WHAT A YEAR IT HAS BEEN

LAST year, almost to the day, I made reference to the seminal song by the Bee Gees: “It’s only words, and words are all I have to steal your heart away.”

We are social animals. We need and use words to communicate and contrive healthy and healing connectivity. Yet we fall short of reaching out to each other to achieve the country and nation that we all hoped, prayed, lived and died for. Sadly, we again seem to have fallen short in this dying year (pun intended).

An overview shows that I have suggested that we make each year the Year of the Parent. I didn’t see much of that. I did attend a very pleasing Abbaclone concert where I was reminded to celebrate life through music: Thank you for the music … without a song or dance who are we? And we said a sad goodbye to the brave, ebullient and optimistic homeless Danny.

The month of March dealt out gobsmacks that still have us reeling. On a personal level, I said goodbye to a real singer, Kenny Rodgers. Also, our brave editor announced the virtual shutting down of shop the way we had known it. The Argus had become an emaciated ghost from the robust paper I rushed to buy for my Dad in 1947. Columnists of long standing felt the pinch and decamped. A few of us stayed, including the redoubtable David Biggs, who has been writing a daily column for over four decades. What a boyo! I stayed on because I unashamedly like seeing my name in lights.

But March wasn’t done with us. Enter the Dragon. Enter the Nemesis from the East in the form of coronavirus, or Covid-19 as it is now known. That was the death knell of more things than we can imagine. The world would change in a way we could not imagine.

It is an accepted fact that this thing will leave when it is ready.

We will never be the same, not on any level. Every possible and imaginable aspect of our lives is irrevocably and irreversibly changed, and the world in which we grew up has left the building … forever.

We have learnt new words, new strategies. Some old truths remained, like the protocol of the 1918 epidemic which taught us that social distancing, hygienic practices and wearing masks are viable counters to the spread of the disease.

Sadly, it also reminded us that the government then was as hopelessly helpless as the government of now.

So, yes. This light overview should stop us in our tracks and force us to ask why we are still going backwards instead of forwards. Racial attitudes remain. Dehumanising categories and indifferences continue to lacerate the psyche. When are we going to wake up?

This might be my last soirée for this year. But please remember to breathe in hope and breathe out despair. Breathe in love and blow out hatred. Love one another. It is a useful exercise.