2022: A Year in Photos

Year: 1985
Grapes: Tinta Roriz, Touriga Francêsca, Tinta Barroca, Touriga Nacional
Producer: Warre’s
Alcohol: 20.0%
Source: Andrew & Liz Curtis, Liv’s parents

It’s the last day of 2022, a year that feels like it’s really flown by – certainly compared to 2020 and 2021. This time last December, we were in North Wales, getting ready to ring in the New Year with good friends, champagne, and party games, after a very sad and difficult few weeks. As I write this, I’m at our dining room table with Edward on my lap; Liv and Martha are snuggled on the sofa in front of the TV; and all of us are waiting patiently for the arrival of Baby #2, who’s due next Saturday, and will undoubtedly ensure that 2023 brings with it more new adventures and challenges. Unless she decides to make an appearance in the next few hours, it promises to be a much quieter New Year’s Eve this time round.

With that in mind, I thought I’d take a look back at this busy, occasionally chaotic year, and pick out 12 things that I’ll remember it for. To do that, I’ve taken one photo per month from my camera (a much harder task for some months than for others); they cover hockey and holidays, football and family, and feel pretty representative of a year that has had plenty of genuine highlights, for all its broader angst and global turmoil.

January

Not a huge amount happened in January. We were still recovering from December’s miscarriage, so after a lovely New Year in North Wales we spent a lot of time at home, doing relatively little. In the middle of the month, I took the Overground up to Dalston to get my hair cut. It’s a bit of a trek from Croydon, over an hour door-to-door, and it would obviously be a lot easier to find a hairdresser somewhere more local, but I’ve been going to see Bernice for more than eight years now, and I’m not in any hurry to stop. When it comes to my hair, I definitely value trust and reliability over convenience, as well as Bernice’s easy conversation and excellent head massages.

After we’d finished, I walked back to Kingsland Road, and up to a local pub for a drink with a friend. I took this photo as I approached the crossroads. I like it for the dusk colours, for the jet trail streaking across the sky, for the soft pools of yellow light glowing from each lamp, and for the neon sign above the cafe on the corner.

February

Liv and I went to two gigs together this year: First Aid Kit in December and Wolf Alice back in February, both at Hammersmith Apollo (Liv also managed Genesis at the O2 with her family and The Rolling Stones in Hyde Park with my mum!). We saw Wolf Alice with Liv’s sister Hetti, who was living with us when we booked the tickets in March 2021, at the end of a boozy, late-lockdown night in. Back then, it was something exciting to look forward to, at a time when the world still felt frozen in place; the promise of normality again, or some vague approximation of it.

By the time we made it to the Apollo in February, it was almost two years since I’d been to any live music. The experience of being in that warm, sweaty, crowded arena, waiting for the band to appear on stage, was like a booster shot of endorphins, as was the fact that I could share it with both Liv and Hets – our household bubble had lasted a full year, through some of the toughest Covid months (especially that long winter of 2020/21), and it felt right that we were together for such a happy, riotous occasion.

The gig itself? Absolutely incredible. Blue Weekend was my favourite album of 2021, so I was really excited to see Wolf Alice live, and they did not disappoint. The whole crowd sang along to the hits, the band sounded amazing, and for that hour-and-a-half it felt like nothing had ever changed. Like 3,000 people were being pushed forward by this joyous wall of sound, away from everything that had made the previous two years so shit. The buzz of live music – good live music – is like nothing else, and on this occasion it lasted well into the next day and beyond.

March

Our trip to Northern Ireland in early March had many highlights: the Titanic Museum, our taxi ride around West Belfast, a beautiful drive up the coast from Larne, an AirBnB in Ballycastle that had a line of stables right outside our front door, and lots of very good local food. If there was one standout though, it was Giant’s Causeway, which we reached just before sunset on our final afternoon of the holiday. At that time of year, there were very few tourists, so we were able to roam around the Causeway as we pleased, peering in rock pools and gazing out at the wide open sea, bathed in golden late winter light. Martha had a great time, and this is one of my favourite photos of her from the whole of 2022.

April

I’ve written already about my hockey team’s title-winning season, which finished on Saturday 9th April in glorious spring sunshine. The celebrations later that night, in the basement of a Cricklewood hotel, were less sunny but equally glorious, and involved thoroughly appropriate amounts of both alcohol and dancing.

I wouldn’t say I fell back in love with hockey this year, but I certainly rediscovered some of the active joy that comes from being part of a club and part of a team, both on and off the pitch. That continued through the off-season, with social events and summer hockey, and even though the current campaign has been much less successful (so far…), I’ve still really looked forward to getting out there each Saturday and playing.

