Went for dinner with a number of friends, some young, some older. As it was our last gathering before the New Year, we found ourselves asking one another how the old year had been, and whether we had any plans for the new one. This kind of discussion usually provokes a mixed response across a wide spectrum, but on this occasion it turned out rather surprisingly that everyone in the room felt they were on the cusp of important change.

Apparently by coincidence, each person seemed to feel that they’d come to the end of something and were ready to embark on something new – whether it was a job, a course of study, a relationship, a place to live, or an approach to earning a living. Yet these feelings didn’t appear to have much in common – they were not dependent upon how long the person had been doing the thing they were dissatisfied with, for example, nor were they linked to austerity and the cuts we’re all beginning to fear. In fact some people were contemplating new challenges even though they knew it would make things financially more difficult than they need otherwise be. I found it very intriguing that, for a set of completely unrelated reasons, we should all be scenting change in the air. Something in the stars?