5 year chunks Review 2016

As I get older (and there's more to remember!) I find it good to scan back 5, 10, 15 years etc if only to remind me that any plans or goals I have for the next five years need to take into account the unexpected twists that reliably show up in life.

Five years ago (December 2011)

I was living on the road. I had given my flat up at the beginning of the summer and then travelled and worked around the country, staying with friends and family, doing whatever was needed where I was. Sometimes this was helping others by doing nothing, sometimes it was big chunks of meaty work. By the December, I'd paused a little, I rented a room from a friend for a couple of months, got a few things sorted around debts and taxes, claimed some benefits that were due to me (and exeperienced the awfulness of the 21st Century Welfare State) I was a few months into a new relationship with the woman who'd become my wife. Neither of us had any idea how or whether our relationship was going to develop further. It snowed quite a lot.

Ten years ago (December 2006)

Ha! I'd just started another relationship! This was the year I got my shit together after my first marriage broke up. 2005 was me falling apart, 2006 saw me putting the pieces back slowly and repairing close relationships. I was living in Dolphin Square, overlooking the river. I'd not really moved in properly, I had only enough furniture for my immediate bachelor needs for example. Having a new lover changed all that, though not drastically! My work was mostly making video and audio for the web - I'd done an internal blog for BP's Marketing Department that year, using podcasts and video to help bring it alive.

Fifteen years ago (December 2001)

Was the last Christmas I drank alcohol. I had a very weird and unsettling time at the Christmas Party, knew that I had to do something different, knew that the work I was doing wasn't really who I was. I'd had a year in a job that felt like "I reached the top and had to stop" but I didn't know what was coming next. That was the year that I'd sat in the TV room at work in London and watched planes crash into the towers in New York. We were sent home in case there was going to be an attack here, there wasn't but the fear and anxiety level got ratcheted up and has stayed there since.

Twenty years ago (December 1996)</h3)

I'd graduated in the summer, had a job created for me, taken it and then gone almost immediately for a promotion which I got. My career seemed to be catching up quickly. I was becoming a fairly typical early-thirties dad - commuting into London every day, two small children, one starting school, the other starting nursery, taking them into town at the weekends to see Dinosaurs and pretty dresses. And then my wife was diagnosed with breast cancer in the October and I was suddenly facing the possibility of losing her and bringing them up on my own, whatever that might mean. It was a wake-up call for both of us although I can see now that I still wasn't really listening for the next five years.

Twenty-five years ago (December 1991)

Was the year that I became a dad. I gave up smoking a month before my son was born. I started the year employed and with good prospects but the project I was working on suddenly came to a close and I was newly married with a pregnant wife and no job. I temped a lot - typing, PA, data entry, filing. I basically did whatever there was. If I didn't have anything at 9 o'clock in the morning, I rang round agencies until someone said yes. This went on most of the year although I had a few weeks off around the birth and my wife was getting some maternity pay. I was very happy to be a dad, it suited me well. My Grandma died that Christmas.

Thirty years ago (December 1986)

Now it becomes a bit of a stretch and I have to do some counting on my fingers to remember which year was which. So December 1986 was when I was in the final year of drama school, so we were doing public shows. I knew that I was going back to play Pozzo in Waiting for Godot. I was living in Wodeland Avenue in Guildford with four other students but because we had a nice house we often had many more people staying. Was it that summer that we did Great Expectations and some street theatre in the Angel Hotel courtyard? Maybe. I think I was also working at The Cannon pub at the bottom of Portsmouth Road (it's called something else now) - which means it was also the time I dislocated my shoulder doing stage fighting (I remember trying to pull pints with my arm in a sling).

Thirty-five years ago (December 1981)

I took my 'O' levels in the summer of 1981. Great music. I had my first experience of a party at someone's house when their parents were away, staying up all night, drinking, throwing up, getting into fights with the people who wanted to listen to Stairway to Heaven all night. Kissing girls! That summer I had my first real girlfriends, I found with amazement that there were actually girls who liked me! So by the time December came I was settled into Sixth Form life, not doing any work, arguing politics with everyone, drinking, going to the cinema in Droitwich where the guy turned a blind eye to 16 year olds who wanted to see X-rated films. I was obviously about as grown-up by now as I was ever going to be.

Forty years ago (December 1976)

I was mostly still miserable from moving schools twelve months earlier. This was the Christmas that I had my eyes tested and found out how short-sighted I was and got my first pair of glasses. I spent the whole Christmas holiday amazed at how clear things could look compared to what I was used to. In the Autumn term our classes had been reorganised and I sat next to René Lelong - we did an "Autumn Festivals" project together about bonfire night and hallowe'een - which included "How To Make Home-Made Fireworks" - you can imagine how well that went down. We knew that the next year was going to be the Queen's Silver Jubilee but that was months away in the summer.

I'm not going to pretend to have any solid memories of December 1971 (I had a one-year old baby brother) let alone 1966 (I had a three-month old baby sister).

The main thing I get from this is that if you'd asked me at any of these points "What do you think you'll be doing for the next five years?" I'd have said "Oh pretty much what I'm doing now, just a little bit happier, better paid etc." And actually every five years, I've been doing something completely different and moved on enormously.