new stuff for a new year

london 7.49am still dark out there. sunrise is 8.04am. 7.6C rain forecast sunday 2016 new year 2017

a new year dawns, though i  slept through the countdown last night. well, if u have seen 65 new years, you cannot get very excited at another one.

seems to me it is an excuse to get new stuff. and we have actually done our bit, we got a new oven and a new hoover vacuum cleaner. i now can understand why the chinese buy new clothes for chinese new year. and use new minted money in the angpows. it stands to reason a new year means new stuff , get rid of the old stuff as it prepares the mindset for a new year with new stuff. yes, very logical really. gets everyone in the mood as it were. for those who have missed buying new stuff, there is another chance to join in when chinese new year comes on 28th jan. u might like to have a little giggle when u find out it is the year of the cock. haha. it is early this year. and makes another thing to anticipate for those feeling a bit let down by this one. 

and i read this morning about the new money that will come out in 28th march to replace the old round £ coin, the old £2 coin and the old 50p. the old round £1 coins will cease to be legal tender after 15oct.

they look very pretty. and it serves to show india how to do these things, instead of blanket making all those old coins invalid at a stroke at a given date. it must cost the uk quite a lot of money to get these new coins made. but hey, we get new coins for a new year. isn’t that great? and money too… so symbolic too. as all these coins spell wealth.

 added i just realised i am starting a new calendar too. i have been using this old one since 2008, and now after 8 yrs i am replacing that with this new one. it might last another 8yrs. who knows.

Digital StillCamera

Digital StillCamera

its a nice change of scenery as it were.

now that i have changed the calendar it hits home to me, that the years are going by. it will be another 4yrs and we shall be in the 2020s. imagine it, that date is the future , it seems impossibly far away in the future when we were growing up in the later half of the last century. when we were celebrating 2000 , this time seems so far away, and now it is 2017. i have lived here for 25yrs . it does not seem so long because everything around me is still the same as it was 25yrs ago. my immediate surroundings have remained untouched and unaltered so that it is difficult to think of it as 25yrs have gone by. we dont have children, so dont notice the passing of the years, but my neighbours two children did jolt me . recently i saw the eldest boy and really had a look at him, and am struck by how grown he has become.