Diaries, 1st January 2024, So a New Year

Isobel

Jan 1

It's grey outside, though it started bright. The sort of day to pull on your boots, wrap up in fleece, scarf and gloves, put some lunch and a bottle pf water in a backpack and head out. Well, it would be that sort of day if my foot were up to it, which it isn't, not yet. I don't think it'll be long though, at least for a shortish walk. Every day it feels more normal. Some swelling, but it's gradually diminishing. I've returned to my work. only a little, as it involves walking and standing, and if I've learned anything these past weeks it's that rest is the key to recuperation.

For the first time I felt excited when I saw the Christmas lights in the west end. Usually I see them go up, and each year now they are the same with the same corporate logos. This time I saw them first at night and I gazed at them from the windows of a bus taking me to see a show at a theatre. But it was the Christmas trees at various junctions I liked the most. Tall and covered in lights, they were magical. As I wrote before, it's supposed to be Prince Albert who introduced this country to the Christmas tree tradition, but my great aunt Madge maintained it was one of our German ancestors, so I like to make a little personal claim each time I see one twinkling in the windows of a neighbour's house. Less of a claim when they are put out onto the street ready for collection by the council in the New Year. They look sad, shabby and unloved by then, stripped of finery.