Happy New Year and the last walk in 2014

Happy New Year! In Japan, New Year's Day is a big thing! It is the most important day in a year. Until the third, most places used to be closed expect for shrines where people visited to pray for their family's happiness for the year. There is special food prepared, so that nobody has to cook for three days.

As I'm away from my country, we don't do anything special here except for eating mochi, special rice cake, my mother sent me. We had champagne and Tempura in the evening. I finished the trilogy by Pullman. We watched Tin tin on TV. I rang my mother just before going to sleep due to the time difference. We had chatted for about an hour. Last two years, I haven't had time to tell her what exactly I was doing in detail because I was either too busy or too unwell. So it was a good catch up.

****************
On the eve, we had a long walk. It was cold but bright.

Pearl the whippet had been bored and when we saw her face like this, we got up and said 'Let's go for a walk!'

I'm bored....

This is an unusual little post box!

We walked down to Westgate garden.

There was renovation going on, but still Westgate looked nice!

Mike is taking photos and dogs were keen to chase pigeons! 

Let us chase pigeons and ducks! 

I noticed there is an apartment for pigeons! 

A bit damp, I imagine! 

 There are old trees there.

Rumour has it that this tree swallowed a bench.

Outside the garden, there is a nice Georgian house.

On the way back we bought double cream to do cream tea with Mike's scones, which spoiled our dinner! It's a pleasure to be grown-ups.