CAN someone – anyone – tell me what the hell happened this past year? Anyone who still retains an intellectual capacity to distance and evaluate? Are we actually living in a Matrix, being toyed with by a sadistic, brutal overlord with a mission to turn us into xenophobic, vicious white supremacists?

Have aliens begun their take-over by infecting water supplies with droplets of insanity and strife? HQs the Palace of Westminster and the White House?

Looking back at the news worldwide it’s as if a collective madness has come upon us. Were it a visual, 2019 would be summed up for me in a face contorted into a snarl. With Boris Johnson hair and Donald Trump’s orange jowls and a touch of Farage around the smirk.

I started the year as a woman and am ending it not knowing what I am, as there are so many gender boxes to be ticked. I think I’m a cis i.e. born a woman and stayed a woman, but the acronyms multiply so fast, God knows what I may be today.

Maybe, even suggesting I’m a straight-forward cis will bring down on my head online fury from those who are ‘other’ and want to shame me for my narrow, er, sex. I’ll just apologise now then.

It’s awfully confusing. I was 20 before I knew what homosexuals were – at least 35 when lesbians were discovered. All the ‘theys’ are way beyond my limits of comprehension. WTF is that about?

I know I do believe in women-only lavatories; although living in France with its mixed loos and al fresco peeing males, I’ve seen more penises than any woman should see in a respectable lifetime.

I think it’s an age thing. Life used to be simple – one gas board, one electricity supplier, one fixed phone service, one rail operator, a handful of airlines, TV in real time, typewriters and Tippex, one credit card available, no computers to speak of and none of this FaceTime/WhatsApp merde.

Why, why, would I want to accept a FaceTime call in the morning? I need to be oven ready, as the dear leader would say, with make-up, lights, Mac on a stack of books looking down to minimise gravity, and no sign of the wine glass.

Why does a disinterested three-year-old granddaughter have to be prodded to say ‘Hello, Grandma’ to a woman she only remembers because of the big dog?

And, no, you can’t see the dog because if I move, I’ll lose the signal and your father will think it’s deliberate because he’s spotted the wine glass and the eyebrow has already been raised. Oh, bugger off.

Now – politics. Actually, I don’t think I can say much beyond a machine gun burst of expletives. Seriously, we had another election and a lying, conniving, racist ascended to power with a massive majority to blow up every decent strata of the UK?

(Not you Scotland. Thank God you have your own uncontaminated water supply.)

A man who lied to the Queen in a bid to shut down Parliament. Oh, so what, he’s lied to every woman he’s slept with – at least she was spared that horror.

A man who’s a chancer, a player, a frightful snob and, frankly, an arriviste, determined to make it big. How do I hate thee…let me count the ways and throw in Gove, Patel, Rees-Mogg, Davies et al.

I think I’m having an angry afternoon. I have, in the past, made my arguments against leaving the EU and I see little point in doing so again. You were either in or out. And out won but I will never, ever, understand why.

And Scotland…ah Scotland. Could I suggest you watch Parliament TV to see the contempt and disdain the SNP are shown? Watch as the benches empty as your representatives get up to speak? Watch the blond curl his lips at their words of independence and raise his eyes as if bored with a difficult, rather challenged, child.

The marchers, raising their Saltires come to mind now...thousands upon thousands walking with good humour and music to validate their presence and their wishes.

With all you’ve seen this past year, is there really an option? Run, run as fast as you can – the EU; that powerful safety blanket is ready to catch and raise you up.

In France we’ve had a general strike; numerous others have piled upon the streets to create havoc in our major cities. The citizens of France, as always, work around the chaos, sighing but accepting.

The main issue is a massive change in the complex retirement laws – some of which are fairly arcane now – but the French fight to keep what they fought for and have.

They know what they hold dear and fight, fight, to keep it so. Observers in other countries rather abhor such challenges to authority, probably as they accept the whittling away of theirs.

Ah, mes amis, time to be more like the truculent French. Keep fighting. Keep protesting. Keep marching.

The People’s Government is not this bunch of tosspots….it’s you. Only you.

Bonne Année.