This photo represents some of that off-field camaraderie, as well as bringing together three of the chief architects of our title success: Miles, our goalkeeper, who helped us to the best defensive record in the League; Johnny, so consistently excellent in midfield, especially in the last couple of months when it felt like we would never lose another match; and David, whose goals and creative forward play stood out in key moments, not least on that final day against Chiswick. Miraculously, none of us look nearly as drunk as I’m sure we were by this point.

May

Most of us go to a lot of weddings throughout our lives, and most of those are special for one reason or another. However, nothing quite beats seeing a family member tie the knot, which is what we got to do in May, when my sister-in-law Ellie married Luke.

Ellie and Luke have been a couple since their mid-teens, which makes them that rarest of things: high school sweethearts who have actually stayed together all the way into their 30s. Their wedding had felt inevitable ever since I met Liv, but that made it no less exciting when Ellie told us in February 2020 that Luke had proposed. The engagement spanned pretty much the entirety of the pandemic, leaving them lots of time to plan the perfect day (and to buy a house – no small feat in itself). I’d say they did a more than decent job.

As did Martha, who was a very enthusiastic and active flower girl. This photo captures her in a rare moment of stillness/contemplation, and is one of my favourite images from a wonderful day.

June

Sunset from a rooftop balcony in Laurac-le-Grand, a small village near Carcassonne in the South of France. This was our first night there, and the start of a lovely but eventful week with my parents and siblings. It was the first full Savory holiday since April 2014, when we went to New York for my mum’s 60th. Since then, we’ve welcomed Liv, Dylan and Martha into the family, and also had Fred’s girlfriend Laura with us in France.

Unfortunately, Dylan and Hannah were both confined to their room with Covid for most of the week, which was obviously unpleasant for them (especially in 40-degree heat) and very sad for the rest of us. We muddled through though, as families do, helped by the beautiful house and area that Hannah had brought us to, and it says a lot about how close we still are in some ways that the week wasn’t a complete disaster – far from it, in fact. It made me want to do it all again next year (minus the Covid), which is usually a good sign.

After Laurac, Liv, Martha and I went up the west coast to a seaside town called Jard-Sur-Mer. We only spent a few days there, but it was enough to properly fall in love with the place. It reminded us a bit of Cornwall, but with even wilder, more beautiful beaches, and the bonus of French weather. We stayed in a little AirBnB in the centre of town, and spent every day lounging on the beach, swimming in the sea, and eating ravenously at local restaurants. It meant that by the time we made our way back to Calais, it felt like we’d had two very different but equally enjoyable holidays, and who can complain about that.

July

Some of my earliest football memories date from the 1990 World Cup. Watching England draw with The Netherlands in a bar at a French campsite with my dad. David Platt’s hooked winner against Belgium. And of course the heartbreak of West Germany, penalties, Gazza’s tears, etc etc. After that game, I apparently fled to the stairs and sat there sobbing – until 2018, supporting England didn’t really improve from there.

In 2019, Liv and I took Martha to three matches at the Women’s World Cup in France, including England-Cameroon in Valenciennes at the end of a short holiday with our friends the Smiths and the Farrimonds. That campaign ended with another disappointing semi-final defeat, this time at the hands of the impressive USWNT, but it was still clear that with a few tweaks (firing Phil Neville), the Lionesses had a real shot at ending the (many many) years of misery.

You all know the rest. We were at the AMEX in Brighton to see England crush Norway 8-0 in the group stages, and three weeks later we made our way to Wembley with the Smiths (pictured here) and our friends Ruth and Rob for the Final. I don’t know how much Martha will remember about that day in years to come – I was a few days away from turning 9 when England lost in 1990, she was three-and-a-half in this photo – but I will definitely enjoy telling her about it, especially if she develops anything like the same love (and occasionally hatred) for football that I’ve always had. From a more selfish point of view, it was just great to see an England team seize their chance at glory, rather than settling for heroic failure.

August

In August I changed jobs, leaving the relative comfort and security of Sainsbury’s for a more challenging and exciting role at Dufry, a travel retailer based in Switzerland. I took my first trip out there a couple of weeks after starting, and worked out of the company’s global head office in Basel for a few days. It’s a city I’d never visited before, and honestly before this summer I’m not sure I could’ve pointed to it on a map, so it was a nice surprise to discover that it’s located right on the three-way border between Switzerland, France and Germany (in fact, the airport to which you fly is actually in France).

