New Year’s Day

On New Year’s day many families have their traditions. What is yours? How do you spend New Year’s Day?

In my family, before I married, we would either go to visit relations who lived a distance from us, or they would come to us, and we would have a buffet.

After I married, my husband’s parent’s treated it as another party day. He had a big family, and we’d all go to each other’s houses, on the Saturday before, Christmas Day, Boxing Day, and New Year’s Eve and Day.

In the late seventies, there was about twenty four of us, so it was a busy time with lots of preparation and enjoyable times.

We’d fill the time with games and quizzes provided by that day’s host. It became more competitive when there were medals and cups to be won.

We had general knowledge games, picture quizzes, car badges and naming all the States in America. Another was called the alphabet game. Everyone had to name a famous person whose initials began with the same letter of the alphabet. Arthur Askey was popular as was Billy Bunter and Charlie Chaplin.

It never ceased to amaze me that we could go twice round and everyone came up with a different name. There was always the uncle who tried to cheat stating Zena Zoran was an actor when he was a child As long as another person could corroborate it, it got through.

One year I did the streets of Manchester where we all lived. They had to guess where the streets were located. Manchester had many back streets and there were lots of laughter and groans when the answers were revealed.

The winner, hands down, was my Dad, who was an ex-policeman and patrolled those very streets on his beat. He had many stories to tell along about each one that was named.

As we had our own children, and the elderly family member passed on, we would go for afternoon walks. One of the walks was a place called Holcombe Hill in Bury, Lancashire. Right at the top is a monument dedicated Robert Peel the founder of the police force. You can read more about Holcome here.

Once the walks or the family parties were over, it was always time to chill and relax.. How about one of my ‘Read in One Sitting’ books.

I have romance, science fiction, paranormal, fair tale, short stories, an and post apocalyptic novella, along with free anthologies. Here are just a few, and if you click on the button below, you will find the rest.