New Year's Day

Every year, I try to take a photograph on New Year's Day, usually in the afternoon. As it's effectively dark by 4:00 p.m. there's not much of a window of opportunity, and as the weather usually isn't up to much, the photos aren't usually terribly interesting. It's more of a ritual than anything -- it's an excuse for a wintry afternoon walk, and I certainly can't imagine any kind of book or project emerging from them.

Last year I was lucky: from the commanding heights of the hillfort at Old Winchester Hill we had a spectacular view of a filthy orange sunset over the Solent, with that weird fading intensity in the colours you sometimes get at dusk in winter.



This year, we made it nowhere more adventurous than the garden centre at Hillier's Arboretum, and the light was truly awful, so I just mooched up and down the lane, peering through hedges.



Same countryside, but much more of a sense of "down there" than "up here." Despite the warmth of my new idiotic hat, I was glad to get home and have a cup of tea and a mince pie.