LAST OF THE YEAR

Everyone is bemoaning 2016 as a bad year. It was an eventful year and amazing things happened.  Even the 2016 Wipe by Charlie Booker failed to be as funny as it usually is, because how do you satirise the surreal?  The surreal is already satirising itself.   There are more tigers and hopefully will be more elephants and people are planting more trees.   Everyone is bemoaning Trump as being as being clinically insane, but perhaps we are just exchanging one illusion for another.     Don't fix it if its not broken, they say, but people forget, all the establishment from the financial world, the economic, the political, the health, the education, the legal system - IS broken. So the establishment in all its guises does need fixing.

The Years Honours list is awful.  There are some names deserving of merit, those not mentioned on the news, but those who don't deserve it, the celebrities, the sportsmen, devalue those who do.    No celebrities.   No sports people.  And definitely no Posh Spice or Cameron cronies.   Cameron will be recognised as being almost as odious as Blair.   Or perhaps he is, and we don't know it yet (I suspect Murdock does).   As for the others, they have been rewarded financially enough.   And if they give to charity, then they get back in terms of feeling good about themselves (which they will) and in tax breaks.    Those who deserve the rewards are those who don't make the headlines and don't have the financial breaks.     

Patsies have been put out to protect the guilty in all areas.  People like Rolf Harris and the football coaches, long dead, have been given out as something to chew on while the others continue to go about their business believing they are above the law because half the time they make it.   But at least we know now no one is the public eye is to be trusted, respected, or given time. More people are turning off the news, not reading the news papers and trusting in their instincts.   And starting to identify who to talk to and who isn't worth the time any more.   Its a shame because there are some wonderful writers out there, just not the outlets for them to share their voice, which has neither ego nor agenda.   

I've had a good year.  Learnt lots of lessons.   And I know whats important.  I'm blessed to be teaching in phenomenal schools with phenomenal teachers who deserve the honours bestowed on the sports men and women and the celebrities.    We are completely misplaced in society about what is really valuable.   Funds should go directly, without passing go, to the schools and the hospitals and get the nurses, the teachers, the doctors, the heads to distribute the money. They will know what to do with it.   Where it is best applied.  But perhaps that is too simple.   

A lot of voices have chosen to leave, while others have chosen to remain, like a heavenly Brexit all over again.   

I have a list of things to achieve in 2017.   In order of priority.    But for now, a poem to appreciate the moment.  

Dragon fly life

one day

a breath

a whisper

an opportunity

one word

or perhaps two or three

no more

to fly high

and breathe deeply

and smile

and love and 

laugh 

loud

and scream

and love

oh to love 

and watch 

the beauty

of 

e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g

because 

now 

its

gone

.