Every year at this time I predictably start with the same sentiments. I don’t make resolutions for I don’t believe in tempting fate but I’ve now found out the hard way that fate gets on with its own business regardless of looking it in the eye or not.

And I always see the year to come as if looking at an unmarked field of snow – pristine, untrammelled, sparkling with wondrous possibilities.

Well, why not? If this past year has taught us anything it’s that we can trust in nothing – we are mere collateral damage of men and earth. It’s hard to write that because, in a sense, it goes against all I’ve ever believed.

The wondrous possibilities seem rather remote as death and destruction stalk us and cynical, self-interested politicians make fools of us all barely hiding their contempt.

The very earth has turned against us; the animals fleeing their killers, us; the oceans boil and ferment and emaciated beasts draw themselves across increasingly sparse feeding grounds.

Our own greed has let loose plague and we’ve permitted political corruption without barely turning a hair ‘cos that’s the way life is now.

We listen to government ministers spout nonsense and no longer call them out.

We once had a Press who did that – a fine Press.

Once the Press was the bulwark against corruption, the last defence when good men turned bad; now its pimped-up pretty boy columnists vie for TV time.

His/her opinion was, and is, frankly of no interest. Facts are sacred, opinions too often an exercise in how clever I am bringing you the real truth as fed to me by my favourite government special adviser.

Beats digging out what they don’t want you to know.

I am heartsick at what has been destroyed in my world that once gave me such pride, in favour of frankly disgraceful manipulative claims to fit a ruling party’s scenario.

At times I wonder why we’re not marching in our droves in protest but then we’re so mired in apathy, in apparent helplessness that it all seems futile.

But once we go down that route then it will be and, somehow, I don’t think we’re quite there yet. Almost.

Well, this was me giving you a break from my own problems this week. Ha! But it seems we’re beset with problems and finding joy in the midst of them seems almost a lost task.

But we can’t give up, no matter those who lead us into an abyss of despair at times.

I refuse to believe these second-rate politicians, whose true intentions become clearer daily, have a long survival rate as their mismanagement in every aspect of national life becomes clearer. As I write this, I’m still looking over the parapet into the new year and refusing to see the muddied footprints already taxing the iced crust.

I prefer to remember other starts to the year with no horrors stalking the land; no masked sideways worried shuffles; no fears of calls that come in the night, no fear of children becoming conduits – the breakers of our defences.

Prefer to remember simpler times, happier times and smudge the smug Tory faces of power and superiority from my memory.

Prefer to think of their unwitting gift to us all in their stupidity – a united Ireland, an independent Scotland and possibly a free Wales.

And I’m thinking, too, that hopes rise in the vaccines and only stupidity again will prevent their take-up.

Too many in France are already saying they won’t take it – too many side effects. Even my ambulance driver said she had no intention of being a guinea pig.

And, yes, she trotted out the line that she’s young, healthy and not at risk. And she’s the professional.

Anyway, in the interim I can only wish you the very best for this coming year and pray it will leave you and yours unscathed and that there is real hope around the corner and decent men and women waiting in line to lead us out of this stinking hole in which we’ve been dumped.

And always…never lose hope. We’re lost if we do.

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