Happy new Decade

"It doesn't seem like a decade since we were celebrating the turn of the century on Sun Corner."  Jo said on our way home from the new year party.  Our perception of time is never that good, our memories get mixed up.  I often struggle to remember what happened on what holiday when the children were young.  When we are together as a family the stories the children tell each other are often only the vaguest memories for me.  My stories are vague memories for them.  So to help us remember we keep diaries and blogs.

The New Year celebration took the same form as it had for the past 6 or so years.  It turned out to be remarkably similar to last year, although the attendance is now about 115, which is close to the usable limit for the church.  The quizzes resulted in ties this year too, but no one got 100 percent.  It is an enjoyable evening with a good food, and good entertainment.  My thanks to all those who give up their time to prepare the evening, they do a wonderful job.  There have been a few young people in the past who have consumed more alcohol than they can cope with, but that too was well managed this year.

The children and their girlfriends and boyfriend gathered together on the first day of the new decade for a 'roast dinner'.  As usual one or more fails to co-operate, which is part of the fun of it all.  This is something we do not usually do, but would be a good tradition, if it is possible to make it one.

Pictures are another way we keep our memories alive and fresh.  Many years ago we had a 'family portrait' photograph taken.  It is on the wall above the stairs.  Today we had another, which is Andrews present to us for our 25th Wedding Anniversary.  That seems quite a while ago, but at least it IS happening.  The photograph was taken by Chris Gurton, who is Liz's boyfriend.  We now have to wait to see how it turns out.  Here's the first one, possibly from 1998:

The picture is fuzzy because of the surface it is produced on, the glass cover, and the poor camera skills of the person who took it, but don't we look young.

We had a video on the church web-site that talked about the true bible story of Christmas, compared with the story that is told, and re-told in carols and nativity plays.  It's gone now so I can't link to it, but I found this from the London Institute of Contemporary Christianity which talks about what the 3 'kings' really were, and has a nice insight into something else remarkable that happened at the first Christmas (or slightly later).

Just like my family memories which fade and become distorted and need refreshing by looking at old pictures and writings, so does our memory that we pass on to future generations or the stories of the King of Kings.

A new year just begun ...

New Year's Day is always a little strange. Out very late the night before, up very late on the day. Its now 5pm ish, and already dark in Essex, but my day feels like its less than halfway through.
 

We had an excellent new years party in church last night. The pictures are from Liz, who came home and went straight on-line to publish (the joys of being young). I went straight to bed, and to sleep. At 4am Mike and his friend turned up, there had been some sort of  'domestic' at the party he was attending. Back to bed. Andy came in from work about 5am, but I slept through that. Shortly after getting up it was off to church for two hours to tidy up and set up for next Sunday. Then home for lunch (breakfast?), and another snooze. Now the day is almost over, and I've not done any of the things I had hoped to.
 

Tomorrow is back to work, the new year really will be started.