Randoms by Rach

New Year's Traditions

Day Seven ~ Develop a new New Year's Eve tradition. It can be serious or humorous; possible or impossible. Here's a list of 14 weird ones if you need some inspiration.

My family has a beaten-up, old bugle. I've no idea where it came from. It never occurred to me to ask (I really wish I had). Every New Year's Eve, for as long as I can remember, my Dad would run outside with said bugle and blow it for a full minute. Every year. He could neither play the bugle, nor did the bugle have any tune in it. After a few alcoholic drinks, this always seemed hilarious.

When Dad died in 2007, the baton (or, bugle) was passed to me. It became my job to tunelessly blow the bugle outside our house. Which I did. It's harder than you would imagine. If the recorder is the only wind instrument you've ever played, getting a note out of a tuneless bugle is very difficult. The few years in between Dad's and Mum's deaths, we had neighbours around for drinks and I would spend the evening practising my bugling skills. To no avail. But I carried on with Dad's tradition, nevertheless.

In 2012, after Mum died, David and I were supposed to be moving to the U.S. (A whole other story there, for a whole other blog.) We shipped our belongings, including the bugle. Well. David got ill, the move was postponed, and we're still in the UK. But our things are in my stepdaughter's house. Including the bugle. So now, until I am reunited with it, I run outside, holding my hands in bugle playing position, and make my most bugley of sounds. David refuses to go with me. Apparently, it's embarrassing. But this is my new tradition for celebrating the new year.

I should also add that I actually went to bed before midnight 2016, as I was ill and, well, I'm getting older.