Time to take stock! As we enter a year of great uncertainly which challenges our mental and physical wellbeing – wars, climate change, social injustice, the continuing rise of populism the world over, but especially worryingly in both the UK and USA, with impending elections – it is also time to reflect on some more positive things that have happened.

Two wonderful things happened to me in 2023:

1. I was given the final all-clear – 10 years cancer free!
2. We are a grandmother (to coin a phrase!) – or in my case, a Bibi

Reflecting on being cancer-free – something I never doubted – I put it down to never giving up hope. But hope must always be accompanied by actions: I have worked tirelessly to eat healthily, exercise frequently, keep busy and remain positive.

Since I started this site, I have remained true to my own advice. I am dairy free, mostly eat a plant-based diet, and only take natural sugar as in fruit or honey in cooking. I do Pilates and/or yoga about five days per week, and continue to dive and ski when I can. The top picture shows me celebrating my come-back to skis after my debilitating shoulder dislocation and fracture this time last year. It’s hard to believe that after three months of indescribable pain and reliance on opiates I am up and skiing – and the only impediment was not physical, but mental – a fear of other skiers!

My dad always used to say ‘Mens sana in corpore sano’ – a healthy mind in a healthy body – and retirement doesn’t mean letting the brain go seed. We owe it to ourselves to keep busy and, if we can, help others less fortunate.  So I will continue being a Trustee of Farm Africa, an NGO whose aim is to reduce poverty by helping farmers in eastern Africa to grow more, sell more and sell for more, all the while adding to food security in the midst of our climate challenges. In addition, I have been asked to chair the Growing Futures Giving Circle, patron Sabrina Dhowre Elba, to form a club of committed supporters (watch out I may approach you!).

Last year I was also asked to step up to being Chair of Transform Drug Policy Foundation. We are committed to fighting social injustice and reduce the harms caused by our disastrous drug policy by campaigning for legal regulation and decriminalisation of drugs. I do this to prevent other parents suffering the needless loss of a child and going through our pain and grief of the past 13 years after losing Louise. And also to make the UK a safer place for our young – cities without gangs, county lines and indiscriminate stop and search polices targeting minorities. Not to mention all those tax revenues to help the NHS…

Finally, we need to keep the little grey cells intellectually challenged. I continue to work on getting Hermann Ungar’s legacy recognised, and to this end I travelled to Brno (and a VIP visit to Boskovice, hosted by the Mayor) to give a keynote talk on his life. In similar literary vein, I delivered my mother’s Africa letters (groundnuts and colonial life, which were source material for The Boy from Boskovice: a father’s secret life) to the Bodleian along with her groundnut photograph album; and in January I shall be delivering her wartime letters to the Imperial War Museum which formed the basis of Love and War in the WNRS.

There are no words to describe the joy of welcoming Claudie Louise into our family at the end of July. It simply gives meaning to all the things we aspire to achieve in 2024 to make the world a better and safer place for our children and grandchildren. And to do this we cannot be passive, but must make our voices heard.

This is why I will never rest on my laurels and I will never give up hope!

So here’s wishing you all good things for 2024. May your lives be fulfilled and busy – and may you travel hopefully!