Happy New Year to you all – I hope your New Year’s Eve celebrations passed peacefully and without incident and that the new year will bring you whatever you need. We spent New Year’s Eve listening to howling gales and sheeting rain which heralded the end of 2024 and the arrival of 2025. Hmm, this year looks a lot like the last year – certainly the weather’s no f*****g better. We were asleep by the time the new year reached Istanbul.
Other than the rain, howling gales and now, this week, freezing temperatures with ice and snow (elsewhere, so far, not in Moreton Pinkney), it’s been a quiet week.
I wrote last time about what a lovely Christmas we had enjoyed. I did, however, want to mention just a few of the “best” gifts we received. I’ve also written in the past about my talented younger brother who creates magnificent pieces of art out of discarded or redundant “junk.” When we visited him in the autumn I bought one of his crab pieces which we carried all over the US and then back to the UK with us (I wonder what Security made of it when they x-rayed our bags?). I also fancied another of his more recent creations – a dog based on the pug Frank, featured in Men in Black which they kindly shipped back to the UK for me.
For Christmas he kindly sent us another of his creations – a wind chime made from rings taken from old wine bottles which are then heated in a kiln. Our mother made some of these when we were growing up and they make the loveliest, delicate “chime” when they knock against one another in the wind. We’ve hung it on the pergola over the patio ready for another summer of alfresco dining. I’m pleased to say that it survived a very dark and stormy night almost immediately it was put in place. Thank you, Sandy!
The best present of all, in my humble opinion, was the Paint by Numbers masterpiece I gave my sweetheart. She did accuse me of wanting to keep her busy (and, thus, out of my hair) for the next seventeen years but I am quietly confident she will finish it by this time next year.
A prize of a year’s free subscription to the Moreton Pinkney Picayune for the first person to correctly identify the photo that she is “painting.”
New Year often features a summary of some predictions from the past. The Guardian had an article about a Prof Archibald Montgomery Low who made some imaginative predictions in 1925 about what life might be like in 100 years.
When the scientist and inventor Prof Archibald Montgomery Low predicted “a day in the life of a man of the future” one century ago, his prophecies were sometimes dismissed as “ruthlessly imaginative”.
They included, reported the London Daily News in 1925, “such horrors” as being woken by radio alarm clock; communications “by personal radio set”; breakfasting “with loudspeaker news and television glimpses of events”; shopping by moving stairways and moving pavements.
One hundred years after Low’s publication of his book The Future some of his forecasts were spot on. Others, including his prophecy that everyone would be wearing synthetic felt one-piece suits and hats, less so.
The BBC had a report on a similar theme, predictions from the programme Tomorrow’s World from 30 years ago, a programme we used to watch with interest back in the day. Their predictions, sadly, look considerably less accurate than those of Prof Low.
And finally, the Guardian had an article on some of the more “interesting” sporting triumphs of 2024 which included, amongst other marvellous “achievements”, a loose racehorse seemingly waiting for a train in New South Wales:
The article also contains this splendidly ironic comment from a Thames Water spokesperson following the effluent-laced Boat Race between Cambridge and Oxford:
Thames Water opened its sewage outlets during the Boat Race. Oxford’s Leonard Jenkins said the day “would have been nicer” with less human faeces; the firm denied it was to blame for spikes in in-race E Coli: “Taking action to improve the health of rivers is a key focus for us.”
said a Thames Water spokesperson without the smallest hint of sarcasm!
You really couldn’t make it up!
Meanwhile, keep breathing, keep happy, keep smiling, keep exercising, be good, be careful, and keep safe. And be gentle to wasps and bees – we need all the pollinators we can get.
Lots of love to you all,
Greg