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  Here we are again on the last day of the year, looking back on the year past, and forward to the next year. Some of us will be glad to see the end of 2024 and happy to see the start of a new year, while others will be cautious and perhaps nervous of what 2025 will bring.  Of course, the concept of a "new year" is a purely man made notion to help us fix ourselves in time within days, weeks and months and likewise in hours, minutes, seconds and even nano seconds - which I understand is equal to one billionth of a second, one nano second being to one second as one second is to 31.7 years. At this point my mind boggles and fails to comprehend the enormity of "time" as we as humans on earth, know it. Our idea of a month comes from the moon and many cultures over thousands of years have used months with lengths of 29 or 30 days to divide the year up into manageable pieces. With this system though, there is the problem of having moon cycles at 29.5 days not dividing equa...

Here we are, already on the 3rd day of the new year of 2023 and I have been berating myself over the weekend for not having a thought or two worth expressing here about anything at all.  Anyone looking back over the 14 or so years of this blog will see that this is by no means a new 'thing' for me, and a simple search of " New Year" "Christmas" or even "Time" finds me castigating myself for not writing a post, the timing of a post or for the feelings and thoughts that I should or shouldn't have had about the season.  (I have posted handy links for some of these posts to save the reader searching themselves, which is a thankless task :) )  So where does Mr Micawber come into this ? He is a character in Charles Dickens' book "David Copperfield" and is renowned for many sayings which we use in everyday situations, such as "Something will turn up". Here, I need to explain that his quotations come about due to his inability t...

"  And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people." Luke 2:10  -  King James Version (KJV Looking forward to Christmas Day with it's promises of gifts and spending time with the family, shopping for presents, writing cards, opening the doors of an Advent calendar each day,  awaiting the arrival of "Santa", decorating our homes - inside and out - are  all ways in which most of us spend the first twenty four days in December. I have done all of these things and more over the years, but have to admit that as each year goes by, increasingly I tend to leave the things which constitute this build up to the day,to my children and grandchildren. I do decorate the living room in my house though this is increasingly by adding more candles than are already there and putting lights around the "trees" and plants which already occupy the indoor space.  A small pine tree, which is an off shoot ...

Here we are again on the last day of the year, looking back on the year past and forward to the next year. Some of us will be glad to see the end of 2016 and happy to see the start of a new year, while others will be cautious and perhaps nervous of what 2017 will bring.  Of course, the concept of a "new year" is a purely man made notion to help us fix ourselves in time within days, weeks and months and likewise in hours, minutes, seconds and even nano seconds - which I understand is equal to one billionth of a second, one nano second being to one second as one second is to 31.7 years. At this point my mind boggles and fails to comprehend the enormity of "time" as we as humans on earth, know it. Our idea of a month comes from the moon and many cultures over thousands of years have used months with lengths of 29 or 30 days to divide the year up into manageable pieces. With this system though, there is the problem of having moon cycles at 29.5 days not dividin...

It's the usual thing for any blogger/writer/up-to-the-minute person to use December 31st, New Year's Eve, to reflect on the year passed and to look forward to the new year with resolutions and intentions - and to post the thoughts for all to see.  So, as I spent yesterday reading other people's reflections and resolutions and also because I was ready for bed earlier than on an "ordinary" day, I thought I'd wait till today 1st January to post mine. Like many people, I have made resolutions in the past and not kept them further than a few days into the new year,This was probably because they weren't really my own decisions but more what I thought I 'ought' to be deciding on. Today I am not making resolutions as such, but posting 12 things that I have learned during and from 2015 (it was originally 10 things, but that would mean I learned less than an average of one a month , which is not much of an achievement - so 12 it is ) These are in no...

It's that strange time in between Christmas and New Year where I feel I am in limbo - but I don't know what I am waiting for.  It's officially the fourth day of Christmas, according to the song anyway. No one has given me any calling birds yet but I didn't get a partridge or any doves or  hens over the past few days either. And I am certainly not expecting any gold rings tomorrow. With three and a bit more days to go till New Year, I suppose I could be waiting for that, if only sub -consciously. But if that's the case then I might have to think about making resolutions, and that seems a bit like putting myself under pressure to achieve something. If I don't achieve what I intended to, then this time next year I will be feeling a complete failure and I don't fancy that again ! So, no resolutions (yet) and no particular plans for the near future (yet). To be able to take each day at a time is a precious thing. At this moment that is all I hope to do. I ho...

And here we are at the start of another “new year” or just a new month, week or day depending on how we look at it. After all we are told by many exceptional scientists that time is only relevant to a particular space or situation and possibly or even probably is not linear at all. So why does my mind always think of January at the left hand side with the year working it’s way across to December at the right hand side? Is it because most diaries start at January at the beginning of the book and work through to December at the end? Or is it more to do with my limited ingrained knowledge of Pope Gregory’s calendar – though I believe that’s more to do with the calculation of dates of festivals like Easter than the actual lay out of the months. Some calendars are quite straight forward in their lay out of how the year runs. Those spiral bound ones with a page for each month with an appropriate picture on it and the dates of the days in a box underneath. They are usually ok for me – until y...

So, today a new year, 2009 has arrived, and many of us I am sure, are wondering what changes, for the better, there will be. Some new laws have come into being in this country but whether the majority of us will be affected, remains to be seen. From today, coastguards around Britain will not be able to fire flares during night rescues. This is apparently in line with changing rescue practices and more use of night-vision goggles. Crews still with flares will have to hand them to the Ministry of Defence or face prosecution. I wish they would bring in a similar law to this about fireworks Still on the medical scene, cancer patients will get free prescriptions from today, (in Northern Ireland patients will get slightly cheaper prescriptions, for some reason) This is good news at least. And 13year-old girls may be vaccinated against HPV, the sexually transmitted disease that can lead to cancer of the cervix. I suppose that is good news too, but it’s a little disturbing (to me) to say it. “...