My six-year-old nephew called at 6:30 am the other morning to ask when I was coming over to play. I told him to give me five minutes, and as he was hanging up the phone I heard him ask “Mum, how long is five minutes?”

How long is time really?

Sad times are syrupy, sticky-slow when you hurt and joy can hurdle by like warm wind in your hair when life is all too much fun. None of us know how long Dad will take to heal, we just know that he must and we will champion his every step of the journey.

The hope is to move him from ICU to the ward and then potentially home once we can get him set up on the new ventilator, which should arrive in a week. We don’t know how long that will be or how much time any of this might take. But really now, all of this time, is a tiny drop in life and we are taking each ‘five minutes’ as they unfold. While we all want to know an exact exit strategy the next steps are certainly not as clear as this sign. (Which incidentally seems to be of a man with one very long leg trying to escape some aggressively large letters.) Our sign will come when the time is right.

Tonight as this year blankets itself out and into a brand new next, we are just happy to still have time, love and each other. Happy New Year everyone, I hope everyone will ring this bad boy in Jim Craig styles.

Let’s light up the fire pit and shoot off some cannons!