OK, OK, I know, terribly cheesy to say so but of all of my learnings of 2004, probably the single most important has been to finally wake up to the realisation that I am important to DM. I really hadn’t worked it out until quite recently and I’m still a little baffled by it to tell the truth.

For most of my adult life, I’ve avoided real relationships like the plague because if you don’t feel, you don’t get hurt. I’ve spent twenty odd years with this slightly warped sense of self-preservation.

This love with DM has been ‘threatening’ to happen for many years but only finally made it into a reality four years ago. I suddenly realised that my old age would be terrifyingly lonely if I didn’t allow myself to feel something at more or less the same moment that he was looking for a new love.

Strangely, for most of the last four years I’ve felt as though it has been, if not completely then somewhat, one-sided. What I’d failed to realise was that not everyone wears their heart on their sleeve like me, in fact there are those (including David) who just quietly get on with their love without making a fuss.

This year I worked it out finally (duh) that I don’t need to spend every moment worrying about when he will walk away from me and to simply enjoy what we have.

So, we now reflect each other’s interests and loves. He sports a THFC hoodie in this photo and of course (in case anyone has missed it), THFC is Tottenham Hotspur Football Club, one of my life-long loves. He too sat in front of the TV this afternoon biting his nails waiting for the final whistle in our game as we watched the minutes tick away on our 0-1 lead away at Man City. he too jumped up and punched the air as that whistle blew and we got our three points away from home. Good old Freddy - villain last week at the Liverpool game turns hero today.

He also hangs onto the two mad Border Collies who are our babies in the photo - as well as being terribly allergic to them when we started seeing one another, he also didn’t really like dogs much. Now he describes himself as their ‘dad’ and is probably better with them than me really - he’s more disciplined anyway. A change in his asthma medication (on to the very wonderful Symbicort) made it possible for him to live with them.

I too have become involved with his loves - his precious Beetle, his music and his amazing skill as a graphic designer and photographer are all things I relish as much as he does. I’ve spent hours and hours decorating his house ready for sale and lugging engines in and out of the Beetle and the Bus.

So, my photo today brings together most of my ‘best bits’ of 2004 - DM, Rosie and Archie (who refused point blank to look at the camera when there were much more interesting things to look at over yonder.…….sheep - or wooly dogs as they’ve become known recently in our world) and the wildness of Cornwall in December. He’s sitting on one of ‘The Hurlers’ - a remnant of more than three thousand years of human inhabitancy of this wild landscape and in the background is a more modern but still old relic of the moors - an engine house from a disused copper mine.