Happy New Year!

I spent Christmas this year with Emily's family in Essex (for the first time) and New Year with my son and my family in Scotland. I had a great time with everyone.

The day before Hogmanay (New Year's Eve to non-Scots) there was a fall of about three inches of snow. My sister and I built a snowman which evolved into a rather fetching snow statue of a plump lady, a neolithic fertility goddess perhaps.

It's also rather reminiscent of the statue of the disabled artist Alison Lapper in Trafalgar Square.

Some local boys came and asked us if we were artists and my sister told them that someone from the local paper was coming up to take a picture. Unfortunately, when we went out to vist our eldest sister, the snow goddess got smashed to pieces by snowballs. Everything is impermanent...