Time to reflect as well as look to the future

THE first day, the first month, the first year of the 2020s. Time flies as the saying goes when you’re enjoying yourself. I always looked upon January 1, whatever the year, as a very important time to reflect upon where I’ve been and where I’m going.

Will the new year be a simple continuation of the present year or will new challenges be placed before us?

If you lived in the south of England then you will be fascinated to see what your particular neighbours have in mind.

In the UK, there is someone about to move into your area; someone with quite a different upbringing to yourself. What we will have in common? Not surprisingly, they are someone with different views to your own, a strange accent to express those views and challenging ideas worthy of exploration irrespective of where you were born.

New Year’s Day seems like an ideal time to review one’s keen priorities with a new prosperity. Unkept priorities will be the source of many long debates as we throw away the last remnants of stupid ideas that should have been thrown away years ago.

Having spent many years in the UK prior to coming to Australia, my attitude to New Year’s Day is very Pommy. My life there always suggested to me a Pommy’s attitude towards a New Year’s Day is a very powerful indication of what part of the UK he or she might have lived in.

I am a south of England boy who went to the northeast of England after graduating from the magnificent University of Bristol. I worked for a little more than two years in the northeast and had ample time to spot some differences between north and south Pommies with regard to New Year.

I would venture to suggest that most people, like me, from the southern English region rarely gave a second thought to New Year’s Day. This was in stark contrast to the attitude of my wife and her relatives.

They spent many years in the UK’s northeast. My impression is that she and those who lived around her were very conscious of the New Year season.

New Year’s Eve was the night for parties and getting stuck into the plonk. Whereas we in the south of the country didn’t really give the new year a second thought. It came as a great surprise to me how New Year’s Eve, for example, could be an excuse to drink and eat too much and generally rejoice at the arrival of the new year.

I met my wife at the end of 1960 and she invited me to share in her family’s celebrations. They were great but were still a surprise to a little southern bloke like myself.

I think after about 50 years living with my wife’s relatives and other north-easterners that they had it right and the southerners were far too dismissive of New Year’s Day.

It is right that we should acknowledge the occurrence of a new year and thank ourselves and others that we are alive, well and living in a damn good part of the world. We should recognise that the next year for many people around the world might be little more than a pious hope and a “hope for the best”.

How often did one hear people say that they hope that the next year, the new year, had better be better than the one just past and the beginning of a richer life, just by being a “new year”.

I like New Year’s and I try to be optimistic about how the world is changing. Celebrations like New Year’s Day can be optimistic pointers towards the best things.