The way I see it, when you're in your forties you can either give in to your mid-life crisis or you can run towards it, arms outstretched to fully embrace it and start your life anew.Clearly the first option is the easiest, but who ever said that easy is best? Where's the fun in easy?
Easy doesn't mean dragging your partner and terrier to the other end of the country; starting two new jobs, finding - and moving in to - a new home and selling the old one in the space of one month and a day.
That's not easy; that's crazy. But that's how we've found ourselves living in beautiful Berkshire.
This morning's dog walk from the back of our house, through the frosty fields and along the banks of the Thames, was accompanied by the sound of a pheasant shoot (I later saw them in the copse and thankfully they didn't look like they'd bagged a single bird) that flushed two deer out onto the path in front of Hobbs and I.
They glanced back at us, then turned and pronked off round the corner, their heads held high and their tails flashing as white as the frost in the undergrowth as they bounced along.
Before they'd appeared I'd been thinking about those whose lives had been cut short this year and how you have to take every opportunity that life throws at you. So, while I'll always glance back at my old life fondly, I'm ready to take my partner and my pooch, and pronk off into our new life and whatever that will bring.
