I recently had to write an essay for university about changes in Scotland’s population since 1945. While I was writing that I happened, almost by chance, upon The Registrar General’s Annual Review of Demographic Trends 2004.

What’s so special about 2004? It was the 150^th anniversary of civil registration (which began in 1855, in case your arithmetic isn’t too hot). So the Registrar General took the opportunity to delve into the statistics and produce lots of interesting analysis on this historical trends of Scotland’s population as far back as records go.

While I should have been writing my essay, I found myself perusing the graphs. I’m that sort of person. Obsessed with graphs. I’ll share a few of the most interesting ones with you.

Sorry about the illegibility of some of these. I have to confess that I am stealing the Registrar General’s bandwidth (although this does not vex me because the public is paying for that bandwidth, and something tells me they won’t get me with the goatse treatment). The original images are huge (much bigger than they appear on the PDF), so I have had to crudely reduce them in size to fit in these pages.

Immigration

Immigrants flooding this country! Er, or not.

Literacy

The Registrar General used the number of people signing by mark while marrying as a crude measure of literacy up until 1915.

Marriages in Gretna

They are a much more modern phenomenon than you might imagine.

Divorce

I bet if you got divorced in the nineteenth century it was national news.

Death

My favourite topic! You can see the general long-term decline in the number of deaths. But more interestingly, the peaks a troughs become much less extreme, signifying improved medicinal technology and ability to cope with epidemics.

These are just a few of my favourites, but I could have included twice as many (to be honest, you’re lucky I didn’t). But if you’re interested in Scotland’s modern history and demography I’d definitely take a look at the full document.

I usually forget the anniversary of this blog. I think this is for a variety of reasons.

Firstly, at this time of year we usually have other festivities on our minds. Also this blog has two major anniversaries in my mind. Moving to doctorvee.co.uk was a watershed, and I am sometimes reluctant to even acknowledge what I did before. Yet my first blog post, back in the days when I used Blogger, was posted five years ago, on the 30^th of December 2002. What a thought.

Less than two years later I upped sticks, and the first post on this WordPress blog came on the 8^th of December 2004. Crazy stuff.

Even before I started posting on Blogger, I had a web presence (some rubbishy Geocities pages). The move to the blog was gradual, which is probably another reason why I often forget the bloggiversary. It’s amazing to see how the blog has evolved over the years from several pithy posts a day a few years ago to today’s much longer and more infrequent posts.

Happy New Year

By the time you read this the clock will have struck midnight and you might well be nursing a bad hangover. So Happy New Year to you. Have some coal.

I have a strange relationship with Hogmanay. I often think I prefer it to Christmas, although when it comes it is often a damp squib.

I think I grew up with different expectations to most people of what the new year was supposed to be like. I saw it as a time for family moreso than Christmas. You know, when I was younger Christmas was about the Sega MegaDrive and Hogmanay was when I got to stay up late with the family and drink some Irn Bru.

A few years ago I discovered that this attitude made me a heretic and that Hogmanay is for getting rat arsed with your friends. Friends I can live with. I like friends.

But the drink? I like a drink, but I never see the point in getting totally rat arsed, even at new year. A bad hangover isn’t any better just because it happens to fall on the 1^st of January. In fact, it might be worse to have a hangover on this day because I want to enjoy the big dinner my parents will be cooking!

I was working today which meant that I didn’t get any real input into the plans my friends were hatching. Needless to say — as I am sitting here writing this post with T minus 45 minutes until the bells — I baulked at the plans, which sound to me like an utter recipe for disaster. I am fragile and I like to sleep. I can make do without a bed, but preferably somewhere with people that I actually know, and failing that somewhere in the town where I actually live.

So I am now having a quiet night in, which is quite odd, but I’ve been getting stuff done which is good. Christmas Day itself was excellent, but the rest of the holidays have been such a massive disappointment — mostly because I have so much studying to do.

I have essays and a dissertation to write. They have been hanging over me the whole time and it’s been quite a bleak month — and it will be a bleak couple of months ahead as the big deadline looms. But I have allowed myself to take the 31^st and the 1^st off, which at least gets rid of the guilt I feel when I inevitably begin procrastinating.

