In 2024, I thought a lot about

I thought a lot about astronomy this year. No, no not astrology (though I hear that is what Millennials are interested in) but astronomy: outer space, the moon, and the vastness of it all.

I also thought about my position in the universe, and the life I’ve lived within it. 

My stargazing guide for December 2023 announced that Halley’s Comet was at its farthest from the sun, so this year the comet has been heading back towards us. Its journey will take 37 years and, in 2061, it will be visible from earth again – just as it was in December 1985.

Two significant things happened that month. The first was that my wife and I found out we were to become parents. Bringing a child into the world meant we were very lucky. The second: Halley’s Comet appeared in the evening sky, a week later. Totally unrelated, of course, but getting to see it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. It is a marker that helps position me in the vastness of space and time, and knowing the comet is on its way back has made me reflective.

I am an insignificant speck of dust in the grand scheme of things. But despite that, I’m having a good life. I’m a very lucky person.

I look back to my earliest memories and although there were some bad times, they are swamped by the good ones.

Since childhood, the most important and influential things in my life have been people. When I visualise my years in a timeline running from left to right (or top to bottom, or some other way that reflects how humans visualise time), I see those people as markers. Significant places and events are markers too. 

I can recall being three years old to now. I was lucky to grow up as part of a loving family.  Playing in what seemed like the giant garden of our family home and helping my mum going about her business, baking and washing. 

I often went to work with Dad. As a four year old, he’d sit me on the roof of the house he was building to keep me out of mischief. He also took me to my first football match when I was seven. Significant because I’ve now supported that team for six decades and we’ve had our ups and downs.

When I was eight, we moved. Not a day has passed without remembering how happy I was in that house and garden. That house was a marker. When I was 11 we moved into another house and I had my own room and desk which meant not sharing with my brother. A major marker.

Those two houses are still standing. I drive past one every week, the other I can see as I approach my birth town from a hill opposite. I got to revisit both houses after 50 years or so. Mum and Dad have long since left us, but they were still there. They always will be. I could still smell Mum’s baking and the putty on Dad’s overalls. They have positioned themselves in the universe, together, as they always were.

In January this year, NASA announced it is hoping to land a man on the moon for the first time since 1972. I met my now wife the same month that the moon was last visited by humans. Two remarkable markers in a single month.

My youth was influenced by the excitement of the Space Race – an enthusiasm that has stayed with me well into adulthood. I have never been religious, but legend has it that the three wise men didn’t follow a star, but Halley’s Comet. It’s a good story, as is much of religion.

Our daughters, born in 1986 and 1989, will see Halley in the sky, just as we did. Together. I’ve told them both to watch out and look up and remember where it all began. 

A significant marker in their lives, just as it was in mine.

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