Happy New Year, whatever that’s supposed to mean. Happy tomorrow and all the other tomorrows after tomorrow, hoping that all the tomorrows will be happier than the last two years worth of yesterdays. Or something. Anyway, I hope the coming days, weeks and months all add up to a great year for you, unless you are a wrong ‘un, in which case, I don’t care what kind of New Year you have.
I’m doing what I always do on New Year’s Eve, which is next to nothing. I will enjoy a glass or two of something pleasant – an Avery’s voucher has magically turned into a top dollar New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, comparable if not better than the legendary Cloudy Bay, according to the wine expert at said wine shop. We will enjoy that one as the clock strike midnight, having avoided Jools Holland’s Musical Excrement, the Hootenanny, which this year features dreary cabaret performers Ed Sheeran, Gregory Porter, Lulu and Rag n’ Bone Man, all pretending it’s actually New Year’s Eve and not high summer when it was actually recorded. (It may have been recorded more recently than that but wild horses could not drag me to the TV to watch it.) Instead, we will talk to each other, play some decent music – ie. not Ed Sheeran – and wish Clive James was still alive so we could watch his genial review of the year.
Next year, we all want the end of Covid. I have a five point plan:
- Get everyone vaccinated
- Ensure the vulnerable are protected
- Those who refuse 1 are the ones who face restrictions and pay for private PCR tests, not those who DO THE RIGHT THING
- Er…
- That’s it
The point is surely that barring the arrival of a disastrous strain of Covid that kills everyone in its path, we cannot go back to lockdowns. In a country where the government does not give a toss about the mental health crisis that has engulfed our islands, it cannot again tell people they must stay at home with no help, no support, no nothing. Many of us have become physically and mentally unwell since Covid-19 arrived. 2022 simply has to be the year when we start to get better. Omicron, more mild than the previous Covid versions or not, cannot divert the path back to reality.
It would be helpful if we had a government vaguely competent with some kind of strategy for this year alone, never mind the future beyond 2022, but British beggars can’t be choosers. Until such time as the Conservative party choose to get rid of him, or he is voted out at a general election, we are stuck with Boris Johnson, a liar, a charlatan, a narcissist and all round wrong ‘un, as prime minister. When Johnson, the worst prime minister in our history, becomes part of history we will return to some kind of normal despite and not because of him. And anyway, it’s our fault for electing a journalist and after dinner speaker with a clown act as our prime minister. For the country, the joke was over long ago.
I want to go to the pub and meet with friends, I want to go to gigs, I want to go on holiday; basically I want my old life back. And unless someone here today, gone tomorrow politician makes me do otherwise, I am going to get it.
As Abba put it so succinctly, Happy New Year. Let’s hope we all meet up soon in the pub gardens, the gig venues and in each other’s houses because without human contact, what are we?
