Outdoor Discoveries

Hanging new calendars

The first day of most years for me involves the changing of calendars and there have been times when that happened later because I was away from home at the time. For one thing, spending the Christmas and New Year period with family in Ireland meant that it was as my late parents’ house where I went changing calendars at the start of a new year so doing the same in my own one was something that had to wait. In 2019, I was in Tenerife for New Year’s Day so there was a delay then too. In 2016, 2017 and 2018 there was no such thing and 2020 has followed that trend.

The calendars that I like to hang on my walls are of the scenic variety. If at all possible, ones with bright skies are preferable, especially during the darker months of the year. Scotland has featured a lot with ones from Colin Prior, Scottish Field and the Scotsman all having been former mainstays. Expanding travel horizons has changed that with scenes from Norway, Sweden and Iceland adorning my walls this year together with two from Wales. Last year, there were two from Ireland in  place of the latter but the other mix was the same.

For a long time, I liked Colin Prior calendars until they seemed no longer as fresh a concept as they once were. Photography has changed a lot in the last two decades so the original appeal of panoramic format photos of similar localities in Scotland no longer has the hold it once did. Instead, I now order panoramic calendars featuring Scandinavian scenes from a German publisher and I have been known to get Alpine ones too.

Otherwise, Swiss, Austrian and Spanish items have been acquired according to where I went during a given year and there are times when I buy too many calendars so I need to keep a watchful eye on that. Even with sending some as gifts, there can be a surplus without due care so I do some accounting as I go and 2020 was good for that. Some magazines come with calendars but there have been less of those this year.

The current times mean that we need every form of brightness that we can get so the scenes that I have arranged on my walls have more of a use than they usually do. Good memories can be recalled until opportunities to add more become more realisable. Unlikely as it appears for now, 2021 may help with that yet so our ongoing patience and perseverance could see their eventual reward in time.