By the way, the Latin translates as:

I am as new as Christ child born of a virgin pure, Mortal, may your new year be just as happy and sure.

I don’t claim the former, but wish you the latter!

I haven’t seen the time ball drop on the Greenwich Observatory, which happens every day at 1pm. Karen has, and she described the experience as “a bit of an anti-climax”, David’s words being “Is that it?” It seems that the tradition lives on however, as a large illuminated ball is used in Times Square, gracefully descending a flagpole to count in the new year.

The ball has been upgraded and made even more hi-tech for 2008, the BBC angling the story as going green. (For hooting heck’s sake, ten toasters for an evening isn’t going to save the planet guys!)

It is a rather cool piece of kit, made by Philips and using LED lighting. (No nasty mercury pollutants there then.)

There is an interesting history of the Times Square Ball online and here is a YouTube of the launch back in October.

If you are a really sad billy-no-mates and find yourself surfing here tonight at round about 11:58, watch this YouTube for last year’s celebrations.

This is a pretty cool event and I contrast it with one New Year in Coventry when the revellers surrounded the Lady Godiva Statue in Broadgate waiting for the chimes on the peeping tom clock. Unfortunately, the Council had fitted a device to suppress the clock after 11pm and before 7am in deference to guests at the nearby Hotel Leofric.

(I wasn’t there- I had a real party to go to, I read about it in the Coventry Evening Telegraph afterwards.)

Here is the aforementioned clock in action, don’t hold your breath…

Inspired by the Splunds totally unexpected (and fascinating) posting The Den of the Splundfather I present The Sink of the ShadesWife.

(Although she does point out that it is my sink really as I do most of the dishes and clean it as part of my chores. This is the follow-up activity to yesterday’s Christmas Adventure.)

We have been itching to get out of the house for a couple of days (to do stuff other than shopping) but the weather has been cold and drizzly. Today, we were rewarded by clear skies and the temperature into near double figures (i.e. 9º Centigrade). We had noticed something in Wetherby called the Christmas adventure in last weeks sunday paper so we decided to give it a try- along with hundreds and hundreds of others!

We started off skating, or at least BloggerWife and Shadelet did. (I sprain my ankles far too easily.) A reasonable sized outside rink made out of some PTFE type material gave David the chance to burn off some energy. It started to get dark whilst this was going on and the arena was floodlit with discharge lamps in a very fetching shade of purple.

We next moved on to the Skiing. This was Nordic style, a cross-country trail on green plastic matting round the enchanted wood, claiming to be the largest artificial trail in Europe. Shuffling along on skis would be a more accurate description for those of us not gifted in the alpine skills, but I was surprised to be the only one of us who didn’t fall off. Grandma chose the pedestrian option along a parallel path which followed the same course. In the wood, various scenes from fairy tales were recreated with figures, lighting and atmospheric settings. It was reminiscent of the Scarborough Peasholm Park illuminations of my childhood and nicely done. If you looked closely though, you often found these large cable tangles behind the trees with the ubiquitous waterproof connectors.

After some liquid (& pastry) refreshment at the Cafe, we then went into our final experience of the evening- the snowflake maze. It was a bit squelchy but very cleverly done. There are twelve gates in the maze representing the twelve days of Christmas and they can open and close the gates in different combinations to make it harder to solve. I didn’t get to all of the gates but snapped quite a few. The site grows both Fir and Yew tress, which is what the maze is based on. It went Christmassy for the first time in 2006 (with an extensive Christmas shop selling lights and all sorts of gifts) and was such a success that it has been expanded dramatically for this year, certainly being mobbed on our visit. Be aware though- Santa isn’t there after Christmas Eve, having gone for his long holidays.

We suspect we might ache in the morning…

Lots of bloggers (& journalist hacks) choose this time to look back on the year. Instead, I’m going to look back on new years eve parties.

As a child, hogmanay seemed very exotic. We saw adults in a carefree tipsy state and if we were very lucky, we were given the opportunity to be the first footer with a piece of coal (and a big yawn, trying to stay awake).

Teenage parties were a hoot or a hurl, depending on how well we paced ourselves. I spent two New Years in the City Hall, one partially in the company of a Circus troupe. (They partied in the ring onstage, we had an alternative do in the projection box)

College years were a bit of a letdown, as our friends tended to go back home, as did myself. Having said that, I remember a particularly fun year just in the company of my fried Wally and his French girlfriend Wendy who chauffered us in her aging 2CV, even making bacon sandwiches in the early hours.

My party before going to Saudi was an odd one- I was the only guest at the Bear Hotel in Maidenhead and got to dance with the Manageress.

I look back on my twenties with affection, particularly in Maidenhead when we used to party with a vengeance, particularly the Wok & Bra Plussers.

Thirties parties were nondescript and sometimes contrived, although there were one or two noticable exceptions.

Forties parties were practically non-existent, particularly when or regular parental bedtime was 9pm!

David expressed a wish to stay up two years ago, but 2005 was such a drag that we went to the pictures last year just to fill the evening. We weren’t the only one…

We don’t really have any plans for this year either. At heart it is a contrived excuse to celebrate unless you are in the company of good friends and then you don’t need an excuse. We know people who do have parties but they live far away and we’d rather they come to my bash in April!