Usually I don’t do new year’s resolutions. By my reckoning, if you were really that bothered about whatever vice you’re worried about, you would try to stop it regardless of whether it was the new year or not. That’s why new year’s resolutions are bound to fail.

Nevertheless, over the Christmas holiday I have become even more worried than normal about my sleeping patterns. It’s quite bad when you are routinely spending 13, 14 hours in bed — the first few trying to get to sleep, then around ten hours actually being asleep, dead to the world. At this time of the year, I miss entire days.

It’s okay to be like this when you are a student bum like me, but given that I am in my final year at university I won’t be able to get away with it for much longer. So now is the time to sort it out and to dedicate some real energy to finding a proper solution to my sleep problems.

I will also try to publish one blog post per day, although I have been trying to do that anyway!

Sorry if you’ve been trying to visit this blog over the past couple of days only to find that everything had appeared to have gone tits up.

I had decided a while ago that I was going to change my host and domain registrar. Unfortunately — typical me — I decided to leave everything until the last minute. The last minute just happened to be in the middle of my exams! You know, those exams I’ve been cacking myself about. Dohh! That made the whole thing much more difficult than it needed to be which is why this blog has been in testcard mode for a couple of days.

You’ll be delighted to know that the whole business isn’t even finished yet, but keep your fingers crossed for me, eh? I’ve also had to tinker with the theme a bit. I’ve taken a lot of stuff away from the sidebar, but it was pretty out of date anyway. I’ll be totally redesigning this blog in a week or so anyway, so it’s no great loss. I’ve also taken Gravatars out because they never seem to work any more.

So what news have I had since I last posted? My first exam wasn’t quite as bad as I had feared. My second exam was every bit as bad as I had feared. And my essay mark — yes, that one I messed up the word count on — was way higher than I expected. So a mixed bag all-in-all. I’ve only got one exam left. Thankfully, I will actually have some time to prepare for it! Hopefully this means that I’ll be able to post. Woo hoo!

Psst. Check this out: duncanstephen.co.uk. Don’t worry. I’ll make it non out of date aswell.

Update: On the subject of Gravatars, I’ve just read about Pavatars. It’s a similar idea, but this time instead of being stored centrally like Gravatars, Pavatars are stored on your own webspace. Nice idea. I’ve already got my own one. I wonder if it will catch on like Gravatars did, because it sounds to me like Gravatars are dead. Via Weblog Tools Collection.

Oh hello, it’s me. Sorry about that silence. I had a scary essay to write, as well as plenty of work. Christmas really is a massive load of shite isn’t it?

Anyway, I don’t think my essay was very good. I stayed up until almost 4am on Sunday night writing the essay. Then once I thought I had finished it, I switched the computer off so that I could get some sleep. I decided to double-check what my word count was supposed to be. And, yes, I got it wrong. Having spent a good amount of time trying to cut my essay down to under 2,000 words, I discovered that it was supposed to be 2,500 words long! So I had to get up early in the morning again to write those extra words.

Then I was too late for the latest train that would get me to Edinburgh so that I could post my essay and arrive at my lecture on time. And my lecture was held on the ninth floor. Obviously, I ran up the stairs. I didn’t take the lift because I like to take the stairs anyway for the exercise. And I tend to avoid lifts anyway for reasons that will be explored in a future post.

Anyway, what a bloody idiot I am for running up the stairs. It felt great when I actually was running up the stairs. “This is no bother,” I thought. In fact, it felt good. Who’d have thought running up to the ninth floor would be such a breeze?

But when I reached the ninth floor I actually felt one step away from death. I tried to calm myself down before entering the classroom, but it felt like a waste of time — especially since I had just run up the stairs to save time. Now that I was surrounded by people I became aware of the fact that I felt just about unable to breathe in and I had lost the ability to speak.

So there you have it. My essay was handed in. It was supposed to be a weight off my shoulders. I was going to relax yesterday evening (even though I had work yet again!). But I was just way too tired. I was all wronged up from that point onwards, to the point that I couldn’t even tell the time (scientific fact). That’s what happens to you when you catch the latest train possible, which is — stupidly — what I always do.

There is so much I could have blogged about over this past week, but I didn’t really have the time to. Hopefully I will have more time to post this week, but don’t hold your breath. I have to exams next week.