The year began with higher hopes for poor old Albion. The oracles, on the other hand, predicted another year of farce and tragedy. They were not wrong, but we cannot be blamed for our optimism. Back in January, Covid was on the wane, and we were looking forward to returning to some semblance of normality. The media, too, were itching to move on and were talking up the Sue Gray report. If you recall, this was to be the conclusion of the much vaunted enquiry into the drunken debauchery at the heart of government, throughout the Covid lockdowns. Indeed, for a time, it was all Sue Gray this, and Sue Gray that. But the oracles predicted the report would leave us nonplussed, that it would land with an insipid flop, rather than a weighty thump, and so it did. It did not bring down the perpetrators, let alone the government, for whom it ran more like water off a duck’s back, and the joke was on all of us who had stuck to the rules.
In February, Boris went to Ukraine to channel Churchill, and was successful in doing so. From there onwards, we were, to all intents and purposes, in a proxy war with the old enemy, much to the delight of the war-horny hacks, and to the horror of the rest. Thereafter, we have looked on with increasing despair it could happen on the European continent, after our assumptions a globally interconnected economy would prevent such an illogical barbarism ever happening again. But then we are not a rational species, and barbarism is more often our default setting.
For all of his boosterism, Boris and his Churchillian bluster was gone by the summer. Then came soaring energy costs, two more prime ministers, four chancellors, plunging trade, egregious levels of poverty, a financial crash, a stultifying heat wave, a litany of terrible refugee drownings, and mass industrial action by railwaymen, the health service, and firemen. Oh, and the Queen died. Now, here we are on the cusp of 2023, and no one speaks of Sue Gray any more. She is a forgotten footnote in the history of 2022.
As I write, the temperature indoors is nudging thirteen degrees, unlike the thirty-five we briefly touched in July. I am wearing fingerless thermal gloves, and a heavy fleece jacket, with a hot water bottle tucked inside. I feel quite cosy, but it’s a long way from the normality we sought this time last year, and yet I cannot help reflecting that it has been a good year. It has been a year of broadening horizons, so welcome after the Covid restrictions. It has been a year of boots on the hill – indeed, more hills this year than ever before. It has been a year of photographs framed in memory, of the Yorkshire Dales, of Bowland, of the Western Pennines, and the Lancashire Plain. It has been a year of poetry, of blogging, of completing another novel.
Back in the spring, I captured the header photo, a lone wood anemone in a quiet hollow of the horseshoe of the Yarrow valley. In winter’s grip, we can lose sight of the cycle of the seasons, that the wood anemone will flower again, and that, from a certain perspective at least, all will be well. It’s just a matter of time. It falls to each of us then to seek that perspective as best we can, seek also to frame the beauty of the world, in all its diversity. Therein lies our defiance of the disconnected tomfoolery that seems to constitute today’s high office. It is also our rejection of the ever present deeps of nihilism the media would have us wallow in.
As with the long forgotten Sue Gray report, we cannot bank on those in charge, to change what really matters to those now freezing their nadgers off. The change, the hope, the optimism we are looking for, it’s already inside of us, and only we can deliver it. Were I to consult the oracle for 2023, it would say: more of the same, probably, but be happy anyway. Be thoughtful, be wise in your self, honourable in your doings, and all will be well.
My thanks to everyone who has visited and commented here for another year, at WordPress. Your company along the way is, as always, the greatest pleasure. And to those whose blogs I follow, do press on with the good work. The view of the world through your eyes is far more authentic, and worthwhile, than anything I read elsewhere.
And finally:
A passing silence, echoes of awareness,
resisting now the urge to grasp,
whatever random lines
might be wrought and tapped out
into this story of a self.
Fading now, casting off sensation,
feeling, thought,
we reach the quiet shore
that is this observation of being.
Letting come, and go
without judgement,
these ripples
in golden cornfields
of experience
are where we reap our joy,
and it’s from here
we bring the harvest home.
The Rivendale Review 