KINDNESS IN THE GLOOM

Listen, I don’t know what to make of this year coming. What I do know is that it started in tears. It’s a bit of a long story but it was all to do with something I’d hoped for that hasn’t happened. The sight of the old year ticking its way into a new one… had set me off.

I’m sure the New Year’s Eve camera angles in London are the same every year. Big Ben with two of the clock faces visible and the corner of the London Eye, the face-on view of the wheel and the barges and the lasers, the high drone view over the river, and then the sweep across the revellers packed into the embankment as the sulphur clears.

What actually is it we’re celebrating? I mean, in the 90s, the future seemed more hopeful, more grand, as I recall. I could go along with the cheery nod to the New Year and feel a little twinkle of my own excitement. But then, I was younger then; perhaps there was a lot more to be wide-eyed about.

But I don’t want to be miserable about this permacrisis world we live in. There’s got to be more to it than shuddering into despair all the time, otherwise why in the world are people like me here? Once the rapture happens, fair enough - cancel everything, but while there’s still hope… surely there can be kindness in the gloom.

I used to think it was simply an excuse for people to go out and get drunk. Honestly, like a sort of long-drawn out version of that British cheer at a waiter smashing a glass - irony that’s become a tradition. New Year’s Eve is terrible; let’s get blotto. Maybe next year will be better than the train crash we’ve just been through? Probably not, but let’s cheer it in anyway. Hoo-ray.

It’s not completely that. It’s an opportunity for a lot more hope. They say, don’t they, that as things get darker, hope gets stronger - or at least, it should. And as long as there people of hope around, there’ll be light in dark places.

Personally, I can’t say that this year will be brilliant. It will be a mixed bag. I can’t predict what’s in store for me and Sammy. And that’s because none of it has happened yet. It’s ours to make of it what we will. And I should say that even if it’s dark and miserable and another slump into global despair, if you’ve got the opportunity, any opportunity at all, to light your bit of it up, then you absolutely should. I hope that’s what I will do too. And you never know: maybe the lights will add up. Just maybe.