One hundred years of one house in Chorlton part 39 December 31

The continuing story of the house Joe and Mary Ann Scott lived in for over 50 years and the families that have lived here since.*

Now I have no idea how Joe and Mary Ann celebrated New Year.  

Their preparations for welcoming in the new and seeing out the old year will have accounted for over half of our house’s history, which leaves me with just 37 years to account for.

And that 37 years has been a varied bag of things.  Most recently it has been a matter of staying up long enough to see it in.

When the children were younger we would go for a meal, rent a few videos and toast the hour with champagne, bought by Mike.

These were also the years of the pre New Year’s do when the idea was to break the week between December 25^th and 31^st and fill the house with people. 

The events always seemed to work and on one occasion left me at the end of the night holding a baby while the parents got their other children together and left.  But after fifteen minutes they returned to collect the one they had left.

And now all the lads are grown up and are drawn to seeing in the end of the old year in different places which is as it should be.

And things have changed in different ways.  Once and it was not that long ago the beginning of a new year would be welcomed by the noise from the docks as the ships sounded their hooters and old Jimmy would knock the door just after the stroke of midnight.

There are also those who remember the bell in the lych-gate on the green which was rung to signal the passing of another year.

So looking back can be fraught with ghosts of things past which can be a melancholy affair and not worth pursuing.

So we shall see.

Picture; from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*The story of a house, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20story%20of%20a%20house