Welcome To A New Decade

Welcome to 2010 and the start of a new decade. A new year and a new decade is all a bit artificial and I've never been a great one for New Years Eve celebrations but it's a way of marking time, of recognising change and progress. The speed of change seems to be increasing and what is that doing to all of us?

Ten years ago, shortly after the world didn't end following the Y2K debacle, we welcomed in the 21st Century. I remember TV programmes like 'Tomorrow's World' in the '70s and '80s predicting the future, smearing jam on those new fangled CDs and still playing them, flying cars and all sorts. Some of those predictions have come true and others are still miles away (where's my personal jetpack?).

Ten years ago I didn't have a computer or a mobile phone. I used a computer at work and had a work mobile phone but why would I need a personal one? Sites like Facebook didn't exist and probably weren't even dreamed of ten years ago. Now we have blogs like this one that allows me to publish whatever I want to the world and, last month 3,000 of you looked at my blog. That's an astonishing number of people to look at my badly written scribblings and photos but I hope you find something here worth looking at.

I think back to my grandfather who was born in the 1890s and died in the 1990s and the changes he saw in his life, from horse and carts being the standard mode of transport in the countryside of Northumbria to seeing men land on the moon. The 19th Century is pulled through into the 21st Century through me, only two generations on from the horse and cart and here I am talking about it to the world with a few key strokes. Whatever next?

I was born at the start of a decade so new decades usher in potentially big changes for me in terms of age but that's where it ends. This year I will become 50, a big life-changing event, or is it? In my 49th year I attended 39 gigs, more than I've ever attended in a single year before. It's not a very scientific measure, but it's a proxy for being active and getting out and about and doing things, keeping body and mind alive and alert. That wasn't the way of life for my dad's generation - you did less as you grew older, not more. The pace of life is changing and we're changing with it. Embrace the change.

Happy New Year!