The old year is ending with a roar of mighty wind. I’ve mentioned before that our house stands foursquare at the end of our road and receives the full force of any on-shore gales – tonight it’s a tempest funnelling up the street, barrelling up towards us. It doesn’t seem angry, just forceful and unremitting. It’s not so much “rage! Blow! You cataracts and hurricanoes” , it’s more Biblical “a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting.” We have a draft excluder at the front door, to try and block the wind reaching us where we’re sitting; it’s like a cloth worm filled with something to try and block the chilly ingress. As a child at home, our draft excluder, probably made by mum, was filled with sand and very effectively blocked any drafts.
I found a poem by Emily Dickinson which starts ‘There came a wind like a bugle’, and I can imagine that, but there aren’t many bugles here, just great puffs of noise as the old year is blowing itself out. Will 2024 blow itself in? If it continues then maybe we will not be able to go out into the road outside the pub at midnight to sing ‘Auld Lang’s Syne’ this year, as we’ve done for so many years. We will raise our glasses in the Dolphin, whatever is happening outside.
In many ways this last year has been a great year, but for me a shadow was cast over the autumn, and to be honest, I shall be glad when we have moved on into January. January is my birthday month and I always feel optimist about. Tomorrow I will share a piece I wrote a while ago about Janus, one of the lines is the Roman god himself speaking: I look forwards, but I also look backwards, I look to the future, I see the past.
So New Year’s Eve, thinking about the past, but also looking very much to the future. My featured image is of an optimistic rainbow – because as I was driving home this morning, having been stupidly lost in Somerset, there was a wonderful brilliant rainbow there before me!
Happy New Year Everyone!!!
Lois Elsden 