Six months ago, I had a dream in which a close friend of mine told I wouldn’t live up to my thirtieth birthday. Today, I prove her wrong. Admittedly, in the same dream, I was accosted by David Icke on a bus, and a giant jaguar driving the bus turned out to be a giant lizard in disguise… Perhaps one shouldn’t take such dreams to heart.

I’ve done it. My third decade is over, and I have stepped through a new doorway into the future. My first decade was the Buckinghamshire decade. My second decade was mostly the Shetland decade. My third decade, I shall forever think of as the Peripatetic decade, as I moved from Shetland, to Aberdeen, to Shetland again, and thence to Edinburgh.

While I am loathe to attempt to predict the future, my oneiromancy being not entirely up to par (For those of you unsure of that word, it is describes telling the future through dreams, I did check ailuromancy first, but it turns out that’s telling the future through the movements of cats, which seems to be an unusually specific form of divination), as evidenced by my opening paragraph, I’m tempted to think of this, my fourth decade, as the Forth decade.

I love this city. I love everything about this city. There are a million little communities, each one happy to open up and share with one another. It’s what community can be best at, and perhaps I’m very naive, but I’ve seen so much less of the cliquey, closed, unwelcoming forms of community here than in other areas I have lived. I don’t want ever to leave. I want to build a world here, working with communities and individuals to make things happen. Because here, I’ve found I don’t need someone to live for because I can live for the whole world around me.

You’re looking at me like I’m a little bit crazy now, I can see it. You’re shuffling and avoiding each other’s gazes, and going “Ooh, that’s a wee bit emotional, isn’t it?” But I’m not going to take it to heart. Maybe I am a little bit crazy. I’ve got a docket somewhere to prove I’m sane, if it helps. But I live in a city now that’s just a little bit crazy. A city, which like a mirrored image of Ankh-Morpork, is mostly built on itself. A city with a village practically in the city centre. A city where everyone takes it for granted that everything comes to a halt in August for everyone to have a good laugh.

If I’m crazy, I’m in a city which is positively certifiable. A year and a half ago, someone said to me “Wait ’til the honeymoon period wears off.” I’ve been waiting patiently, and none of the wonder or the joy has gone.

This is it for the minute. This is a snapshot of the inside of my head. I have my moments of sadness, of anger, of sheer hopelessness. But they are few and far between, and the inside of my head is lighter than it has ever been before. This is me, as I enter my Forth decade.