Happy New...whatever x

Ask my kids about the New Year and to them it's no big deal.  

The prospective arrival of a new dawn is met with the question:  "Is it a school day?'
When the answer is no, then the following question is "So, today, will we go buy Skylanders?"
From their point of view, nothing is particularly special about 'yesterday' or 'tomorrow', this year or last year. Everything's about getting the best out of what's going on today.

When I was a kid I never understood why people would say "Happy New Year"  with an air of melancholy.
As I've gotten older I do.

But a lot of things are different from when I was a kid. For a start, now I celebrate New Year three times.

The first: Hogmanay.

Hogamany is what New Year's Eve is called in Scotland. (and frankly the best title for it ever)
Round about 3pm, here in LA, sounds of Jimmy Shand will be heard echoing through the house along with the Alexander brothers, Andy Stewart and even the odd song from Glen Daly. Scotland enters the New Year at 4pm our time, so the Skype is on overtime.

Then we head over to some good friends from the East coast to celebrate, whilst we watch the Times Square ball drop live on TV from New York.
We write on little pieces of paper, what we wish to take with us into the New Year and what to leave behind, and silently throw them into the fire.

Then at midnight, LA time, when the rest of the world is already well into a new year, back here at Tweddley Towers, me and Mr Twed toast New Year Pacific time, sitting in the back yard looking up at the stars (you can see them briefly, in between the scores of helicopters that clutter up the LA night sky, all the bloody time.)

And  I see myself from the outside:  A middle aged woman with ridiculous hair and two magnificent children and a pretty spectacular bloke - which is bizarre because, inside, I'm certain I'm only 27 and only five minutes ago it was 1992.

And I think of New Years gone by. And I wonder where I'll be, when I look back on this one from a distance.

And I wish my parents could find a way to call me from the Bahamas. 

An uncle once said to me. "Be careful where you place your mind.  If you always have one foot in the past and one foot in the future, your arse will be dangling over the present." (my family have always been eloquent)

So this year, before throwing it into the fire, I'll write on my piece of paper "Is it today we get to go and buy Skylanders?"

Happy New Year to you wherever you are, and whatever time zone you find yourself in. xxx