Me on Monday - the New Year edition

 Here we are at the very beginning of the new year - I hope it finds you happy and healthy. We started off the year with a healthy long dog walk

Hard to believe that after all the build up, the festivities are over and I even saw Valentine cards for sale in our local shop on Friday - always onto the next thing!  We had a lovely family time at Christmas and fortunately everyone was well in time for the big day.  Our grandchildren are still believers and Leo said to me that they had recently had a video doorbell fitted and he wondered if it would pick up Father Christmas coming with their presents.  Which was when I remembered that we have an old FC outfit up in our loft from when my dad used to dress up for our children.  So Paul was despatched to the nether regions of the loft where I don't dare to venture and we hatched our plan.  

We spent the evening at theirs, secretly sneaked their presents in when they were busy playing a game and said goodbye at about 8.30pm.  Rachel hurried them upstairs to get ready for bed and we drove around the corner until we were out of sight of their house.  Paul got out the car and put the costume on, then walked back to their house to walk up to the front door, check his list, then walk round the house seemingly to deliver presents.  All was going well until a neighbour got out of his car, saw Paul walking round the corner in full FC gear and followed him with his phone in his hand.  At which point I realised how dodgy we must have looked, a perfect disguise for someone to sneak around houses in the dark!  So I quickly got out the car, ran up to him and explained it was to prove to our grandchildren there is a Santa, please don't call the police!  He laughed and said he just wanted a photo of Santa delivering presents in his road to show to his grandchildren the next day!

Our New Year's Eve was spent quietly at home (Coco is extremely nervous once the fireworks start and we didn't dare risk leaving her on her own) but we had an early get together with two other couples on the eve of NYE so I guess that counts as early celebrations!

One of my Christmas presents was a book of poems by the poet Brian Bilston, one for each day of the year with a fact about that day so I thought I might add a snippet of verse from those in my Monday posts.  The January 1st one is called Resolutions, and considers how a poet may vow to not write an acrostic for a whole ... 

"Year.  A resolution, I think,

Easily done.  Eminently achievable,

A piece of cake.  Oh,

Rats"

Happy New Year!