Happy New Year

I cannot recall when I last made a New Years's Resolution.  Indeed I think the last one I made was not to make any more. Checking my New Zealand blog (because I was in New Zealand for about nine New Years) seems to confirm my thoughts.

So far as I can recall the last New Year that I really celebrated with other people was in New Zealand too. 

When I came to the Island half a century ago this year 'First Footing' was very much the 'thing'. We had very small children and discouraged however well-meaning but drunken people from waking everyone up. I think in our township on Lewis it became almost a thing of the past after one of the neighbours wandered off into the moor in a disoriented and presumably drunken state and his body wasn't found for for years. 

So last night was a WhatsAppfest of good will messages before I made it to bed at 1am.

For those of you who read my blog I wish you a very happy, and above all healthy, year ahead.

I'm hoping to write and read and respond to a lot more blog posts this year. 

Well, that's the plan. 

But first I have to make a few resolutions.

Happy New Year

It has only just struck me that today is the 31 December. In just over 12 hours for me it will be 2023. However, in half an hour in New Zealand it will be 2023. So for all my Family and friends in New Zealand and the timezones between there and here I wish for you a very

Bliadhna Mhath Ùr

The last week hasn't been one of my best and I've read little and written even less.  Hopefully all that is behind me. Well obviously it's all behind me but what I mean is that I hope all the lethargy, coughing and general lack of wellness is now behind me and the New Year will see life returning to whatever is the new normal out there in the big wide world that is Lewis.

Various friends I've spoken to today have been reminiscing about the Hogmanays we used to have. Stornoway used to have a huge firework display down at the Harbour to see in the New Year. It was always mobbed and a great charity fund raiser. In the Seventies when we came here we always had a party of friends on the evening with a meal and party games and a great deal of fun. Indeed, one way and another that continued into the 2000s and then for a decade I was always in New Zealand for Hogmanay.

Since then it's been a time of quiet reflection and, whilst each year I might be awake for The Bells, there's greater odds that I'll be asleep.

I did think about looking at one of the videos I'd taken back in the day but, with loved ones featured having passed on, New Year doesn't really seem the right time. 

Apropos nothing at all to do with New Year I was watching Archbishop Tutu's coffin being carried into the Cathedral today. It reminded me of the time when I found myself helping out an undertaker for a funeral at a crematorium. Archbishop Tutu's coffin was the 'cheapest they could find' but had rope handles by which it could be carried. I looked at those with envy as the bearers held them and took the coffin into the cathedral. The coffin I was supposed to help carry (the first time I'd ever carried a coffin) had less substantial 'brass' handles. As I picked up my corner of the coffin by the handle the Undertaker said in a 'whisper' that seemed to reverberate around the crematorium "Not by the effin handle you effin idiot, they're effin plastic."

Hopefully, tomorrow, I will wake feeling a new man and ready to meet the challenges of 2022 of which, I'm sure, there will be many. 

Welcome to 2021

I was working in the garden on Thursday afternoon and a sudden shower came through. I turned around and there was a rather splendid view:

I hope that this is a sign of better things to come.

I haven't celebrated The Bells actively since I stopped living in New Zealand. Before then, we use to have a magnificent firework display in Stornoway to welcome in the New Year but the funds dried up as austerity hit. Most of Stornoway and the environs went to that and, indeed, friends in the town always had a New Year dinner party before the fireworks which I loved. Since then I've celebrated the incoming year either very quietly or when I woke in the morning having been fast asleep at midnight.

This year we have little option anyway. Mixing in other people's houses is forbidden. 

I hope that you stay safe and continue writing and/or reading blogs in the year ahead.

2020: The First Day

For those who haven't already seen my seasonal wishes I direct you to Meike's wish: Welcome to 2020. May your skies be blue and your seas be calm. I hope you will manage to keep what good and happy things you have in your life, and get rid of what bothers you. Happy New Year! 

It's been a strange day and not quite the way I had intended to spend the first day of the year but then wotthehellarchiewotthehell I've enjoyed it so far. I just haven't really achieved anything much of the things I set out to do. Will it alter anything in this world? No. And I have managed to keep up in Blogland.

This is a photo taken this morning New Zealand time (ie 2 January) in Havelock North by Martin from my New Zealand Family. That is the sun. It is almost blanked out by smoke from the fires in Eastern Australia. Sydney is 2365k /1437 miles away from Havelock. I'm sure that all my readers will be aware of the enormity of the fires which have been burning since September and now engulf huge swathes of Australia. To give a European perspective that is the distance between Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis off the West Coast of Scotland and Belgrade, Sarajevo and Rome.

The global effects of the fires in so many ways are demonstrated rather well by this photo. 

Oddly I have just had a notification from New Zealand One News with a bulletin about the fact that this is the second day that New Zealanders have woken up to a 'blood orange sun'. In some places the sun is a dark red. 

Let us all hope for better things in the coming weeks, months and years.

New Year Celebrations

There are no fireworks in Stornoway to celebrate New Year now. Not that there would have been today anyway because it's the Sabbath. Before I started spending the winter in New Zealand in 2006 the Stornoway waterfront was alive at Midnight with families all seeing in the New Year. It was wonderful. When I first came to the Island in the '70s the tradition in the rural townships (and perhaps in town too) was for people (usually men if I remember correctly) to see in the New Year through the night visiting all the houses in the township. In the early days we claimed immunity as we had two tiny children. By the mid '80s though for many years we had our own New Year dinner party at our house with friends. 

For me this New Year the celebrations are suppose to begin tomorrow at Gaz and Carol's with my grandson, Brodie, in Grimshader. It would be my first overnight in their new home. 

I have been in Purdah and haven't seen my grandson since Christmas Eve. After that I developed a bad throat. By this morning it was almost better so I had high hopes. Then by lunchtime I had started with a cold. I cannot remember when I last had a cold. So it looks as if I will have another period of Purdah and not be able to see the family. There is no way I could risk the family getting a cold at this stage of Brodie's development.

So my New Year will be a quiet one. I may, perhaps, go and infect someone else or I may simply stay at home and catch up with the dozens of letters and so on that I want to write. 

I am spending this evening in splendid isolation. I've had very little in the way of alcohol for four months - my wine stocks are better than they have ever been. Tonight, however, I have one big decision to take. Which will be better for me: a whisky mac or a Cognac? Tough one. 

Slàinte mhath!

It's a New Year

Four days have now elapsed since last year. Did you make New Year resolutions? I don't think I have made them since I was a child. It seemed very much more 'done' in those days. Or perhaps it just seems like that to me. Certainly I'm not aware of any of my friends who make them. Or perhaps they just don't share them.

To be honest I'm not sure that I quite understand the concept of a 'New Year'. What alters? Our attitudes towards our fellow men or our work or our play? Do we feel invigorated? Did we feel better when we woke on the 1 January? I suspect a lot of people felt decidedly less well than usual.

For me every time I wake up in the morning I am grateful. I am very conscious of how precious life is and how fortunate I am to be alive. 

The one thing it does enable us to do is to say to our friends that we hope they will have a very happy and healthy time in the year ahead. Perhaps we should have a Happy New Month or a Happy New Week or even a Happy New Day and think about people more frequently.

By the way if you did make any resolutions have they lasted this far?