Decades

Very little, other than loss, focuses the mind on the passing of time like a birthday.  Especially your child's birthday.  Youngest was ten this week  and ten years seem to have flashed by like the click of my fingers.  I have written previously about how easy it is to gloss over decades when doing family history.  Because you only have snapshot resources for most ancestors.

However, the passing of a decade is immense, if the following are anything to go by.  For example...

2006 was the year of:

• Daniel Craig's first Bond film, Casino Royale (a rare post baby outing for this);
• Take That's return (I was over seven months pregnant at their first gig and my friend announced I was on my own if I had an emergency - she would not be leaving the venue...);
• Top Gear's Clarkson/Hammond/May line-up on its eighth series.  But it was the year that Richard Hammond nearly died in a crash, pushing up viewing figures (don't try this at home, Chris Evans/Matt LeBlanc);
• Donald Trump's mortgage company.  He said it was a great time to do so as the housing market looked firm for some time to come.  The markets crashed in 2008 along with Trump's company (no comment or I will be here for a while);
• Victoria Beckham at the Germany World Cup with the other WAGs, wearing very small shorts and t-shirts.  She now makes a fortune from persuading us all into massive culottes and polo neck tops;
• Defector Alexander Litvinenko dying of polonium poisoning in London, apparently at the hands of the Russians.  The public enquiry only concluded in 2016.  Really?  Ten years?
• Tony Blair and George W.Bush still in situ.  Not long to go though.  Blair went in June 2007 and Bush at the end of 2008;
• The last regular Top of the Pops.  Meaning I would never fulfil my childhood ambition of dancing in its studio.

(I looked at books for 2006 but it was all a bit of a mystery.  I was only capable of picking up gossip magazines for most of it, clearly.  And television passed me by too, although I have since caught up on Life On Mars and The IT Crowd amongst other 2006 hits!)

Some things we did not have in 2006:

• iPhones (launched January 2007)
• ISIS (proclaimed 2014)
• iPlayer, TV streaming in general
• Wi-Fi, although it seems to have existed - the article I read was very technical!
• The Kardashians - at least thankfully not really famous then
• Arab Spring - began 2011
• Twitter - introduced 2006
• sleep - well, that was just me

Of course, these have and have not lists are endless.  The people lost, the babies born.  The technology used, the stuff not yet invented.  But I think these examples do show how we take so much for granted very quickly.  In the same way that you can't imagine how you will fit a child into your life.  Or how you will fit a second child in once you can just about cope with the first.  We should all take the time to stop and look around us once in a while.  In another ten years, I will be an empty nester with, fingers crossed, two kids rampaging (quite literally for Youngest, we fear) around universities somewhere.  I really hope the coming decade will slow down a bit.