So ... it's time for the traditional end of the year celebrations - a reflection on the year just passed and  hopes for the year yet to come... a familiar, almost timeless, tradition.

As we enter 2014 - the centenary of the outbreak of the Great War - I looked back to the New Years day 1914 edition of The Recorder, the local paper for Palmers Green, Southgate and Winchmore Hill. 

The Recorder Newspaper was published from 1907 to 1918 each copy has been digitised and included on a searchable disc available from the Southgate District Civic Trust I am grateful to David Cooper for permission to reproduce extracts on the Bowes and Bounds Connected website,

Viewed with hindsight that reflects back from the preceding century it makes a poignant read - yet it's the wish we make every year: "we can hope, and hope sincerely, that 1914 will bring to us all a greater measure of happiness than the last"

You can see the original printed New Years message below - with the text reprinted beneath

With all good wishes for 2014.

WE cannot, if we would, avoid a little sentiment about the dawn of a New Year, although there is nothing in that dawn which warrants us in believing that it will be any different to the one or the others which have preceded it. January 1st at any time is only man's marking of the flight of time, yet we cannot altogether avoid asking ourselves the questions: What does the New Year mean to me ?

Does it offer any hope of ambitions realised? Does it promise more happiness ? Shall I see it through ? and so on. But to none of these questions can we give an answer. No man can say what to-morrow will bring forth, yet we all hope for something better on the morrow. It is well that we should. " Hope  springs eternal in the human breast," and, according to one philosopher, it told a nattering tale. But we can hope, and hope sincerely, that 1914 will bring to us all a greater measure of happiness than the last, for happiness is the most precious of all human possessions.