Welcome to 2024

Don’t worry, I’m not starting a tradition of New Years’ podcasts to go along with the monstrosities I publish for you at Christmastime.

New Years’ Eve is my least favourite night of the year. In the past I’ve managed to ensure that I’m working the night shift so that I don’t have to participate. This also has the added benefit of allowing one of my colleagues an opportunity to not be working; enjoying the new year however they so wish. Unfortunately this year it wasn’t to be, and Mel has taken our two dogs to her mum’s for the night to keep them away from all the inevitable trauma of fireworks, which seem to be more disturbing to the older of the two with every passing year.

So tonight, I’m sat at home by myself. Well, the family cat is here, but she got bored of sitting on my lap in about twenty minutes, and has disappeared off elsewhere, so I’m going to crack open a bottle of mulled wine and enjoy the end of the Christmas season alone.

In his excellent (and at this point traditional) re-upload of his review of Auld Lang Syne for The Anthropocene Reviewed, John Green talks about the history of the song, before going on to recount stories of his friend and fellow author Amy Krouse Rosenthal, circling back to the Christmas Truce of 1914, wrapping up in the final couple of paragraphs talking about hope:

“We live in hope–that life will get better, and more importantly that it will go on, that love will survive even though we will not. As Emily Dickinson put it, hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul and sings the tune without the words and never stops at all.

And we are here because we’re here because we’re here because we’re here.”

– John Green, Auld Lang Syne, The Anthropocene Reviewed, 2019 (2021, 2022, 2023 &c.)

Here’s this year’s re-upload if you want to see the whole thing, I thoroughly recommend it, but you may need some tissues to hand:

I listen back to this review every year, through hook (by looking for it) or by crook (by getting a YouTube alert that the re-upload has come). It never fails to bring me to the brink of tears, while at the same time lifting my spirits and helping me through New Year’s Eve.

However you’re spending your new year, I hope that the next orbit of the sun is a good one for you and all those for whom you care.

We’re here, because we’re here because, we’re here, because we’re here…

Ben