The new year has started slowly here at Bigland Towers. After the excitement and fireworks that saw the end of 2025 we’ve taken the day off to potter around and enjoy the warm coziness of home before starting 2026 in earnest. January’s brought cold weather and threats of snow, so a day off seemed sensible.

New years eve was more productive. Despite the chill we ventured out by car to do some exploring. The railways annual Christmas shutdown has seen a lot of engineering work take place up and down the country. Some of that work will run well into January, but there was one local Trans-Pennine Route upgrade (TRU) project I wanted to have a look at. Mirfield station.

Over Christmas the rebuild of the island platform was completed and track through platform one was reinstated. Hording blocking it off were removed with passenger trains reintroduced from December 27th. There’s still a lot of work to complete as the new footbridge and lifts have yet to be commissioned, but the place looks very different to how it did just a few weeks ago.

Having frozen to death in the wind to get these pictures we headed back to Halifax and home, but not before stopping off to photograph moody skies providing a backdrop to Castle Hill near Huddersfield.

Back home, Dawn busied herself in the kitchen to experiment with making her own thin-crust pizza bases. I’m biased (obviously) but I think they were a great success and tasted delicious when topped with seafood or chorizo, vegan cheese and chilli. I suspect these will become a regular feature in the Bigland household this year!

Whilst we weren’t bothered about spending midnight in the pub, we did pop out for a sociable few drinks in our local, the Big 6, before returning home to see in the new year sat in front of the fire, watching the fabulous London fireworks display. That brought back a lot of memories as I was there on the Embankment on the opposite side of the river to the wheel for the millennium display in 1999. There’s been a lot of water down the Thames since then…

Now it’s 2026. A year I’m looking forward to with cautious optimism. The world’s still a very uncertain place but there are grounds for hope. Russia’s war in Ukraine is going badly for them, and there’s signs that one of their key allies (Iran) is beginning to fall apart due to civil unrest. Of course Trump is still a major disaster, but the narcissistic old fool and his MAGA morons are in trouble in the polls and likely to have bad mid-term elections this year. In the UK, the wheels are starting to come off Nigel Farage’s latest bandwagon (Reform). His Russia connections are coming back to haunt him and the councils Reform run show every sign of being a fiasco waiting to unfold. Plus, despite all the Reform and media frenzy and speculation over Keir Starmer, the idea that there’s going to be a general election before 2029 is for the birds. And if a week’s a long time in politics, 3.5 years is an age.

The Labour government have proved to be a disappointment due to a lack of bravery, squandering a huge majority that they could have used to make important changes without fear of opposition. But, they’re nowhere near as bad as the media love to make out. They’re doing good things but the media resolutely refuse to highlight anything positive and concentrate on a stream of negativity. I’m hopefully Labour can get their act together on messaging, stop being timid and cut through to highlight the positive changes they are making.

If only the media spent as much time looking at how Nigel Farage’s girlfriend managed to pay nearly a million quid in cash for ‘his’ house in Clacton as they did obsessing about Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves tax affairs we’d be far better informed as an electorate.

On a personal front, I’m looking to spend January concentrating on some projects that have taken a backseat over the past year or so, which includes finishing scanning a lot of old slides which have never seen the light of day for decades. Then there’s travelling. I may not be heading outside of the UK for the next month, but plans are certainly afoot for later in the year.

I’m also intending to up the ante on blogging. Things slipped a bit in 2025, but now I’m back with a lot to say – and things to do…

In the meantime, let me with all my like-minded readers the very best for 2026. I hope you all have a fabulous year.

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Cheers!

Paul