Happy New Year

Not much blogging this last few days as we've spent all our time with family. 
When I was a child I remember waking to the sounds of Auld Lang Syne being sung by the men out in the street before they first footed carrying their lumps of coal across the threshold, cutting the Christmas cake and being rewarded with a silver coin.  The traditional blessing of "Health, Wealth and Happiness" rang round the cul-de-sac.  Today's organised celebrations with fireworks in city centres round the world, apparently vying with each other over how much explosive material can be consumed in peacetime seems a million years from those days.  Am I getting older and looking back through rose coloured glasses?  Perhaps.
I do know that it's a time for counting blessings and reflecting on how fortunate I am.  Fortunate to be living in an era when the click of a mouse brings family on the other side of the world into our living room.  Fortunate to have enough money to buy the food we need and a few luxuries besides.  Fortunate to have family who can come and stay and who still love us enough to do so.  A roof over our heads, mothers who are still alive, friends to visit, and so they go on.  We are very fortunate indeed at the start of the new year.