Happy New Year and may it bring you all that you wish.

To be totally honest, it has always seemed to me that one year slips seamlessly into the next, we mark the advent of a New Year in a definitive manner but in the olden days I suspect it would have  been different.

It was a beautiful day yesterday blue skies above and no wind so we went for a walk, Lucy and I.  Just outside the pub, a bike screeched to a halt besides me, it was David back from a long ride to Harome village.  The name Harome means rock/stones, and translates from old English meaning a heap of stones.

Try saying it, it is a bit like clearing your throat, harum-scarum always jogs through my mind when I say it.  Small village on the edge of the moors with a bespoke restaurant, though I have never actually been.  But looking at the Telegraph's article, 'truffled faggots' does not fill me with delight.

As we gossiped about the village he said that he had only found out the day before of the sad case of the man who had commited suicide. And in that in your face Yorkshire way of speaking asked if I had contemplated it.  Faced with such a question, how do you answer? If I was to say yes, they would put me on a watch alert, so I gave my reply, considered yes, but what a terrible legacy to leave one's family so no the world is a beautiful place.

There have been two suicides in the villages in the last few months, the young lad filled me with despair at such a loss, but the widower gave up on life without his partner and I understand that.

Today I go for mince pies and mulled wine to the other end of the village this afternoon, it is almost as if we are split in half, there was that falling out over the wind turbine.  How whenever there is an event in the village, everyone always sits with their friends and do not intermingle, perhaps we should have a choir.

One resolution as the weather gets better I shall visit the churches and village round here.  The rivers rise on the moors and then make their way down to the Vale of Pickering,  Harome is part of the parish of Helmsley, that pretty Yorkshire town with its castle and square.

Sometimes you just want to chase rivers, as this below found on British History Online. The naming of rivers in this part of the world seems a strange mixture.  I have crossed the Rye many times, but the Esk seems to have its roots in O/E water, and the Riccal... It is a tributary of the River Rye, which in turn is a tributary of the River Derwent. The name originates in the fourteenth century as Ricolvegraines means Rye Calf, where Calf is a small island near a larger one.

Ouse is quite probably related to the PIE *wed- or *ud-, meaning water as an inanimate substance (whence whiskey, the Greek ύδωρ (hydro-), the English water, the German Wasser (water), the Russian вода (water), ведро (bucket), выдра (otter), the Latin onda (wave), the German Undine, etc.). Not sure about the others. –

Chasing etymology; which is always a delight in the naming of rivers, woods, villages for it captures our relationship to the land and the many invasions Britain has suffered.  I am wittering as usual..................

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Helmsley parish stretches from Ryedale to the southern slopes of the Cleveland Hills, where rise the Rye and its northern tributaries, each with its dale. On the northern slopes of this watershed are similar dales worn by the southern tributaries of the River Esk. The highest point of this district of solitary mountainous moorland is Burton Head, which rises from Bilsdale East Moor, 1,489 ft. above ordnance datum. The Rye rises on Snilesworth Moor in Cleveland 700 ft. above ordnance datum, and as it enters this parish (the first in 'Ryedale') receives the Seph from Bilsdale and the Riccal through Riccal Dale. The Rye then descends between thickly wooded, steep banks and flows by the ruins of the Cistercian abbey to which it gave its name—Rievaulx—and the quaint compact village consisting of a few stone and tile cottages scattered along a by-road running between the main roads to Helmsley from Hawnby and Thirsk. The river continues between thickly wooded hills rising sharply on either hand. It turns Sproxton Mill and then winds on to Helmsley Bridge.