Thoughts and activities on the eve of New Year’s Eve.

Fashion trends come and go. Some of them come around again and again. I have stuff in my wardrobe that can come out again now as those particular items are no back in fashion. Vintage shops do a roaring trade. However, one fashion idea that somehow I don’t think will catch on again is the codpiece. This article shows some of the wonderfully ridiculous pieces of clothing that have been invented to incorporate the codpiece. But perhaps it was trendy just too long ago to make a real come-back. After all the 16th century was a long time ago.

I wore much more sensible clothing to be out and about today. And I seem to have been out and about quite a lot. I got up bright and early, well, too early to use my bus-pass, and set off to walk to Uppermill and visit the baker’s shop. From there, enough time having gone past to mean I could now travel for free, I caught a bus to our local Tesco store. I was on a mission to buy ingredients for a dish I am going to cook and then transport to a friend’s house tomorrow evening.

Twenty years ago, a good friend of ours decided to celebrate his 50th birthday, which fell on Millennium Eve, with a party for a select group of friends. We all stood outside in the cold at midnight and watched fireworks all around our town - his house is on one of the high spots of the town. And so a tradition was born and every New Year’s Eve the same friends got together and celebrated a birthday and a new year in one. Time passed. One of our number died of cancer. We got together and drank a toast to her memory. Then, just under five years ago, the instigator of the whole thing finally succumbed to the COPD that had been making life hard for quite some time. Since then, the rest of us still celebrate his birthday, each one of us taking one dish to the feast.

That explains my early morning run to the supermarket.

Some time after I returned home, Phil and I walked onto the village to pick up a prescription for eyedrops. While we were doing this, my daughter texted me: did I fancy a walk out with her and various of her offspring? A visit to the library. A stop-off to feed the ducks.

Well, why not. My Fitbit is just going crazy about the number of steps I have taken today!!

So tomorrow, we’ll take a fancy chicken dish to an old friend’s house. Four of us will eat and drink, toast absent friends and finally wish each other a Happy New Year, trying to ignore the crazy state of our country and of the world.

Usually on the television you see the celebrations in cities around the world, as they move onto 2020 before we do and set off masses of fireworks, regardless of the environmentalists’ warnings. However, I heard something on the radio news the other day about the authorities in Sidney, Australia, seriously considering cancelling heir usually impressive display of pyromania this year. There is a strong feeling that seeing fireworks explode in the sky will be too stark a reminder of the flames that so many have seen leaping into the sky, indeed that many are still seeing today.

 Perhaps we need to rethink the whole celebration.