I think everybody agrees that January this year seemed to go on for ever, but maybe it didn’t just feel long but really was long. Here’s the thing; we had a grandchild that was due to be born on Feb 20th or thereabouts but actually arrived on Jan 15th. I sort of wonder whether the baby was premature or did actually gestate for the full nine months and the eighth month lasted several weeks longer than it should.

Anyway, I think it is quite obvious what the main event of the month was. Jayne was obviously delighted to get the second new grandchild in two months anyway, but even more so that this one was a girl, the first new baby girl for fifteen years or so. I am not a huge fan of babies, and can’t see the obsession with them, but even I was very emotional when I heard the news.

I think the real reason I was so overwhelmed was just the absolute relief from months of tension. It was a difficult pregnancy for many reasons. The mother is either forty or close to that (I admit I am no good with ages!) and this was the result of IVF. In fact there were lots of failed attempts and this was the last egg left that finally took, so the early days were very fraught. After that there were all sorts of issues and panics for both mother and baby, which is why it had to be induced early. I can only imagine what the parents were going through, because I spent months terrified on their behalf, to the extent that when the new came through via a surprise photo on WhatsApp, I almost broke down. Anyway, the baby girl is tiny, with a birth weight of a touch under two kilos, but healthy.

Everything else that happened in January was trivial by comparison. I went out on the motorbike a few times, including a trip up the M23 in absolutely foul weather. I really must make sure that my next bike has an MOT date in the summer rather than January! Otherwise it was just little local circuits around Horley/Gatwick just to keep the battery charged up, and a trip out to the Crawley record fair.

I did pick up some nice 1970s records but really got carried away in a post-Christmas binge of buying 2026 LPs that I had been lusting after all year, plus a couple of goodies from Burning Shed. I even managed to get to a record shop in Worthing because we went to visit the new baby in Worthing Hospital and went into the town centre afterwards for some lunch.

Another area where I got carried away was in reading. I read twelve books in the month and eight of them were by Mick Herron. What happened was that I decided to read all of the Slow Horses books before starting to watch the TV show, so that is what I did. Being thriller-type books I tend to read them quickly.

Other than that I continued to get drawn into long sessions playing Age of Empires II and so didn’t get round to starting to watch Slow Horses or much else at all. All I watched was the Taskmaster holiday specials, the latest Harlen Coben series on Netflix (Run Away) and the first episode of the new series of Death in Paradise. I also watched the new Matt Damon/Ben Affleck film The Rip. At 115 minutes it is a bit longer than I prefer these days, but it was good once I managed to work out what the hell was going on.

I did the ‘dry January’ thing, but only because most months are dry for me.

For a change I not only drove the car, but drove for more than a few miles, and did it voluntarily. It was only about half as many miles as I rode on the bike, but it felt like more. What happened was that, when we went to Worthing to see the new family member and went into town to eat we ended up quite a way from where the car was parked. Jayne was having trouble walking because her new boots were hurting, so I left her at the seafront then walked the km or so back to the car park and came back to collect her. This is partly because I am such a good husband, but also because I couldn’t face walking that far with her going very slowly, complaining, and having to keep stopping.

That doesn’t feel like a lot to have done in a month, even one that lasted of seven or eight weeks but, in my defence, I did play a lot of Age of Empires II.