This monthly update was started a couple of days before the new year. I finalised it just after New Year’s Day, but took a few days to proofread it.

I find the period between Christmas and the new year to be rather melancholic. However, Christmas day was unique and very special as Rowan, Ben and four-month-old Ledger joined us for lunch. Of course, Ledger does not have much idea about what is going on, but it was a joy and delight to have the little boy present. He is as bright as a button and is beginning to smile and chuckle (although not at me yet!). He has turned into a little person very quickly and clearly has strong opinions.

My older half-sister (94, and soon to turn 95) went to her daughter’s (my half-niece) for Christmas. She informed us, during the Christmas phone call, that she is about to become a great grandmother. She is very excited about it. It is clear the next generations are coming into their own.

The experience of being a grandparent is not something I fully appreciated before it happened. It is remarkable to look at Ledger and then reflect on my grandfather who was born in 1868. I won’t see 2068, but he will, and if he lives to 74 he will mark the 200 years since his great grandfather was born, the year 2099 for those who don’t want to do the maths.

There is no doubt that my generation has been incredibly fortunate in many ways. Being young and fit enough to enjoy grandchildren is just one. Having said that though, we were looking through my mother’s research on our family history, and it is striking that the men and, provided they survived childbirth, the women in our family mostly lived longer than average lives.

But perhaps they were not ‘prosperous’ prior to my father’s generation. In general, their occupations were not anything to write home about, agricultural labourers dominate. I should add that there is a rich source of information for genealogists in the United Kingdom through the census. This has been carried out every 10 years since 1811. We, as a family, also have rich pickings as, in her research, my mother acquired copies of birth, death, and marriage certificates going back a long time.

Before the holiday period I went and collected a number of new books I had ordered from our local library. My modus operandi is to read reviews in the two papers I get: on Saturday, the Guardian and on Sunday, the Observer. I then order books that look interesting but that are not available in the local branch. In that way one does not need to pay for a book, and if it does not merit careful reading, not much is lost. The cost of this interlibrary loan is a mere 60p. Among the books I took out were two which I read slowly, with great pleasure, as I enjoyed them so much.

Sebastian Faulks’ memoir Fires Which Burned Brightly (Penguin Random House, London, 2025) is excellent. He is a few years older than me and I have both enjoyed and been inspired by his book. It is described as a snapshot of a life in progress.

There is a delightful description of him in a jetlagged state at a book signing. I can confirm that at these events one has books thrust at one and is expected to sign and write a brief inscription: “To Joe, thank you for buying this book, I hope it inspired/interests you, Alan”, or something similar.

Faulks says he took a book and asked the purchaser for her name. She said ‘Holly’. He replied that it was a lovely name and was what his daughter was called. She brought the book back as he had written “To Holly with love from Daddy” on the flyleaf. One does go into automatic pilot mode! I have enjoyed telling this story to every family member I can, and have not stopped laughing at it yet! My faux pas at a signing was misspelling the name of the person.

I am looking forward to getting the next tranche of edits from Sandra Dodson in Cape Town. She is the editor I have contracted and is currently working through my text. Reading Faulks’ book makes me feel I have something worth saying, we lived through the same period but from very different perspectives! Of course, I can’t write with his skill and fluency!

The book I have just closed is Buckeye by Patrick Ryan (Bloomsbury Publishing, London, 2025). There are some books which one just does not want to finish as the story is so engrossing. This is one. It is set in a small Ohio town called Bonhomie. It is essentially the story of the lives of people of the town from 1946 up to 1976 or 1977. I was going to say nothing dramatic happens, that would not be true as life happens, and we are all the stars of our own dramas.

The end of the Second World War is the point at which the action starts. One of the main characters, Cal Jenkins, had been unable to enlist as he has a shortened leg. Felix Salt, on the other hand, was fit, joined up and saw action in the Pacific. He was badly wounded and sent to convalesce in San Francisco before being discharged and returning home. He is scarred by what he has seen and experienced.

Central to the story are the next generation, two young men, Tom and Skip, who are in fact half-brothers, a secret not known by the townsfolk or the boys. I won’t say which of the men, Felix or Cal, is the father as that would spoil it for anyone who reads this and gets the book.

It is a story of the boys growing up and the adults living their complicated lives. Running through it as a sub-theme is that the father of the boys is gay, or at least as gay as it was possible to be in America in those times. In a shout out on the back cover, Tom Hanks writes “I’ve been yearning for a novel that connects the American generations who dealt with our two Wars – one of Omaha Beach, the other of the La Drang Valley (in Vietnam). Buckeye is that book and its soars”. I totally concur.

My younger sister came up to stay over the Christmas holiday. We went out on the Sunday between Christmas and the new year to the small market town of Aylsham. The pub in the village square, unfortunately, is called The Black Boys, and they do an excellent Sunday lunch. I was the only meat eater present so had turkey, for the first and only time in 2025. The vegetarian range of food was excellent according to the vegetarians (everyone else), and everyone felt they had eaten too much.

Of course, at this time of year it is very chilly here and we have had a couple of frosts. Indeed we had our first snowfall of the year on the 3rd. Global warming means that these are nowhere near as common as they used to be. This is a confirmation of environmental change, a source of concern. I had put the hedgehog food away as they are supposed to be hibernating. A few evenings ago, I heard something akin to hedgehog noises, so scattered mealworms. In the absence of hedgehogs, the blackbirds will eat them, and all the wildlife is affected by the freeze.

This is the time to make New Year’s resolutions, something I have not done for a while, but was minded to this year. The top priority will be to get my own memoir fully edited and accepted by a publisher. I have been told that if I can pitch a second book of the same time it might be viewed more favourably. I am not certain that is true, but it is possible I can do this. This book I am completing covers family and my life up to the time I left England to take up my first professional post in Botswana in 1980.

I had been thinking about how to carry on. It won’t be chronological but rather key themes. I can visualise chapters about working in Botswana as a young ODI Fellow; my time in South Africa prior to my involvement in HIV and AIDS; the work on AIDS; the International AIDS Society and other bodies; commissions and high-level meetings I attended and/or helped organise; the importance of playing sport (albeit not very well, but with enthusiasm); deep friendships around the world; and international travel. It would have to be carefully read by a legal mind. I want it to be an honest account of the international AIDS architecture and people. I was very naive about some motivations.

To end off let me touch on my second priority for 2026, one that has featured in many resolutions over the years. It concerns weight loss. As far as I can see that landscape has been transformed by the drugs that have come onto the market. I am using one in the UK and its equivalent in South Africa. They do work, but I must confess to still enjoying good red wine and that is a small problem.

So the challenge for 2026 is to make achievable resolutions and manage to stick to them.