2022 has been a memorable year.

For a start, it’s the first one since pre-Pandemic times where I’ve managed to remain healthy. I had Covid in 2020 and again in 2021 (quite a bad turn the second time and came close to being hospitalised). Barely recovered from that, still physically weak and trying to do too much, I then managed to rupture a bicep – tore it clean away from the bone. It was comfortably the worst injury in my life (and I had a few in my old sporting days way back when), and I had a week in hospital, most of it waiting for the scheduled operation to take place. I had an implant fitted to re-attach the muscle (and no, it doesn’t beep when I go through airport security) and that took a good six months to fully heal. It’s left me with reduced mobility in my left arm and hand but even though I’m a leftie it hasn’t really made things any harder for me: I’ve taught myself to compensate and use the other arm more.

But it left me, towards the close of 2021 facing a daily battle with depression, and this is something I need to be aware of to this day. Thank God, it wasn’t too bad an attack, no suicidal thoughts, self-harming or all the other bad stuff that can manifest: but unpleasant for all that. I managed to get a couple of weeks in Switzerland in September 2021, when the weather was still hot and sunny, and flat-sat for a relation of My Beloved while he and his partner holidayed in Sardinia, and it was just what the doctor ordered. I bought rail rover tickets and spent a week touring the country, visiting cities like Zurich and Luzern and Basel that I thought I knew from past work visits but discovered many new things, and just thinking of….well, very little. It was a much needed tonic.

This year, 2022, has presented a different set of struggles, as I have battled financially to complete and pay for a new apartment (much needed now my kids are in their mid teens and needing their own spaces) in a time when prices of everything have sky-rocketed thanks to Vlad The Impaler v2.0 invading neighbouring Ukraine. Everyone has struggled with that atrocity, and my recent visit to my homeland highlighted that even there people are contending with prices and problems over and above those delivered by Brexit and successive incompetent Tory governments. Europe today is an unhappy place, it seems to me. My big hope for 2023 is that things improve and some measure of happiness and security return – but that is a BIG ask…….

But, to return to my personal story, I’ve survived more or less intact (more than can be said for my credit card balance it has to be said…). I’ve managed to keep my mental health positive, my elbow is fine, and the inoculations, despite their not being as effective as previously, have kept Covid at bay. I’ve managed a lot of hiking and a lot of cycling around my city, and have lost weight as a result – I feel much better for that. Admittedly I’ve overdone things a couple of time, and have now and again struggled with sciatica, but I have a cocktail of tablets I can take to manage it (thankfully, since October it’s been fine). Oh, and I discovered Vivaldi……

So all good then as we head in to a new year, 2023, It promises to be equally memorable. For a start, in March I turn 70, an age I never though I would reach, back in the days of my indestructible youth. With the bulk of the apartment costs now paid, I hope by early summer we will have moved in and rented our existing home out to provide an additional income, meaning we can start travelling again. My Beloved and I have a number of plans bubbling around, principally doing an airbnb rental in Croatia for the whole of August: a villa is the idea, with enough space to allow my sons and their families to visit with us for a week each (and split the cost with us). We also quite fancy a trip, just we two, to the Canaries or Greek islands in early spring, to jointly celebrate my 70th and her 50th birthday (from this year), unencumbered by kids and (hopefully) much in the way of clothes.

And I will try out this Mastodon thingy. And write more stuff, both on this blog and on This World, This Life over on Blogger. And I hope more short stories. And some more to the memoir for my kids. Hell, I might even bite the bullet and publish my novel and the stories on Amazon Kindle – I’ve been prepping for that the last four years but what with one thing and another haven’t done so yet – it really is long overdue!

So I wish everyone at Team Vivaldi, in whichever office, and Vivaldians the world over, both old hands and newbies like me, health, wealth and happiness and every success for 2023.

To paraphrase an old Irish comedian from 50 years ago, may your God be with you.