Friday, December 31, 2010
New Year's Eve
Perhaps we should have done last night on this night.
New year's eve - the night for partying ...... and yet it felt right to have had a good time with family on a night that was ours and nobody else's.
This evening is a time for reflection - looking back over the year and recalling past new year's eves.
It is a time to look forward too - to a life full of the things we value and an attempt to discard the things we don't value very much.
Like many, I begin the year with various good intentions. I am wise enough now to realise that I shall not fulfill many of them; not even the ones with regard to my eating, and those intentions really do have my own good at the heart of them.
Poor body is not happy right now - wheat can be so good to eat and is such a mainstay of the British diet that it is hard always to discard it. But it should go.
There is one new years resolution that I first made in 1962, when only 18 years old. Bill and I were at a dance - somewhere on the industrial estate. In those days we all went to dances - not clubs. The music was live - a three of four piece band. We were with others from the cycle club. I think I had won a bottle of gin in a raffle.
At midnight there were the usual hugs and kisses and I resolved to spend the next new year's eve with the boyfriend (Bill) that I had been with for a short while.
We have been together for every subsequent new year's eve since then - 48 years of them.
I am sure that Julie was there at the dance at the end of 1962.... her Roger too? Not sure.
Last night we were with them again.
There were 10 family members together last night - once again it was the older, retired half of the family.
I was very happy to provide a background for them all to be together to talk and laugh and eat and drink.
Bed time was not until about 2 o'clock.
So, today has been quite a lazy day. There was washing up and vacuuming to be done and I did some ironing, whilst enjoying The Sound of Music on TV.
Now for some Monk family portraits - a chamber of horrors?
Lesley
Pictures of Julie.
Not the best picture of Pam - but it sums up the evening quite well!
Bill.
When I saw the one on the right, I realised how much like Jane he looks.
Nephew, Antony.
Julie's Roger.
Lesley's Peter.
Jane.
Paula.
All over the country people are gathering and have begun to celebrate the passing of 2010.
Jamie, 6,000 miles away is soon to wake up, already in 2011.
Our niece Lisa, in Australia, has already had a wow of a new years eve party.
Other family and friends in USA and Canada will soon get together and start their celebrating.
Wherever you are we wish you well for 2011.
Labels: family
