[80s hit reference no-one under 40 will get]

This blog is reaching nineteen. Nineteen years of this shite. Not quite there yet, as I’m starting writing this slightly before Christmas 2022, as I find myself with nothing else to do and bored of doomscrolling social media.

So, what has 2022 brought us? No human deaths in the immediate family [*crosses fingers and hopes not to have to edit this section in the closing hours of 2022*], which is an improvement over 2020 and 2021, but 2 catty friend deaths in very close succession, which definitely isn’t.

The country, if anything, is actually in a worse position. We’ve had a continuing succession of ineptitude and evil which has hit new lows, to the degree that people were looking back at the Thatcher years if not with longing, at least with a grim appreciation that just when you thought you’d seen the worst, someone says “hold my Cristal” and plumbs new depths. Enough of that. We all know where the blame lies and I’m so very tired of it. We can’t afford to pay public sector workers, but we can afford to pay minister’s mates billions for stuff that doesn’t work. I’m so glad we took back control and ended corruption.

I continue to feel and look old, but I’m hopeful that at least I’m not acting like an old gammon, despite appearances very much to the contrary.

My gloomy prediction of

We’ll all get older and our health will deteriorate at best

in 2021 looks like being accurate, though that hardly takes Mystic fucking Meg, does it?.

In better news, I did at least get the surgery I could have done with some years ago, and it has given me a definite improvement. I’m still fucked, of course, but while being so, there’s considerably less pain and I may be able to exercise a bit more again.

In catty better news, we got new furry friends, and they’re now fully settled, even if only one of them uses the cat flap, so we get furry company and they get a warm, comfortable, loving home. I get awakened by a furry creature parading over me as daylight appears. Thankfully, at this miserable time of year, that’s relatively late.

While the country continues to be a selfish, isolationist, racist shithole run for the benefit of a very few, there are still good people: many of them are currently striking and deserve our support. Maybe we can redress the balance next year, eh? While the outlook in so many ways is bleak, we can have hope: there is a society, despite what Thatcher said years ago. There are good people in the world, and I’m lucky enough to count some of them as friends.

Covid is still present, of course, but now vaccines are common and it is better understood, for many people it’s just unpleasant, rather than life-threatening. In terms of news, it’s kept very low-key these days. We managed to contract it during the summer, and while it was pretty unpleasant, we appear to have recovered, but the very real fact is that others have not.

Sitting writing this (it’s now December 30, now I’ve got this far), I’m certainly not overly positive about 2023, and I don’t think that’s an unreasonable view, unless you’re deluding yourself. We can but hope for some good, maybe grab your finest black clothing and a copy of First and Last and Always and a bottle of your choice of spirits, stay up past midnight to ensure twenty fucking twenty two has gone, and give 2023 the sort of look that it fucking well deserves as a warning.