exactly the same way, so he will have six months off work. Actually, he’s slightly anxious about what they’ll get up to without him, but he’ll cope with that.

I remember the year that we were snowed in, from a week after Christmas. Russell’s office had been shut for the week between Christmas and the New Year, and then the cold grey skies opened and we were stuck. No one was going anywhere. We had a fabulous time. We built snowmen, tobogganed down the cliff, marvelled at snow on the beach and brought groceries home by sledge. We had no one’s company but our own as a family for nearly three weeks and we loved it. Russell had always been work-orientated until then and it changed him to a family man. Two or three years later, we had to choose our path and we decided on family over career. But the Sage was 15 years older than Ronan is now, and we could manage. They were very happy days, though.