On the fantastic side, we had a Jubilee that exceeded all expectations, followed by on Olympics* and a Paralympics that were so good we all thought we'd been magically transported to another country. Locally, Hastings broke the record for most Pirates in one place at the same time, the Jerwood gallery opened, The Hastleon's Oliver was a huge box-office success and Keane played a blinder of a set in a concert just behind my back garden.
On the miserable side it started raining on January 1st and hasn't stopped yet. My work load appears to have doubled but my income definitely hasn't. Smudge died, and Gizmo's kidneys have packed up and he's not responding to treatment so he's not going to last much longer. (Though it must be said, he's baffling the vet - he has so much urea in his system he should be dead by now, but apart from the fact he drinks water by the bucket, pees it out by the flagon and smells faintly of pee, you'd never know there was anything wrong with him.) The BBC is imploding, the press isn't. And George Osborne is about to invent the Triple-Dip recession, at about the same time as the Republicans are forcing the US over the fiscal cliff with their childish intransigence. (Honestly, triple-dip is a word that shouldn't be heard outside of an ice cream parlour.)
I'm playing with Osborne's excuses for his economic illiteracy. The past few excuses he's used for the ecomomy performing worse than expected have been 'a cold winter', 'a wet spring', 'Christmas' and 'The Royal Wedding'. When he uses 'The Eurovision Song Contest' as an excuse we'll know he's finally lost it completely.
* They're over - it's safe to use the O word again.
