Tis the season for new beginnings or so we are told. Actually New Year, as we celebrate it [spoiler alert: I don’t] is a modern confection. There is nothing significant about the change between 31st of December to the 1st of January. Don’t believe me? I watched the BBC News channel yesterday. They stated that it will take 26 hours for the whole of the earth to move to the 1st of January. Now you could suggest that this is fake news but please don’t.

The much more significant date up here in the cold and damp north is the winter solstice. From that point, we are slowly marching to long summer days and away from the depression of night lasting many hours more than the day. Of course for those in the southern hemisphere the opposite is true.

To top everything off it is a cold and damp start to the New Year. Yippee.

Ba Humbug.