So here we are in 2018.
It started on a low note for me, but it was my own fault. I dug around in my modest stack of music CDs and picked a couple of my favourites to hum along with.
Unfortunately my favourites tend to run to downward Bob Dylan and depressing Leonard Cohen. I think it was his Songs of Love and Hate that we used to say were Songs to Commit Suicide By.
Which is not to mock depression, a desperately dreadful condition, but to explain that the music does nothing to lift your spirits. But I was tired of hearing tiny voices tinkle away at Jingle Bells and very good singers warbling that all they wanted for Christmas was “yooooo”.
Also I couldn’t find my Tina Turner Simply the Best. I suspect someone in the household has hidden it.
Anyway, by the time I got through So long, Maryanne for the third time, I was deep in mourning for the dear departed. Among them old Leonard himself, who sadly performed his last gig in 2016.
Actually it was us who were sad, he probably twirled off stage in his usual sprightly fashion though he was even older than I. Which made me think sadly about how my sprightly days were getting fewer because of my sore leg.
I seem to have rallied on magnificently until I decided my knee was really hurting quite a lot, even for an overweight, overage person.
When it was confirmed I had was a touch of arthritis not even worth X-raying I started developing it in every joint in the body. But apparently that was just a severe bout of hypochondria.
I attended carefully when the physiotherapist gave me some gentle exercises and told me how to walk up and down stairs and slopes. Actually, it was to avoid slopes, they don’t go well with arthritic knees.
Fat chance, I live up a driveway strongly resembling Mt Everest. Sometimes I feel like I should be tied by a rope to someone with an ice pick just to get to and from my front door.
Anyway I did all the stuff I was supposed to do to avoid falling, successfully reached the bottom, stepped out onto the road and fell square on my knee.
I won’t bore you with the pain and agony of my Yuletide season, relieved only by a multitude of good wishes and splendid gifts and white wine. I heard red isn’t good for arthritis. Or perhaps that’s gout.
I don’t have gout so I saved the red for New Year, when I was feeling somewhat morose.
I got to missing some of the familiar faces of past years who had populated our parties on the front verandah.
There were those who had passed on, which can’t be helped; some who got chucked out; and some who had just got dispirited with the situation and had gone to make a new start somewhere else.
The more music I played the more I missed Professor Wadan Narsey. His musical skills may be disputable, but his enthusiasm for the songs of our flaming youth was unquestionable.
I missed the occasional warbling of Professor Brij Lal who is not allowed back in the country for no stated reason, and his very clever wife Dr Padma Lal, who is not allowed back in either.
There are others, many of them our best qualified and most experienced people.
I wondered about those apparently disposable CEOs who recently got the push. Then there is the sacked Water Authority of Fiji head who seemed to me to be doing a decent job.
Why, just before Christmas a pipe under our street broke (again) and the fix-it team turned out within a short time and we were back on before I could whine about no water for a cuppa.
But what do I know? I wondered about the ATS people.
It seemed to me that yes, workers on that particular shift shouldn’t have gone off to a meeting for several hours without telling anyone. But then they should have come back and got reprimand letters saying their pay would be docked for those hours and meanwhile, the complaints treated seriously and swiftly.
The idea of locking everyone out does not appear useful in the main aim of getting people back on the job.
I was maundering on to myself until some rellies and friends who have not gone away and who can sing rocked up. They got Leonard started on Hallelujah and I regained the joy of delightful conversation, scurrilous stories, festive food, red wine under the imli tree and the memory of all the truly pleasurable things of life in Fiji in the past year.
So my resolution is to think more on them and less on the destruction of the environment, unenlightened decisions and development and be glad that many of those who have gone away are still contributing to the greater good — just somewhere else.
* The writer is a regular contributor to this column. Views expressed are hers and not of this newspaper.
