It’s Noche Vieja – New Year’s Eve – and I am in Spain; so, as the Spanish would have it:
“Feliz salida y entrada”
And if you feel you are making your exit from 2013 “pursued by a bear”, I hope you discover that it’s really nothing more threatening than a teddy-bear.
In the UK, when Christmas falls at a weekend, there are compensatory holidays; this means that if you invite friends over for Boxing Day, you need to be absolutely sure they all turn up on the same day.
This year, with the 25th falling neatly on a Wednesday, there was no potential confusion: Boxing Day was the day after Christmas, it was Thursday, December 26th, it was St Stephen’s Day, and no one was likely to dispute that.
Except Amazon, it seems, whose constant messages flood my inbox: 
The neighbour’s oaks are always among the last of the local trees to lose their leaves, but the terrific winds of a few nights ago left them practically bare. Yesterday was the shortest day, so now it’s downhill to summer. 
And you? Are you planning to turn over a new leaf? Do you have a New Year’s resolution already prepared? Why aren’t you going ahead with it right now?
(And by “you”, I mean “me”, of course.)
(The real natural signs, that is, not forced daffodils that have been in the shops since before Christmas, nor the bargain strawberries imported from Spain, however fresh and sweet they are.)
Now the local daffs are promising and will soon be brightening all the gardens, motorway verges and railway embankments. (I imagine a great golden wave that starts in the south west and works its way slowly up to the far north of Scotland.)
For the moment, though, there are snowdrops; more, perhaps, than I have ever seen in my life. I’m currently learning to use a new camera, so there will probably be more snowdrop photos than ever before, too.
I guess the locals didn’t build enough snowmen.
(See the BBC story Can building snowmen really help to prevent flooding?)
don't confuse the narrator 