Seeker

Happy New Year to you all, whether you have just stumbled on this blog or are one of my regular readers. There's something odd about New Year's Day. It's a new beginning, but if you live where 1st January is a public holiday and you partied last night, then it's more like a day of recovery than a new start. And this year it's immediately followed by a weekend so many people's new start at work won't be until Monday. If you are in Scotland the new work year start will be Tuesday as you have another Bank Holiday on Monday. Well, Hogmanay is exhausting isn't it? What is different about today compared with yesterday? It is only a date on a calendar, a date when we have reached approximately the same position in earth's journey round the sun as we were in this time last year. Wait a minute, doesn't that happen every day? What's new is we have to start getting used to writing 2016 not 2015 and those of us who are old wonder how ...

I f it is really 2015 then I must be getting old. Today does start 2015 so I have to admit I am getting older - but not 'old' yet. You are as old as you feel aren't you? 'Old' is always much older than me - in my own mind anyway, although I think my grandchildren see my age differently. I'm not old enough to have heard King George VI's 1939 Christmas broadcast in which he quoted part of Minnie Louise Haskins' 1908 poem 'God knows', more popularly known now as 'The Gate of the Year'. I'm old enough to be inspired by it and often think of it on New Year's Day and other times of new beginning when facing an unknown future. That is probably because it meant so much to many people of my parents' generation. It was read at the end of every school year by the head teacher of my school. It was significant for my father and was read at his funeral. So, remembering that my parents married on 1 January and faced an unknown future, a...