AT THIS time it is customary to look back and say whether or not it has been a good one. Anyone glancing over their shoulder at 2001 may be tempted to say "good riddance".

Each year has its defining moments, though many don't stay sharp for long. One day's headlines are soon folded up and lining the great sock-filled drawer of history (as Humphrey Lyttelton might almost have said on Radio Four's I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue).

Each of us lives in private but with an awareness of the world at large. So a terrible year might not have been that bad in other ways, with personal happiness weighted against the wider sadness.

All years have their tragedies, spelt out in chiselled headlines. In an ordinary year, the Great Heck rail disaster would have provided sufficient unhappiness to last from February until the year's end. But 2001 turned out to be no ordinary year.

The middle of the year doesn't normally fall in September but 2001 had a different sort of axis. In a sense there was before and there was after. On the morning of September 11, two hi-jacked planes flew into the twin towers of the World Trade Centre in New York. And the world, in a phrase that was to be repeated often, stood still.

The images from that day seemed caught in time. It was clear and beautiful, the sort of crisp Autumn day when all is perfection. Time froze and there was a sense of slow, monumental wonder at what could not possibly be happening. Then all too rapidly, the horror and monstrousness began to sink in.

It stayed with us through the months that followed, through the war in Afghanistan; and now we are all shuffling into the new year's hallway, hoping for something better.

There has never been a day quite like September 11, a day on which history ran before our eyes, recorded live for the television.

Such a day demands the bigger sort of statement, the comforting slab of words to make sense of what makes no sense. So political leaders and newspapers told us that the world had changed for ever.

But has it? Who knows, because we haven't had the "for ever" bit yet. What must certainly be true for many people is that September 11 brought an acute awareness of the suffering of others, and was also a useful reminder that we all inhabit the same world. To write such words is to flirt with banality; but sometimes the commonplace thought seems to get to the heart.

So it is, to unfurl another platitude, that life goes on. Meals are eaten, kisses exchanged; Christmas enjoyed or endured.

Happiness is discovered in different ways. For me, there was a school play with our daughter in a lead role; a York Music Centre concert with number one son on saxophone; and watching number two son's Cub football team win.

Such small joys knit together into something larger.

Anyway, that was 2001. Have as happy a new one as possible.

HERE are lighter thoughts, culled from the year's quotes. It doesn't do to hold up other newspaper's headlines, but it is hard to resist this from the Huddersfield Daily Examiner: "Mad cow talks"; but what did it say? Or how about this from the Ipswich Evening Star: "Charge for elderly to see GP attacked"; blood sports on the NHS, no less.

Let the last word rest with the Italian ambassador, Luigi Amaduzzi: "I asked the barmaid for a quickie. I was mortified when the man next to me said it's pronounced quiche."