I’m lucky enough to have quite a lot of young friends – by which I mean my children’s ages or younger.  Some of these I’ve met through my kids, others through school, their parents or from blogging.  And quite a few of them are at the time in their lives when they’re having their first babies.

There’s a lot of sadness and worry around at present, in this country and internationally.  And this isn’t a politically minded blog and I’m not going to elaborate, but I doubt if there are many people in Britain, whatever their political views or their social or EU-related ones, who are very confident at present.  Everything is either tits-up already or has the potential to be.  And so I, like many of my friends, have found new year greetings to be considerably more muted than usual.

For this reason, hope and joy are especially welcomed.  So greetings and congratulations to those lovely babies – the most recently born being Violet, now about 30 hours old – and lovingly welcoming good wishes to those due in the next few months.