My intention at the start of 2022 was to run a marathon in September, but after a promising start to my training programme, I’d already fallen a little way behind by the time I started at Dufry, and perhaps unsurprisingly, the intensity and exhaustion of learning a new role in a new company forced me to admit to myself that it wasn’t going to happen this year. When I took this photo, I’d already made that decision (and made peace with it) so the run I did that day was the first since mid-June that didn’t feel pressured in any way. I went up the west bank of the Rhine, and entered France just north of Basel. It was early morning – not usually my favourite time of day to run, but I knew I wouldn’t have time later on – and there was still enough of a chill in the summer air to make conditions really pleasant down by the river. I carried on as far as the ‘Three Countries Bridge’, which crosses the Rhine and takes you into Germany on the other side.

While it doesn’t look like much, the Three Countries Bridge is actually the longest single-span, foot/bike-traffic only bridge in the world, and I stopped for a few seconds in the middle of it to take in the view of the river, and of Switzerland in the distance. After that, I ran down into the German town of Weil-am-Rhein, and back along the east bank to Basel. 10K, three countries, one world-record bridge, and back in time for hotel breakfast: not a bad way to start a working morning!

September

I picked this photo from a rooftop bar in Peckham mainly because Liv looks absolutely beautiful in it, but also because one of the things I’ll remember about this autumn is our regular midweek date nights. After nearly three years as a Research Fellow at the Royal Marsden, and over two years of working almost exclusively at home during Covid, Liv went back to clinical work on the same day that I started at Dufry. That’s meant longer days, 2+ hours of commuting each day, and, especially in the third trimester of this pregnancy, a lot of evenings where understandably she hasn’t felt like doing much beyond chilling in front of the TV and getting an early night.

However, as a result we’ve been very good at scheduling date nights, even when they’ve just involved going to the cinema or to a local restaurant. In that, we’ve been helped by Martha’s amazing babysitter, Elsie, who was an absolutely essential part of our lives from August to December, and gave us the freedom to keep some time just for the two of us. On this warm day in mid-September, I took my laptop to Peckham in the afternoon, and worked from a cafe, then went up to Skylight, the bar on top of the Bussey Building, to wait for Liv. She turned up looking smashing, and we lingered over a cocktail/mocktail while looking out over London and chatting about our respective days, before heading off to dinner.

We’re unlikely to manage many date nights in the first few months of 2023, but I’m hopeful that once the new baby craziness passes, and we’re into the same happy rhythm as a family of four that we’ve found as a family of three, we’ll be able to get this happy little part of our lives back again in some form.

October

Anyone who follows me on Facebook or Instagram will have seen this photo already. Here’s what I wrote at the time. I don’t feel any need to add to it!

Last weekend, Liv was on night shifts, so it was mostly just me and Martha. On Sunday morning, I opened my eyes at 8.15am to find her standing by the bed, looking a bit sad. I gave her a hug and noticed that her PJ bottoms were wet. Assuming she’d had an accident, I asked whether her bed was wet too. She said no, and explained that it wasn’t wee, it was orange squash. I was a bit confused by this – Martha doesn’t really like squash – so she said she’d been carrying a cup upstairs and had dropped it.

I went to investigate, and this photo shows what I found. It turned out that my brilliant, determined little 3yo girl hadn’t just been carrying squash, she’d been attempting to manoeuvre a tray half as wide as she is tall, laden with breakfast bowls & cups. Whether she’d planned it the previous night or just woken up and had the idea that morning, she’d made and was trying to bring me breakfast in bed.

That meant dragging her little stool around the kitchen to get crockery out of cupboards and milk out of the fridge. It meant pouring and diluting squash, dispensing and mixing cereal (thank God she didn’t try to make a cup of tea). And it meant clearing all her Bluey toys off the tray in the living room, so she could top it with the breakfast she’d proudly made, before falling at the last hurdle.

I felt so sad for her that this lovely thing she’d been trying to do hadn’t quite worked out, but also just very proud, and overwhelmed by love for the person she is and the person she’s growing into.

Throughout the day and this week, I thought about her running downstairs that morning to put her plan in motion, then buzzing round the kitchen getting everything ready, and what must have been going through her brain at the time. I also thought about the fact that after spilling the squash, she’d used the rest of a roll of kitchen towel cleaning it up; how disappointed she must have felt as she did so, and how sad she’d looked before I hugged her.

The whole thing was just another reminder of parenthood’s capacity to casually break your heart every single day, and simultaneously fill it up with more love than you ever thought possible. Why on Earth do we put ourselves through it?!

November

November felt like a long month. Stressful from a professional perspective, with pretty grim weather and the weird combination of feeling like we were entering a frustrating holding pattern, pre-baby, while also having huge amounts still left to do. That’s not to say there weren’t moments of simple, easy pleasure though: we had a really fun Bonfire Night at Ruth and Rob’s house, Martha and I went to both the Natural History Museum and Vauxhall City Farm one weekend while Liv was working, and at the end of the month, we went down to Dorset for the ‘Crafty Christmas’ fair in Liv’s parents’ village.

