I’ve had a topsy-turvy year, but the statistics prove beyond doubt that my chief distraction of 2024 was the acquisition of a small furry menace

As the year barrels toward its end, I feel in many ways as if I have survived a difficult and challenging period, worse than the year before, and the year before that, if possibly better than anything one dares expect from 2025. But impressions can be deceiving, and I find that when I’m reviewing the year gone it helps to rely on nothing but the latest and most verifiable statistics. Here, then, is my look at 2024 in cold, hard numbers.

1 New dogs acquired in 2024. Have I mentioned this at all? I’m sorry, I never wanted to become the sort of person who has a very long answer to the question, “So, how’s your dog?”, but that’s what I am. I also have 250 pictures of the dog on my phone, and I am willing to show you all of them. My only defence is that having a puppy is so time-consuming, the havoc it wreaks so comprehensive, that I have no other conversational topics – nothing else is happening to me. In that sense, having a new dog is a lot like having a baby, except that a baby won’t gnaw the skirting boards off your walls while you’re out buying milk.