3January1997

Friday 3 January
My dear folks,

The evidence lies upon the page. This is the third day of the New Year! Good thing I’m not an accountant for I can’t account for the 1st & the 2nd. If the year continues at this rate, by the end of it people will be rushing around like the characters in early movies! So, before it’s much older, I want to say the first hello of 97 & happy New Year. We saw a feature last night on the folk of the Chatham Islands which claim to lie closest to the western edge of the international date line. Consequently, they argue that it’s from the Chathams that the first dawn of the new millennium will be viewed. Some sharp entrepreneurial types have bought up the rights to just about everything in the islands at the appropriate time & will charging the foolish rich a fortune for the privilege of watching the sun rise in the sky - something the rest of us will be able to do “for free”!

I have risen early after retiring early &, mercifully, sleeping through the night. The first few nights after a body-clock turn-around tend to be interrupted. Jones sleeps on. Jones’s capacity for sleep is extraordinary. She doesn’t know that people are meant to do it less as they grow older. She is blessed with the ability to nod off seconds after she has pulled up the blankets & can put in ten hours with the ease of a trained athlete. The click of the catflap sounds from the patio as Mavis returns from his early morning toilet.

Last night we had our New Year celebration. We allowed generous intervals between starters, the curry main course & Christmas pudd the better to enjoy it! Afterwards, I watched Clint Eastwood & Burt Reynolds in City Heat. Good stuff!

Yesterday, as per my opening paragraph, vanished with a speed & ease I’ve seldom witnessed. After rising mid morning, I got in an hour on my files & computer - the usual end of year clean up - before we went walking. It was the most beautiful day, sunny with barely a hint of wind. We started at the bottle store (to select wines for a special dinner tonight) & continued to the bank, the post office, the supermarket, the video store, the chemist.......the usual. We both wore knapsacks which grew fatter with every stop. Jones then walked on another mile to look for some special cheeses (to find the cheese shop closed) while I returned to my clean up.

The drama of the week took place in the adjacent street which was cordoned off on Wednesday afternoon to allow fire fighters access to a terraced house where smoke was billowing from an upstairs window. Fire fighting vehicle reinforcements arrived steadily, as did numbers of police. We thought it a bit overdone for a house fire, especially when a police helicopter was thought necessary as well. The rat pack from the local estate tried to get past the police tapes blocking off the street for a closer look but a hard faced cop was having none of it. (Jones later saw the pack playing on the ice covering the local canal, a highly dangerous enterprise, although she felt they should not be discouraged; they’re not the world’s nicest children!)

There was subsequent coverage of the fire on the local news. It emerged that two houses (containing however many flats) had burned down completely, leaving 45 people homeless & a couple injured, not the sort of start anyone needs to a new year. Jones wandered past yest & said they were both roofless & utterly gutted. Was obviously worse than it looked. Hope that’s our dramas over & done with for the year ahead. That’s my page done! Let me get it off.

Blessings
T