Another pointless thread

All the best for the new year then Gary

I shall be keeping an eye on the weather and if it looks like a sunset I too will be photographing it from the coast (all of five minutes away).
I doubt I'll be up early enough to shoot the first dawn though.

Looking forward to seeing the direction you take with your photography. I'm really going to have to make an effort with mine and try and recapture the joy.

Let's hope 2020 is a good year for all.

When do you think the number of pages in this thread will match the year we are in::::

I think we will all have to post a whole lot of pointlessness to get anywhere near the year number. I'm aiming for five figure number of personal posts, but I don't know if I'll make it in 2020.

9 years, 9 months for 1337 pages. At this rate it'll be another 5 years!

Jonny Ball "Think of a Number"

Fireworks.

€77 million going up in smoke tonight, and, even though that is against the law, because it is foggy tonight in much of the country tomorrow night too.

If I were to win the lottery (what do you mean you have to buy a ticket?) I would go away every New Years Eve to somewhere without fireworks, or at least only organised ones.

..and when I started the thread i thought, well, it'll last maybe a year...

Happy new year everyone and may the pointlessnes continue.

Happy New Year, may it not be entirely pointless.

Oh it will be..

Ok last Christmassy thing before the decorations go back in the loft- why does my musical Santa include the Red Flag anthem in his repertoire? Was it a Christmas Carol tune at any time? Or is it subversive Chinese propaganda?

It's the tune for the old German carol "O Tannenbaum" ("O Christmas Tree"), so not subversive at all. No idea how it came to be used for the Red Flag. On the other hand, lots of what we think of as traditional tunes for Christmas carols actually started off as tunes for other songs.

Steve

Thanks Steve, I am relieved to hear it.

Leichenstein uses the same tune for it's national anthem as God Save the Queen (no not the Sex Pistols!).
The Red Flag was written by an Irishman and was supposed to be sung to another tune, the White Cockade. Billy Bragg recorded a version to that tune. It was probably the Americans who changed to Lauriger Horatius (O Tannenbaum).
Lots of carols have or had regional versions with different tunes. DH and I know some carols to different tunes, he being from Lancashire, me being from Middlesex.

Here endeth the first lesson...