A New Year Blog- January 2025. Something Significant?

A New Year Blog for 2025

On New Year’s Eve we drank tea and were in bed by 10:30 waking briefly for the nearby fireworks at midnight. Mr. Dog the collie was mildly interested but not enough to get out of bed and he soon went back to munching through his night-time biscuits.

Facebook reminded me of a decade earlier when the family gathered and at midnight and after toasting the New Year with a wee dram of single malt, we sang Aul Lang syne and then set about the annual tradition of egg hurling. This involved those who could throw going out to the front of the house armed with a raw egg with their name written on it and taking it in turns to launch them over the house with the aim of getting them to land without breaking on the back lawn.

We never had a year when at least one egg was successful but there were many casualties from wayward throwers who hit the front of the house, the car on the front drive, the pond (we found one in the pond late one summer….. still whole but very very soft and squidgy) and various stones or paths in the back garden. These eggs were not wated as the dogs charged around gleefully licking up the wounded eggs.

Back another two decades and that gathered family as children acted as spotters racing from one side of the house, indoors, to the other to announce when an egg was coming over. In the back-garden, those who did not want to throw donned hard hats and carried torches scanning the night sky for the next missile.  Often new year was in fancy dress with a theme. The year of children’s literature saw Jasmine and Aladin accompanied by a very tall methodist lay preacher dressed in a tutu as Tinkerbell trying to reach any whole eggs before the dogs could get them.

Another year the police stopped in a patrol car outside the house to see the strange gathering standing in the road, eggs in hand, dressed in kilts waiting to hear the news of the latest landing. It gave them a laugh in their long shift…. We offered an egg but they thought they had better not join in.

I do not regret my early night this year, although I would love the throwing arm of my prime,  the memories of those past events are enough and that we could give people those joyful occasions playing silly games.  ( I will save tales of “Are you there Moriaty?” and “bottle Walking” for another occasion.

As every year for the last four decades we had a house guest for a couple of weeks who has somewhat different tastes to us in watching TV so we avoid the uplifting Rom-com and try any find a compromise. This proved to be Jumanji, University Challenge and The Big Bang Theory.  If you have not come across the latter on Netflix, there are countless clips on YouTube so I won’t explain the ongoing plot- just to say that it is a quirky situation comedy. In one episode the main characters are clearing the office of a deceased colleague and disposing of all his out of date texts and research when they come across an unopened bottle of champagne. The label showed it was a present from his mother to be opened when he had a significant achievement. The characters mused on the sadness of that but it made me wonder what might count as a significant achievement.

Nobody gets a Nobel prize for bringing up a wonderful family, spending decades as a church warden or a lifetime of managing a household and yet I would mark all these as worth celebrating as significant. When the family gathers at Christmas, which we can do before us elderly folk need our sleep, it feels a very significant moment. Contrastingly there are things we do or say which affect other people in the most significant way without our ever being made aware of it. And then there is prayer……

Happy New Year reader / Reader – may 2025 be kind to you, and if it is not may you find comfort and hope and a friend to help you through.