Tim Dowling: my year in numbers (yes, most of them involve the new dog)

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.

10 Columns, out of 52, that I have written about having a new dog. This is even more shocking when you consider the dog was only acquired at the end of July. I really am very sorry about this, just as I am sorry that this dog has taken over my life, my home, my thoughts and my side of the bed, all of which – against my better judgment – I have simply let happen. I have no excuses, except that I am in love, and have consequently gone mad.

1 Foxes I have tripped over while walking home in the dark and thinking, “I haven’t seen any foxes around here in quite a while.” He was pretty polite about it.

2 Times this summer I fell from lawn furniture: once from a collapsing deck chair, and once from a hammock – in front of all the same people both times, unfortunately. The humiliation was pretty raw on each occasion, but I console myself with the thought that it could have been a lot worse if it had been a nicer summer.

19 Chew toys owned by the new dog, in spite of which it still prefers chewing on skirting boards, stair carpet edging, rocks from the garden and scissor handles.

4 Curtain rails installed. I’m not a professional curtain rail installer, so four in a year is a lot for me. Moreover, the rails were, at my wife’s insistence, actually lengths of copper piping fitted to the wall with brass pipe brackets, so the job was really a form of plumbing, for which I am not remotely qualified. I don’t want to say “successfully installed” because the walls and window frames were not true, so I had to eyeball all the levels. Now every time I walk into one of the newly curtained rooms I’m reminded that I should probably get my eyes checked.

7 Weeks we spent without heating last winter. The cold was not the most agonising thing about this episode – it was the seven weeks of no one being able to determine why the heating wasn’t working. Repairmen were coming round daily to test theories, without success. Blockages, pressure issues, pump problems and the critical failure of something called the canoe filter were all cited. Many expensive parts were replaced, all to no avail. I started the winter not really understanding how central heating works, and ended it not really understanding what central heating is.

17 Live dates by my band, down from 23 in 2023, but I’m told this still amounts to around 4,000 tickets sold, along with 800 souvenir tea towels. We also managed to record an entire album over a weekend, and put out a non-No 1 Christmas single. It represents a great deal of hard work, although my wife insists that if I’m with the band I’m on holiday.

30 Age my oldest son reached in 2024. Even more than 21, 30 is a frontier to no-turning-back adulthood, and a sobering reminder that one is not getting any younger. To be fair it’s probably quite weird for him, too.

102 The age my father had reached when he died in July. When he visits my dreams these days he is often younger, but sometimes he’s 103 and wondering what all the fuss was about.

10.3 The revised figure for the number of columns I’ve written about the new dog, reflecting the approximate percentage of this column devoted to it. I’m so, so sorry. I will try to do better in 2025.

Happy new year.