The coming of a new year makes people feel their age. Oddly, it probably has this effect more on younger people than on older ones. The older you get, the more recourse you have to the so-called "wisdom of age". This wisdom is not, as young people think, merely a hoard of experience, a playbook of strategies and tactics that we can use to console ourselves (or steel ourselves) against mutability and decrepitude.

In fact, it is not really a wisdom at all. It is rather a changing relationship to the passage of time, and a more realistic one. There is a paradox to it. As recent events recede from us, more remote events seem to loom closer, since we judge them in the light of our longer lived experience. It is only natural that the past becomes a warmer and more welcoming thing to contemplate as we grow older. It is not just that we have seen more of it. We also come to accept that we are more tightly bound than we had realised to things we think of as long, long ago.