2020 hindsight

 

Oh, people are longing to be shot of 2020. 

"2021 has got to be an improvement," they say. 

I say, "Shhhhhhhh!"

Actually, things could be so much worse.

A couple of years back, there was an article at the end of what was being described as "the worst year ever" -  I think it was 2018; what happened then, anyway?  I can't remember.  Anyway, the article listed about half a dozen years that were infinitely worse.

This article isn't the one I saw (the other one had horrific illustrations), but apparently 536 AD wins, hands down.  As I recall, the year the Black Death reached its peak (about 1351), and 1942, when the Nazi killing machine was really hitting its stride and the war was looking bleak for the Allies, were also in the list. Not to mention 1918 and 1919, when something like 50 million people died from influenza.

Our best hope?  That, as bad as 2020 was (ie. not that bad in the grand scale of things), 2021 will be better.  My New Year's wish remains much the same as always, but rather more fervent this evening: the best possible outcome for as many as possible.  Also, that I do no harm -- maybe even some good.

Goodbye, you strange, unloved year.  Sleep with your annual siblings.  Live only in our memories, so that we learn from you.

Calculating

...and December flits by like an Anna's hummingbird: here for the blink of an eye, then vanished out of sight, leaving nothing but a sound rather like a clicking abacus.

This is the first Christmas in some years where I have felt Christmassy for a sustained period. It's probably because we're Christmassing our new dwelling, marking it with the holidays, much as a cat rubbing around my ankles.

Elder daughter has returned to be with us for twenty days. It's the eighteenth day. Already.

It's also the seventh day of Christmas, as we tremble with trepidation on the threshold of one far too interesting year into the, as yet, blank face of 2020.

I wish you and yours all the possible joy of it, and that much joy may be possible, all evidence to the contrary. Perhaps it's better if we pass through the evidence, and create some better evidence. Whaddaya say? Who's with me? (What's that clicking noise?)

Parting shot

And so 2018 ebbs away. I've got family to be with (and laundry to do -- because I'm that exciting -- and so I'll cheat, as usual.

I'd just like to point out that elder daughter, at age 26, didn't recognize any of these hit tunes, but I suspect it's the holiday lyrics that make them bearable.

See you next year.

All Christmases are last Christmases

It's the seventh Day of Christmas, and I still haven't seen this year's Doctor Who Christmas special.

Part of the reason for this is that while the Resident Fan Boy was in the living room, sleeping during the transmission (he says he won't and always does), I was upstairs watching the production of Richard III that makes up The Hollow Crown, a rollicking holiday fun-fest of drownings, smotherings, decapitations, and general treachery, warfare and murder. Take that, Prince of Peace.

However, some hours earlier, after the family had opened their presents Christmas afternoon, I watched the 2014 and 2015 DW Christmas specials. I think I was the one who dropped off to sleep during the original broadcasts in past years, so they were practically new viewing for me, and they both, at some point, have the same message: every Christmas is a last Christmas. We gather together, as Clara said to the Doctor, never knowing whether this will be the last time; that's why we reach out to family and friends as the days draw shorter and darker.

I pondered on this, thinking about Demeter watching us in Hades via Skype as we opened our presents after lunch, as is our custom, the Resident Fan Boy being the son of an Anglican minister who couldn't join the family by the tree until the four Christmas Day services had taken place. Demeter is still with us; the RFB's father is long gone, his last Christmas being nearly twenty years ago.

I think I was still watching Doctor Who when elder daughter appeared and told me that George Michael had just died. George Michael had a big hit with a song called "Last Christmas"; it's one of my least favourite songs ever, but there is no question that he was a huge talent. This was demonstrated to me beyond a shadow of a doubt on an Easter weekend nearly twenty-five years ago, when I, nearly nine months pregnant, willed elder daughter to stay put until after my birthday, which was the following Wednesday. I lay quietly in our bedroom watching the Freddy Mercury Tribute Concert (Mercury had had his last Christmas a few months before), and George Michael nearly blew Wembley Stadium away with this song.


May the coming year, as uncertain as it may appear, be filled with wonderful firsts, and, if there must be lasts, may they be things with which you are glad to part.

Duck! Here comes another year!

So,the back half of my molar dropped out a couple of hours ago. I phoned the dentist who is closed until January 4th. I phoned the Dental Emergency Centre and the receptionist told me no immediate action need be taken unless I'm in pain.

So I'm not in pain. Yet. But half my tooth is missing. And I keep thinking the right side of my face is getting numb. And this tooth was, from the look of it, seventy percent filling, so the mercury is probably leeching into my already pitiful brain.

Brilliant! I now have an excuse for every imbecility I commit in 2010!

Wishing you all a butt-covered New Year,
Persephone

The eighth day of Christmas

I rather gave up on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day as holiday material years ago. My idea of a party never grew much beyond cake and ice cream and games, and I'm an unaccomplished drinker. Alcohol doesn't loosen me up; it just makes me sleepier and stupider than usual (when it doesn't make me positively ill).

Yesterday evening found us parked in front of the television eating potato chips and tortilla chips and watching, amongst other things, the very last Royal Canadian Air Farce New Year's Special The Final Flight. The Royal Canadian Air Farce, which was on CBC radio in the seventies and eighties and has been on CBC television since the early nineties, isn't what you'd call biting political satire, and has never been as hip as say, The Kids in the Hall or Codco, but in between the lamer gags there's always been a gem or two. CBC television, in its questionable wisdom, has decided to cancel the show despite healthy ratings, presumably because of the desire to attract a more desirable demographic. (I hate to break it to you, CBC, but that demographic is hunched over its computer, playing games and downloading stuff to watch illegally.) All the same, I noticed that elder daughter, all of sixteen, guffawed several times during this final Air Farce, which featured, among other things, longtime news anchor Peter Mansbridge pretending to be a Newfie, and the infamous Chicken Cannon firing for the last time at five chosen targets, including the CBC logo. Prophetic? Maybe...