Tis that time

How beautiful the turning of the year!
A moment artificial yet profound:
Point upon an arbitrary chart
Passing like a breath upon the heart,
Yearning with anticipation wound,
New hope new harbored in old-fashioned cheer.
Even when the boundary line is clear,
We recognize the oneness of the ground.
Years, like circles, do not end or start
Except we lay across their truth our art,
Adjusting dates as they go round and round
Revolving to a tune long sung and dear.

Happy New Year!

With a little help from my friends!

I finished work at 10pm yesterday and arrived home in a dancing mood! Luckily for me Captain Rory, an Irish friend, was also in a party mood so at midnight we taxied it up to one of Edinburgh's dodgier clubs thinking that if we start at the bottom there'd surely be a party. There wasn't much of one. So we moved onto (Dude you will be proud) a wee Mexican restaurant called Garabaldis. After walking in I immediately spotted a friend called Lynda who had gone to the same school as me in Bulawayol but we only met in Edinburgh. Her husband was home from contracting in Kyzakstan so him, a friend and her were having a bit of a party (thanks to the friend for the pole-dancing attempts, they kept us highly amused.) Not long after that David's twin brother Andrew, who I seem often bump into when I go out partying, walked in to the place with the standard big smile. Captain Rory bought all my drinks in the hope that he's the rich bank-worker now and can afford it whereas in a few years when he's backpacking the world I'll be the rich photographer and take him out on the town - ye of so much faith thank you!

Getting to sleep at 3am and knowing I had to be awake at 5.30am for work I texted as many friends as I could who'd be in different times zones so they could mis-call me to wake me up. And the winning call seemed to be from a +82 number - South Korea!?!?! (Desi - I think it was you but where in the world are you ... surely not...?) Thanks for that, a wonderful start to what's going to be a sleepy day!!!!

Christmas treats for the soul

So Christmas is just another day. I'm guessing, thanks to China, more people in the world do not celebrate it than do.

My Christmas got off to a dodgy start with me having to work for 24hrs but luckily my colleagues pooled together and I did not have to wake up at the office. I couldn't go to England to spend it with my folks so I bought a good substitute, cheap red wine. My Christmas eve turned into quite a party due to dancing and singing along, with a Glaswegian, to John Belushi by the Broken Family Band.

This morning I went to work and had to deal with situations such as service-users in tears because they were missing their family who never contacted them anyway. Another woman tried to phone her sister only to be told she'd moved out the flat and left no details, but after handing the phone over to me the new owner told me why ... their father had been arrested for murder and the sister's partner was in prison for attempted rape. The usual stuff. My shift ended with one of the new polish colleagues getting a pretty good slap across the face and a big enough dose of shock to keep her crying for an hour. All the pretty stuff that everyone thinks of on Christmas.

After work I took up a kind invitation from a friend to join him and his family, luckily I arrived just in time for dinner and it was a superb evening with all the relatives. From there we took his grandparents to their home and his granny proudly showed me their open fire which they wouldd spend the rest of the Christmas night infront of. From there we went onto visit friends of my friend, a very close family. The father asked me what I did and I told him social work as a career and photography as a hobby .. and hoping to combine it into photojournalism at some point. He called me away to look at some autobiographies he had, then let me read a write up about a soldier who'd given up his limbs to courageously protect a town that wasn't even in his home country, and after that he told me about one of his children who'd died tragically a few years ago. He spoke about where he tried to get his inspiration from to keep believing that he should keep going. I listened. Then he asked where I, being rather young, got my inspiration for life from.
He probably won't realise it but his kind words and the time he took to talk to me is what will make me return to work tomorrow and keep going. Thanks Joe.

Ho, ho, ho

Merry Christmas to everyone! Have a good one xxx