The Obligatory New Year’s Eve Review Of The Year That Was

Last year I wrote a review of 2015 on the 31st December so it seems only fitting that I review 2016 today.

Except that I’d rather not.

It seems to be universally accepted that 2016 was a bit of a rubbish year all around.

Not for everyone obviously – some people might well be thinking that 2016 was quite good.

If you’re British and you hate immigrants then you might be feeling like 2016 was a pretty good year, what with Brexit and all that. Obviously 2017 is going to be a bummer for you when you realise that Brexit isn’t going to deliver on any of the things you thought you were voting for. Then again it might take until 2019 or even 2020 for you to work that out.

But thanks to Brexit, us Brits can pretty much write off 2017 before it even begins.

If you’re American and you’re hoping to ‘Make America Great Again’ and you think the best person to do that is an egotistical xenophobic misogynist, then you might well have had a good 2016. Again 2017 looks like it might be a write-off for the non-Trump voting masses (which was over half the electorate – possibly making a mockery of democracy as most of us understand it).

Then again, none of us really knows what is actually going to happen.

I’m currently of the view that Trump can’t actually be as bad as he’s threatening to be and will actually only end up being as bad as other politicians. Which is still pretty bad. But that in the end might turn out to be a blessing of sorts because normally politicians promise to do great things and then do really awful things. Trump has threatened to do all kinds of horrendous stuff that surely no-one will actually let him do, so the really bad stuff that he does do might even seem good in comparison to what we’re all expecting.

Just call me ‘Mr Glass-Half-Full’.

2016 will definitely go down as a good year if you really dislike celebrities. Cos, you know, a lot of them died this year.

And if you’re into general atrocities the world over, involving suffering on a mass scale, then 2016 really has been a good year for you.

But I’m not really qualified to speak about any of that.

I am qualified to speak about me.

What has 2016 been like for me?

Well it’s certainly had its ups and downs.

I’m not sure whether there were more ups or downs. I suppose that’s not the worst state of affairs.

I got a new car which was a good thing.

I needed to get a new car because my old car was breaking down a lot, which was a bad thing.

After much sowing of grass seed, I managed to get something approximating a lawn in the back garden which is pretty good, especially after several years of dandelions and moss.

I then needed to mow the lawn a lot during the summer, which is a bad thing if, like me, you have hay fever and are also inherently lazy.

I lost a bit of weight, which was a good thing.

I just put it all back on over Christmas, which may well be a bad thing (although honestly it didn’t feel all that bad to be eating nice food again).

Other stuff happened, some bad and some good.

The bad, while bad for me, would alter the irreverent tone of this blog so I won’t go into it now.

The good, while good for me, would probably make for quite dull content so I won’t write about that.

At the time of writing though, I’m still here. There are still some hours to go until the end of 2016 so I won’t count my chickens but, as I’m in no way famous or likely to be any time soon, I’m quietly confident of seeing in 2017.

If I do make it, I’ll be back in the blogosphere tomorrow with a set of realistic and achievable New Year’s Resolutions.

Or more likely I’ll do what I did last year and come up with preposterous and ridiculous resolutions.

Either way I’ll have failed at them by February.

At the latest.

However, if you’re reading this prior to the arrival of 2017 then I hope your New Year’s Eve celebrations are adequate. Mrs Proclaims and I will be doing our usual socially inept thing of staying in and watching a bit of telly. We will stay up until midnight most likely although I offer no guarantees.

I’m still without my phone so if you are someone who is likely to send me some kind of goodwill message via that medium then apologies for the lack of response and consider this blog post me wishing you a Happy New Year.

Happy New Year Everyone!