A Grateful and Optimistic Start to 2024

About six weeks before Christmas during the lead up to the festivities, I was feeling quite poorly. On reflection, this bad start to the festive season made Christmas even more special for me this year. As some of you will know I am lucky enough to be just a tiny part of a large and special family having four children and twelve grandchildren.

Luckily for us Christmas is always quite busy and an occasion when even grandchildren who have been working on the other side of the world try to come home to Wyke for the family Christmas gatherings. As I had been feeling somewhat under par the cuddles and contact, catching up chat and everything that goes with the Christmas reunions was so very exciting and brought it home to me perhaps more than ever before how so very lucky we are to be born in such a beautiful, peaceful and happy place.

A time of feeling not quite as well as usual offers us a time of reflection; it’s useful for making us look hard at how lucky we are to have the wonderful family union, and to truly appreciate those people who are nearest and dearest to us. When we are feeling on top form and busy, it is easy to miss opportunities to say thank you to our closest family for being so kind and caring, especially when we need them most.

I know that the older one gets and the longer our relationships become how easy it is to forget to be nice enough to our closest and to thank them for their patience whenever we are feeling down.On to the weather…… I am almost afraid to mention it but as I am writing this we have a cold snap and the wet, wet, wet has abated for over a week now and we have even had some beautiful frosty mornings to cheer our hearts, and allow the worst of the flooded people, of which there have been many, a brief respite from the constant heavy rain and wind.

After the wettest autumn and early winter that I have ever known in my lifetime the flooded streets, homes and farmland is the worst in anyone’s living memory.

Let’s hope we have had the worst and this current relief is a sign of better weather to come, and all of us can look forward to watching the first little signs of springtime ‘24 peep over our ‘Windowsills’ as the song says.It will certainly be welcome for all of our local farming friends as we are all now so far behind with autumn and early winter preparations for the coming spring that we are getting a little desperate for something better.

John