Good morning 2025!

And so as the first page of a 2025 diary turns. I must return my twinkle garments to the wardrobe. No more sequins or clever play on words.

I have promised my green sequin skirt a possible summer outing but for now they are off for a well earned rest.

I talked to a friend about our shared love for twinkle garments for the festive season. She said the only problem is that all our festive photos look similar no matter what the year.

A point well made but of no consequence to my simplistic thinking.

Talking of observing time passing, I have had an awful shock. A 10 X magnification, illuminated mirror arrived with Santa. We have a 5x travel mirror, which I last looked at in September. Let’s just say the shock of 10X v 5X was not a gift. The wrinkles are im-pres-ive in the new mirror. 5X has been telling lies on my holidays or the last four months have been particularly harsh. My face looks like a geography contours project. Waterless fjords have appeared on my face. Smiling makes things worse. I may spend 2025 being enigmatic.

We were out early for New Years Day on the Barbican. Earlier than the street cleaners.The Barbican is the hub of nightlife and revelry in Plymouth and has been for centuries. New Years Eves are vivid, giddy, lustful and excessive. This morning saw plastic glasses and fast food wrappers skittering round in the wind, small brightly coloured pools of sick were easily avoided on the historic cobbles.

Maybe not to everyone’s taste but I captured the sensation of a Barbican Night Out on a painting a few years ago. It doesn’t reproduce well as it is a glossy resin piece,but to me it represents the hedonism and joy of a great night out. Uniquely, in Plymouth, it is done with high heels and cobbles. What could possibly go wrong.

Happy New Year 2025.