It’s the beginning of the last year of the first quarter of the twenty-first century AD. In the Big World things seem to be getting more… crazy. It’s hard to know what to believe these days with so much information, and disinformation, washing over us. Global peace, collaboration, and willingness to deal with real existential issues that will affect us all in the longterm are left for hopeless romantic idealists and seem to be of little interest to the masses.

As I write this, a few weeks into the new year, Donald Trump has been sworn in as the 47th president of the United States of America. My guess is that things will not be getting less crazy from here on.

Anyway, my blog is about the little world, a celebration in photographs of life lived locally in a, still, peaceful part of the world. My pictures may seem banal but I enjoy observing, and documenting my part of the universe as I move through it in both space and time. It includes some travels but then also as seen from a local perspective. I often take photographs of the same places and the same things at different times to document how everything changes yet everything stays the same.

In this post are photos of the days leading up to, and immediately after, New Year’s Eve.

Cooper, Anna and I drove out to the summer house after the Christmas celebrations were over. 2024 ended on a bleak note weather-wise (as you could also see in the previous post), and it remained so right up until New Year’s Eve when suddenly the temperature dropped and the snow began to fall. It disappeared again on New Year’s Day but returned, together with some sunlight, a day later.

The wonderful thing about our spot on Orust is that nothing much happens. We sleep late, go for long walks, eat good food and drink good wine, watch a movie, and go to bed, and repeat.

New Year’s Eve was an exception. Family and guests came for dinner, games, and Champagne to toast the new year. It’s a tight fit in a small summer cottage in the middle of winter but all the more warm and cozy. We were also here to escape the fireworks and crackers that scare the crap out of Cooper. He is paralyzed with fear and creeps up in a corner shaking.

It’s become a New Year’s Eve tradition to walk down to the water and drink Champagne with our friends Hilde and Daniel. A small fire didn’t warm us at all, and by the time we were walking back to the house again a light snow had begun to fall.

There isn’t much to say about the following days. The snow stayed on the ground, the sun shone, and long walks were taken. Other than that, nothing much happened…