After a toast with alcohol-free champagne and thanking Padma for having put up with this cranky old bastard for another twelve months, I was in bed and had fallen asleep to the soothing sound of ABC RN well before midnight.
Which meant that I was up again just after 3 o'clock to blindly feel my way through the pitchblack house, first to the toilet and then to the living room, only to painfully stab my big toe on the coffee table.
"So much for a good start to the new year", I thought to myself as I switched on my computer to be greeted by emails wishing me a Happy New Year. The German philosopher Immanuel whose last name, when pronounced the German way sounds like an obscenity in English, taught us that happiness is unobtainable. Why then do we wish someone a happy new year when they have zero chance of experiencing it?
I mean, if you went up to a one-legged boy and wished him an extra leg in the new year, his mother would probably punch you in the face. Rightly so. If you wished your dying uncle crippled with stage four cancer a ‘long and happy life’, you would be banned from future family gatherings. Wishing someone a happy new year is no different. We need to stop doing this and find less upsetting ways to spread good will.
You could wish someone a prosperous new year (although that also has greedy capitalist undertones) or a peaceful new year (which may imply the recipient has lost the will to live). Probably the safest bet would be to wish someone a less shitty year than the last one. This at least is an achievable and realistic goal.
With this in mind, I sincerely wish that 2025 will be significantly less shitty for you than 2024. And my thanks to the neighbours across the river who, unlike in previous years, did not engage in a drunken orgy at their boathouse which always used to wake me up. Maybe all their teenage kids have grown up or it's the cost-of-living crisis, but thanks all the same and a happy New Year to you all. Darn it, I've done it again!
