Happy New Year

I've made a declaration of New Year.

2016 has not been a great year.

This year I ended up seeking help from a local clinic for a series of hormone related tosh.  Massive anxiety attacks, downward spiralling mood in an uncanny inverse relationship to upward spiralling weight.  Just as I'd made my first appointment to get some professional help to sort my shit out, I found myself in the back of an ambulance being taken into hospital.

I didn't enjoy the hospital experience.  I discovered that morphine and I are not going to have a flourishing relationship.  Ever.  Smallest possible dose sends my blood pressure gurgling down a plughole.  It was a quite weird up and down thing going on as the ambulance men and docs attempted pain management.  After scans and much prodding, the small intestine blockage I seemed to have acquired actually went away of its own accord at 2am leaving me in an NHS nightie with the clothes I'd cycled from work in and my phone and a charger and a nil by mouth notice.

I took a week off to get my head together and bang, work crisis of the year No 1 hit the inbox.  All hands on deck to get the information gathered to clear the name of a rider who had done nothing wrong.  It was emotionally intense, a talented guy who deserved better.

Then we bounced along, tried to go on holiday which didn't entirely go according to plan, coming home a week early only to have the camper van written off on our own street.  Four months before the insurance was 100% settled and the van is still in the bodyshop.

Somewhere in the middle of all that, other holidays failed to come off as work ricocheted from the nicely termed pseudo crisis efforts of the gutter press.

So now, I have declared today New Year's Day.  22nd November is the new New Year.  Because I don't have to wait until 1st January to make things better.  My New Year's resolution to take me through the next 45 days is to try to do something active every day, 20 mins run being the minimum standard.  So, Happy 2017, believe it or not, it's already here!

Little Britain

And now Little America.  A land for the small minded bigots you might suggest.


https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/10/misogyny-us-election-voters

The good old guardian gave a nice couple of lines on the American Dream.

"The first black American president will now be succeeded by a man endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan. This, according to Trump and his supporters, male and female, is what the American dream actually looks like."

Made me think.  There's been a lot of similarities in the Brexit vote and the Trump presidency win aftermath.  Young people voted differently to old people, and young people didn't get their way, despite it being their future which is being messed with.  Forgive me for noting that in the US this is only a decision for four years not like UK where Brexit, like a dog, is for life not just for Christmas.  

There are already those who don't understand the despair of the people who wanted a different outcome.  Saying things like, we're all in this together, you've just got to roll up your sleeves and get on with it. We've got work to do.  Kind of meaningless for those of us with a 9 to 5 office job and no ability to affect anything bigger, not even, it seems through voting and democracy.  In the UK Europeans are afraid of what their future holds. In America the muslims, the homosexuals and the coloured are afraid of what their future holds. And with good cause, I'm thinking.

Let's make America / Britain great again, eh?

You know what would make for greatness for me?  The feeling of community - people who look out for other people, who help people, who notice when things need a bit of support and realise when they have the capacity to provide that help.  People caring about each other, extended family style.  Greatness isn't about striving for your own personal gain, it's about surviving and importantly making sure that others survive too.