On the way back to London, we stopped at Queen Elizabeth Country Park, just off the A3 (fun fact: the only ‘Q’ Parkrun in Britain, and one of only two in the Northern Hemisphere), for a tramp around the sodden woodland. At nearly eight months pregnant, Liv did phenomenally well to get up and down the hilly (and muddy) paths, as did Martha in her sparkly Frozen wellies. We took this photo when we were nearly back at the car, and I really like the fact that it reflects how genuinely happy we all were at that moment, as well as how grown-up Martha looks.

December

There was only really one photo I could pick for December. Even if it turned into a really badly-timed super spreader event, ‘Croydon Christmas’ on Thursday 22nd was one of the best and happiest days of 2022 for all three of us, as we welcomed all four of our parents, three of our five siblings (sorry Fred and Luke), and my nephew Dylan to our house for a day and evening of festivities.

With a due date of January 7th, we didn’t feel it was sensible to leave London this Christmas; a tough decision for both of us, given how much we love going to both Dorset and Oxfordshire to visit our families at this time of year, but a necessary one. Happily, we were able to gather almost everyone here instead, and after an afternoon of presents and good conversation, we all sat down for dinner together. My mum brought a delicious salad of fig, Feta and walnut salad (pictured here), then we all enjoyed roast ham, mash and veg, followed by banoffee pie and pavlova, and the bottle of 1985 port (the year of Liv’s birth) that’s reviewed below.

Days like that only really work when you like (as well as love) your family, and when you can bring together various branches of it secure in the knowledge that everyone will get along with each other, and be relaxed in each other’s company. I’m very lucky in that sense, as I was reminded on the 22nd, and while I’d been a bit miserable earlier in December at the thought of not seeing everyone over Christmas weekend itself, I had such a good time with them all here that the next morning it no longer seemed like such a sad prospect. In the end, Liv, Martha and I had a wonderful Christmas just the three of us, and while I’m sure that would’ve been the case anyway, this day definitely helped!

Wine Info

From the Wine Library website:

The 1985 vintage was a hot one and produced powerful wines which are drinking well now. The Warre’s is dark spicy and warm and very long.

Jancis Robinson, 2006

Very very dark. Sweet, spicy, liquorice nose. Very broad start to the palate and then dried fruits on the finish. Lots of firm tannins still. Still relatively embryonic. Heat on the finish. Lovely spice on the finish. Not the most stereotypically feminine Warre style of wine. Powerful finish. Almost brawny with some wild fruit and flower flavours on the nose. Still chewy. 

Wine Verdict

Livvy

Knowing when to drink the bottle of port that is the same age as you is pretty difficult. What event or party is worthy of opening it? And when would it be too late?! Am I at risk of wasting this vintage port? These were the thoughts running through my mind intermittently over the past few years – 36 or 37th birthdays were too…non-specific, but 40 might be too late. It needed to be special with enough people who like port that it wouldn’t be wasted, and it probably needed to be soon.

And that is how, despite the fact that I’m currently pregnant and so not really drinking alcohol, Croydon Christmas became the perfect date! Almost the entire family in one place (let’s not talk about the COVID super-spreader consequences of that one…) celebrating an occasion suited to port. It really was perfect!

The port, fortunately, was also excellent! My little glassful deliberately wasn’t that big, but it was enough to realise that this port hadn’t aged badly and was truly delicious. A ruby red colour, almost russet with amber tones, that smelled warm and fruity, and tasted rich and smooth. It was soft and very easy to drink, and exactly how our pre-Christmas Christmas dinner should have ended!

10/10 – over-marked perhaps because of the joy of the whole occasion, but I couldn’t have asked for anything more!

Chris

I was also once given a bottle of port from the year of my birth, back in 2011 for my 30th, which I opened at a dinner party the following year with friends. 1981 was a decent year for port, but Liv got lucky with 1985, which is regarded as a brilliant year – the best of the 1980s – and one whose vintages should be at their peak around now. That information did nothing to assuage Liz’s anxiety around this particular bottle, which had been gathering dust in various boxes, cupboards and cellars for many years, since Andrew had acquired it from a business associate. With its age and sub-optimal storage in mind, she brought with her a wonderful contraption for slowly tilting, opening and decanting port, and we all stared in fascination as it went to work on the bottle of Warre’s.

Happily, I would agree with Liv that the wine itself was delicious. When it first came out of the bottle, it seemed quite pale in colour, almost orange, but once it settled in the glass you could see the ruby still there, and the taste was gloriously rich and raisiny, with a real kick of alcohol. A proper grown-up drink, but one that wasn’t harsh or overpowering in any way. A real treat.

9/10