Ngā mihi o te tau hau (Happy New Year)

volunteering with homelessness charity Crisis in London on New Year's Day, wearing my Michael Connelly charity t-shirt, which was also to raise funds for a LA homelessness charity

Ngā mihi o te tau hau (Happy New Year), everyone! 

I hope as we turn the calendar from 2024 to 2025 that you have been having a good festive season and are looking forward to a new year full of joys, adventure, and love... and lots of good and great books!

Kia ora 2025. Man, time flies. I remember being a wee kid, working out how old we'd be in the year 2000! Now we're a quarter century past that. Calendar changes are often cause for reflection, eh? Whether we consciously mean to, in terms of making some resolutions etc, or not. 

As I was walking to the tube in the pre-dawn London darkness yesterday, it struck me that I was spending the last day of 2024 doing pretty much the same thing I was doing on the first day of 2024, volunteering with a great group of people at Crisis, a homelessness charity that operates throughout the UK. And today I kicked off my new year by doing the same, somewhat appropriately with a nod to my love of crime fiction by wearing one of my 'Harry Bosch' t-shirts, which has a great message on it. 

"Everybody Counts, or Nobody Counts," is Harry's credo throughout Connelly's fantastic series. 

Michael Connelly wearing one
of the special charity t-shirts

Not bad words to live by. My t-shirt got several positive comments from our guests (rough sleepers) at Crisis today. Perhaps fittingly, I'd actually bought it a few years back when Michael put them up for sale to raise funds for a homelessness charity in Los Angeles. It's a growing issue in many places. 

It's my sixth 'Christmas' volunteering with Crisis. If I couldn't be back 'home' in New Zealand for the holidays, I was very grateful to be ending my year and starting a new one by spending my time doing something to help others, with some great people - fellow volunteers and our guests, once more. 

You can read more about Crisis and the work they do, and how my own eyes were opened by my time volunteering there over the years, in a post I did to start the year, for the Murder is Everywhere website. 

Last night and early this morning before I went on shift I was thinking about all the different kinds of 'New Year's Eves/New Year's Days' I've had throughout my life. 

For more than 20 years, from when I was a new entrant at primary school, my New Years' were always in the Top of the South Island of New Zealand, whether camping by the beach in Kaiteriteri or hanging out with family and friends. Throughout school, university, being a young lawyer, and even my first years of travels, I'd always be home or return home to the Nelson-Tasman region for the holidays. Looking back, as Fred Dagg used to sing, "We don't know how lucky we are". It's a pretty great part of the world to get to call home. 

My first overseas New Year's Eve and New Year's Day was, funnily enough, still a summery one, in Colonia (Uruguay) with my girlfriend and a couple of law school pals, who were randomly passing through Buenos Aires at the same time as us, as 2007 ended and 2008 began. We took the ferry to another country for some fun beachside celebrations and shenanigans. 

Summery New Year's Eve celebrations in Uruguay

Since then it's been a real mix of home and away, from an Egyptian feast with snakes and table dancing in Luxor on New Year's Eve, to US summer camp reunions when I'm just off the plane from a Christmas in Lapland, to 1 January sunrise walks with my daughter around New Zealand rivers and vineyards or quiet parks in COVID-era London or through Kauri forests in Northland.... 

On the first day of 2025, as I unwind from another Crisis shift, I'm grateful for it all. Even the bumps and bruises along the way, in among many joyful moments. 

To all my pals reading this, I hope that however 2024 went for you, that 2025 brings you plenty of joy, adventure, and love. Time flies, and life changes, but it can be full of lots of good things along the way. In the small moments as much as the bigger ones. Here's to a great year of crime and thriller reading, and many other good things for us all. 

Hugs and aroha - Craig S