I hope all my readers have a lovely day and get everything they wish for.
I was thinking the other day that this is my 70th Christmas. That's 10 full weeks of Christmas Days. My dear wife is on her 71st, my sons are on their 39th and 37th and our grandchildren are on their 10th and 6th if I have got the maths correct. That's a lot of ho ho hoing between us - 233 years in fact.
Soon our thoughts will turn to the New Year and I suspect I will have made these comments before. I find New Year ridiculous. Everyone shouts "out with the old and in with the new" as if suddenly everything is going to change when we know that it won't and all the problems of 2021 will just roll over into 2022. And at the end of 2022 we will do the same thing for 2023.
I think for the individual it's a psychological mind-set that may change. This year I'm going to diet and lose x, this year I'm going to be more active, this year I'm going to speak to my friends more regularly etc etc.
I do think that if we have a determination to do these things it makes the world a better place. As they say "Every little helps."
I don't have New Year resolutions as such because I don't like breaking them and that only leads to feelings of guilt. I have aims. Aims that are achievable and I know I can fulfil and many of them are just continuations of what I have been doing the previous year.
My aims for 2022 will be to write 365 blogs (a continuation of this year), to produce 12 editions of my Hethersett Herald e-magazine (a continuation), to produce four editions of the Norfolk Family History Magazine Norfolk Ancestor (a continuation).
There are a couple of new aims. One will be to have my book on the Le Paradis Massacre published. I am aiming to have this finished by the end of February and already have a publisher interested. My other new aim is to produce 12 copies of the Hethersett Good News magazine which is a new venture for me and something I will write more about later.
Then there are the personal aims. Since lockdown I have walked over 2.000 miles and this is something I will continue to do. My aim in 2022 is to walk at least 1,000 miles and this is something I know is easily achievable because I have achieved it in the last two years.
I would like to lose half a stone in weight but I'm too partial to cakes and things I shouldn't be partial to. Do add some of your aims in the comments on this blog. That way I can bully you into keeping them in the year ahead.
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I do have a New Year's aim for all of you. For goodness sake check what's in your attic/loft or spare rooms. I don't have to check my loft as there's nothing up there. It's not a space that can really be used for storage.
I make this plea for two reasons. Firstly did you read the news that this afternoon there will be the showing of a lost Morecambe and Wise tape that Eric Morecambe's son found in his attic? This seems to be happening all the time. Lost tapes of television programmes seem to turn up every year. Why Eric's son hasn't come across this earlier is a mystery to me. You would have thought that when his dad died the family would have gone through everything knowing how famous he was. It's ridiculous that the BBC recorded over so many classic tapes that will be forever lost.
This year I had the delightful experience of meeting the Princess Royal thanks to my involvement as a trustee of the Le Paradis Massacre memorial appeal which was successful in getting a memorial in place in Norwich Cathedral Close to the 97 men who were massacred in Northern France on May 27th, 1940. We are really hoping to visit Le Paradis next year and will be desperately disappointed if the pandemic prevents us from doing so.
Princess Anne was very knowledgeable on the subject and knew that I am responsible for the massacre website which incidentally is at www.leparadismassacre.com if anyone wants to read it. She asked me where myself and John Head get the information from for the site.
I responded that we have been contacted by and been in contact with many families who had ancestors killed in the massacre or the fighting in the area. Many of these had found memorabilia in their lofts and attics. They came across stuff they didn't want and didn't know what to do with and then contacted us. Of course to us it was gold dust and enhanced our understanding of just what went on in that small French hamlet on that fateful day.
It immediately made me think about the thousands of documents in thousands of lofts covering dust and thousands of subjects that have never seen the light of day and need to find a home somewhere.
I have been writing a diary for almost 50 years and haven't missed a single day in that time. Some entries are just a couple of hundred words but others run to thousands and cover all the important things in my life from the age of about 20. My only regret is not starting a daily diary earlier.
I am getting to the point in my life where I'm wondering what should I do with them. I hate the thought of them going in a skip when I go. But there is a website that mentions an organisation which accepts individual diaries. I would hate to lose the content of my diaries, however, so am thinking along the lines of digitally scanning them in and then passing the physical books onto this organisation.
I just have to get my mind round the fact that I will no longer have the physical diaries. I know they are safe short of fire and flood but I don't trust modern technology. I would have to keep about five copies of them on USB sticks, hard drives, in the cloud and elsewhere.
Digitising and scanning them in will be a long and arduous task and of course they continue to grow. Does anyone else write a regular diary and have you thought about what you are going to do with it?
Anyway that's enough for Christmas Day 2021. I'm off to have some fun before we get locked down again. Merry Christmas to everyone and thank you so so much for reading my ramblings this year.