My picks for the year ahead

Rather than look back on a year spent waiting for the plague to come and Donald Trump to go, I’m looking ahead. Good things are in store. I feel psychic about this. Melania Trump will take a tip from the Elvis story, take up martial arts, and throw Donald over her shoulder into a deep lake, knowing he can’t swim. She’ll then shoot through with her karate instructor.

■ Barron Trump, who received his title at birth, will turn out to be the sole beneficiary of what remains of his drowned father’s assets, a pair of thinly goldplated cufflinkswith someone else’s initials and a warehouse full of remaindered copies of Trump: The Art of the Deal.

■ Ivanka and Jared Kushner will challenge the will and demand the cufflinks.

■ Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston will throw punches at each other in public. This will be reported as the latest chapter in a glowing love story that quite possibly isn’t.

■ Boris Johnson will be mistaken for a homeless person. No-onewill believe his claim to be prime minister of the island formerly known as Great Britain.

■ No TV weather people, senior TV journalists or frontwomen will feature on magazine covers headlining ‘‘baby joy’’, a ‘‘mystery disease’’, or ‘‘moving on bravely, alone’’.

■ The term ‘‘baby joy’’ will be banned from all publication covers in the interests of womenwho feel discriminated against for being less than joyful about breeding.

■ Jacinda Ardernwill reveal her addiction to pokies and enter rehab.

■ A newly published New Zealand novel will not be described as ‘‘superb’’, ‘‘lyrical’’ or a ‘‘masterpiece’’, and its author will not have emerged from a university writing school.

■ Men over the age of 30 will stop wearing little boys’ shorts and getting around on skateboards.

■ Children in restaurants will not treat them as play centres, climb on the tables, see how loud they can shriek, and expect adult patrons to act like adoring relations rather than their reluctant prisoners.

■ Boutique beer will become unfashionable, leaving flummoxed many youngmen with grandfatherly beards and odd hats who formerly brewed the stuff.

■ Landlordswill turn reasonable and make it possible for ordinary people to pay their rent.

■ Student debt will be wiped for all graduates.

■ 500,000 expat New Zealanders will not try coming home when many Covid variants lock down the entire world apart from us.

■ Cafes will offer baked goods ‘‘with extra gluten’’.

■ Interesting allergies will no longer dominate polite conversation.

■ Neither will things you learned when you had your DNA done.

■ Talk of astrology and all conspiracy theories will be followed by a day in the stocks in the centre of town, getting pelted with rotten fruit and veges.

■ On alternate days the same will apply to people who tell you to have a nice day. You have the right to be miserable.

■ Climate change deniers will be sent to sunbathe at the North Pole.

■ Prince Harry will escape from Meghan and head back to the army, where he was happier being shot at.

■ Nobody will put chopped-up broccoli and carrots into muffins, but beetroot will decorate pavlovas.

■ Vegans will take up folk dancing.

■ Duchess Kate of Cambridge will be made to eat a wholemeal, with witnesses.

■ We won’t have any more lockdowns, ever.

■ Bicycles will be the compulsory mode of transport. Cycling to Aucklandwill take the place of former jet flights to Europe, will take the same amount of time, and will be more exciting. They speak English there! Mostly.