Happy New Year. But which one?

When you think about it, every day is somebody’s new year. 1st January 2018 is the big one. But what about 16th February 2018, marking the Chinese Year of the Dog and celebrated by 1.4 billion people? Or Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, on 10th September 2018. Followed two days later by Muharram, the Islamic New Year. My friend and co-writer Farida J Manekshah celebrates Nowruz, the Persian New Year, on 21st March 2018.  And they’re the only ones we know about. What new years do the peoples of the Amazon celebrate? Or the tribes of Papua New Guinea?

My new year resolution is to write more books. At least six. In 2016 I co-wrote Farida’s life-story under the title ‘Memory of Beheram’. It was my first book for 10 years. I republished it in 2017 under the title ‘Refusing to Bow’. This year I also wrote ‘Legal Profession: is it for you?’ based on my own 45 years as a lawyer and which I hope will inspire future generations of lawyers, wherever in the World they work. International publishers Taylor and Francis have accepted for publication a technical book I have written on housing regeneration. It is important to me because Britain is in the middle of a housing crisis. Amongst work-in-progress is a self-help book about a distressing medical condition which affects millions of men world-wide. Later on I may indulge myself by writing something about London’s East End, based on my own family history. Several months ago I came across a transcript of an 1884 Old Bailey trial in which my great-grandfather, John Edmund Vivian, was a prosecution witness. It concerned the theft of furs from Blundell Brothers’ warehouse in Cheapside.