Music, marriage and everything in between
Wow – 2014. Got married. Spent my honeymoon discovering Route 66. Cried my heart out when the No camp won on 18 September. Discovered that the best music is in the past. Decided to buy a house and have a baby. Had a major bicycle accident from which my body is still healing. Spent some days smiling from ear to ear; some thinking what a wretched world we’ll bring a child into. But I felt privileged to be alive – and that life’s too short not to drink good wine.
I think I’m a grown-up now
My mother threw out my Simpsons comic book collection and all I felt was emptiness and apathy.
Joined a boy band at the age of 64
I’ve been able to play guitar since the age of 16 when I bought a how-to-play guitar guide by Bert Weedon from Birkenhead market for two bob. All my working career I’ve been Mr Responsible Sobersides and never picked my guitar up. Then when I retired I went to a music class, polished up my superstar talents and now have great fun busking every weekend for Cancer Research in a group called Loose Change. Go to a music class. Join us.
Almost paradise
I moved to Grenada from the UK and have a small cocoa farm with livestock, on the edge of the rainforest. Small island life is rich and strange. I’ve learned that donkeys tell the time, and ants can eat the floor beneath your feet. I still [remember] frosty mornings, the scent of bonfires and scratch of woollen mittens, but I have forgotten how it feels to be cold. Mango juice sticks to my skin as I feast on a windfall, my orphan goat dreams sweetly on my lap.
My Front Patch
I distracted myself from a year of hospital visits by planting this. The result on all fronts was a success.
Loving life and growing up
I applied for university, became Athena, spent every weekend for a month going to house parties, met my idol twice, ate a forkful of mayonnaise, befriended some of the people I now love most in the world and officially became an adult. By far one of the best years!
Vespa and me
I struggled to learn to ride my Vespa this year. During my first lesson I confused the accelerator with the brake – I was sent home early. The damn thing has been sitting in a shed at the driving school since July, taunting me. I’ve decided to give it one last go. It will not defeat me!
Many loves and I
Always look on the bright side of life, ta-dum… ta-dum, ta-dum, ta-dum. For the third year in a row my multiple sclerosis has not progressed thanks to the liberation procedure performed in 2011. My 34-year-old alcoholic stepson fell deeply in love and quit drinking. I saw my 38-year-old son in the flesh for the first time in several years. My two-year-old granddaughter and I make each other laugh every day. My wife still loves me and I her. Happy 2015 everyone.
Death to mosquitoes
For 54 years my funny, talented big brother lived on this earth, one small mosquito made sure he didn’t make it 55 years.
Same-sex marriage
Result – a wife. Nottingham city, 13 April 2014. Mrs and Mrs. First lesbian (and possibly best dressed – bow ties and waistcoats are so cool) marriage in Nottingham city. Came out to extended family who attended the wedding. Also – as we are both primary school teachers – to our classes and parents at school from whom we received good wishes and cards.
Yes you can
2014 was a year of almosts but good creative fun all the same. My drawing is a metaphor for believing the goal has been reached only to find it´s still some way to go. The positive is that the goal is still attainable but it´s going to take a high degree of effort to make it.
Single at 50 – the cost of depression
This is the year I started getting help with my depression and I now have a fairly positive outlook and self-image. It is the difference between black-and-white and colour. The cost of this is what has been left behind – I lost the relationship with my wife and totally fractured the relationships with my children. The latter I am building back up, salvaging the former is less likely. I don’t really want a new relationship, I’m still in love.
2014: Back on top
Most would agree that we’ve been “through the mill”,
With sickness, injury and “under the hill”.
And whilst the start of the year left me deflated,
2014 has left me elated.
From jobless, hopeless, living with Dad and Mum,
To working and earning, and hopes? I have some!
Needless to say, I didn’t do it alone,
Here’s to my family who helped with a loan,
And to all of my friends who lent me a hand,
With money and time (and hugs on demand).
Although I’ve not reached the ultimate goal,
The future is brighter now I’m not on the dole!
Laura Reddington/GuardianWitness
Meeting my soulmate at 44
Our first date and he was an hour late and looked at least two stone heavier than his photo. Flustered and red he bought me a flat white in a hipsteresque cafe in Shrewsbury. At this point I took a deep breath and told myself to keep an open mind. Twelve months later I can say that 2014 has been one of the happiest years of my life. His friends and family say he is a different person since we’ve met: lighter, happier and less moody. My auntie tells me I look 10 years younger.
From Devon to Cornwall via the Pacific
2014 has been extraordinary. I acquired a small streamboat, which I am restoring. I passed my medical school finals and then spent two months in Samoa and Fiji. There I sat on beaches, learned to scuba dive, made some incredible friends, and worked on placement in a hospital that didn’t have a regular supply of even the most basic drugs. Since my return I’ve moved to deepest, darkest Cornwall, which although remote, is beautiful.
richardthorley/GuardianWitness
SalfordDadz
I thought that I knew, as a public-health nurse, how people facing multiple disadvantage could change their lives but I was yet to see it happen so quickly and powerfully. I was with six fathers meeting as strangers when one said: “Have you ever thought of killing yourself?” And that was it. The ties that now bind them started to form. They became not only friends but leaders, inspiring fathers in torment.
A new innings
I am an editor of a news portal at the age of 76.
