NEW YEAR, NEW PHOTO

I hope you enjoyed the end of 2010? We had a few days in Sussex with walks, family, and an incident with a ladleful of flaming brandy. A night in London with friends, drinks, pulled pork, and pizza. A New Year's Eve with chicken tagine, my first experiments with filo pastry, and the realisation that we could see two of Edinburgh's seven sets of fireworks from our sitting room windows.

Last week I talked about waking up on the 1st ready to get out for a walk to welcome in 2011. Instead I read, ate crumpets, watched Back to the Future, and finally got dressed sometime in the afternoon. But we did manage a walk. We walked down a very closed Leith Walk, we talked about how many 1st of Januaries we had spent together and spotted cafes and restaurants we need to eat in this year. Then we headed home to watch cookery programmes and to eat; scotch pies for him, a sausage sandwich for me. And once I had eaten I opened up my new diary and filled in birthdays and wrote that small list of resolutions that I can never resist making. This time though they are smaller goals, things that make me happy, things I have been meaning to learn. I want to sign up for a crochet class, paint my nails more, bake bread, travel. I want 2011 to be a positive year, a year where we do things we love, see friends, visit some new and some favourite places.

And here, for now, one small change. I had been using the old photo for far too long so new year, new photo.