How to start this? How can I bundle up everything that has happened this year in my life, in the UK and in the entire world and package it into a neat little blog post? I can’t so I won’t try but its safe to say that 2016 will be a year that for the rest of my life I’ll look back on and think…really?

My 2016 was a year for travel, 23 flights across the globe, 5 new countries visited. Too many new memories to count that can’t be captured in an Instagram photo. I will never stop feeling privileged to be able to see this world whether with my parents (and their newly-discovered sense of adventure), my friends or just my suitcase and my smartphone.

Back home in my tiny London flat, the still-dawning realisation that “tax payer” and “homeowner” have personal relevance was ingrained with two nights of no sleep watching the world changing forever. Small talk with first dates, strangers and work colleagues (all inside The London Bubble) became infinitely less painful than it was in 2015.

Wedding invites, buying “new baby” cards and turning 29 confirmed that while I still get ID-ed buying a shopping basket of gin, vegetable crisps and hummus I’m definitely a grown-up now. Realising that my story is mine and doesn’t have to read the same as anyone else’s made me feel more secure about being in Team Adult; my place here is valid without an engagement ring on my finger or the ability to host a dinner party.

2016, we probably won’t miss you but we’ll definitely not forget you in a hurry.So much has happened this year that pin-pointing individual memories is difficult, little moments blurred against the background of seismic change but, earth-shattering moments aside, another year which at points felt difficult to distinguish from the ones preceding it. To non-exhaustively highlight – meeting the Leicester City football team, flying to Stockholm to do Body Pump, sliding down London’s Orbit Tower, New York New York New York, seeing Brian Wilson play live, walking down The King’s Road (in Westeros not West London) and still pressing “publish” on this page after 7 years.