Happy? New? Year?

It’s that time of year again, when I apologise to everybody that I was supposed to send holiday cards to for being too disorganised and depressed to do so. In my defence, this has been a fucking depressing trip round the sun and, while I do genuinely wish everybody a happy new year, I think we all know that it won’t be.

What year is it next year, anyway?

The same year as it always is. 2016.

So, as we face our fifth consecutive 2016, I don’t really think that happiness is the correct thing to wish you all. Sure, if you can find any happiness then grab it with both hands but I doubt that most of us will see much happiness until November at the very earliest, and even then I don’t think it is wise to get our hopes up too much. Instead I will wish you all fortitude.

Survive Brexit. Survive the end of the UK. Survive Boris. Survive Trump. Survive all this and help eachother to survive it.

Or, to put it another way:

“Seest thou yon dreary Plain, forlorn and wilde,
The seat of desolation, voyd of light,
Save what the glimmering of these livid flames
Casts pale and dreadful? Thither let us tend
From off the tossing of these fiery waves,
There rest, if any rest can harbour there,
And reassembling our afflicted Powers,
Consult how we may henceforth most offend
Our Enemy, our own loss how repair,
How overcome this dire Calamity,
What reinforcement we may gain from Hope,
If not what resolution from despare.”

Hold on. Did you just quote Satan?

Well, its actually Milton, but, you know… It seems appropriate to these benighted times…

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Footnote: Yes. I did steal the idea of quoting Satan. Natalie Wynn did it in her video about the election of Trump in 2016. It was a good idea then, in 2016, and it is a good idea now, in still 2016, although I must admit that the first thing that comes to mind when I read “seat of desolation” is Boris’s omnishambling arse.