So here we go again, another hole pegged on the crib board of life: and what a year it’s been!

This is a year that’s had me in bits. A bit of a holiday, a bit of Christmas, a bit of entertaining, a bit of eating out, a bit of meeting up with family and friends and so on and on.

And now? A new bit of virus that’s causing all sorts of problems whom I wasn’t even going to honour by mentioning its name. But what the heck, with a name like Omicron it deserves to have a mention. Anyway by the time that you read this article we might well have a new virus on our hands – and elsewhere – or alternatively there might be a change of name to something more fashionable, or even particularly relevant. How about Omigoodness?

I’ve got to admit that in order to meet the exigencies of journalistic deadlines I am actually writing this article a few days before Christmas – good name for a book actually – so unless I want to adopt the roll of a soothsayer it’s very difficult to indulge in comments such as ‘What a good year it’s been!’ or ‘What a horrendous year it’s been!’. Although, come to think of it, it’s probably been both. What I do know is that 2021 seemed to fly by at a rate of knots. As my Father once said when he lost his watch on the allotment: “Wherever has the time gone?”

At the time of writing, I must confess that, it feels a bit like Custer’s Last Stand with the enemy surrounding us in ever decreasing circles. The only difference being that I’m tentatively confident that, ultimately, this battle will move in our favour. Thinking about it, maybe this is not a good allegory as Custer lost his battle - not a bad name for a virus actually.

What’s so interesting about my situation is that, by reading this article, you have become my future and I have become your past. You are now in an ideal position to judge the correctness of my procrastinations. The phrase ‘Little did he know!’ comes to mind.

The one thing I am sure of is that it hasn’t been too bad a year for the moving industry, so it’s an ill wind, etc.

Another factor that I’m sure of is that, whereas initially I thought that things were bound to return to normal, the reality - my reality to be more precise I suppose - is that changes have occurred to our way of life which are irreversible. Much of what we used to perceive as normal has just simply moved on. I haven’t got space to go into the specifics here, but I’m sure that you know what I mean. Change is much more a good than a bad thing.

Here we are then, with tentative steps having been taken into the New Year. Maybe we should count our blessings, because there are lots of them. Last year wasn’t quite as bad as many of us thought it would be. Life for all living creatures involves a degree of struggle and past generations accepted this as a given. The fact that we are here today displays our resilience. Destiny I think they call it!

Maybe we are not as self-centred as we used to be and maybe this is a good thing for the future of the world and future generations. We shall see! So whatever the date is when you read this article, may I hope that your year has been ‘OK’ so far and that it will certainly continue to be so throughout the rest of the year. We don’t have many certainties in our lives but the one thing that you can be certain of is that this column will soon return to its regular diet of indulgent flippancy.