Retrospect

First published on the 16^th December, 1992 in Column Eight. 

During December the media tends to review the events of the last twelve months, so, not wanting to be behind the times, I now offer my own personal retrospective.

This was the year in which my children once again insisted on their right to grow, and now all but one of them look me straight in the eye – or eyebrow.

This was the year in which, for the first time ever, I completed a correspondence course. Early next year I may give you the details, but as yet I’m still too close to the event to speak of it without emotion.

This was the year in which my body said; ‘If life began at forty, I’m out of here!’ Nearing the completion of my fifth decade on this planet, my body and I have lately had some disagreement over the value of life as we know it, Jim.

For example, when compensating recently for the soreness following a minor op, I put my back out, got it in again, then put it out again – (rather like a dance step, this.) After which the body pretended it had some virus, and my lower limbs ached. I put the body to bed for a bit of rest, but it responded with a stiff neck.

The ‘thing’ travelled down and made the back of my left knee sore, then wound up putting both my thumb joints out of action.

However, I’m still breathing. A lot of other people aren’t as a result of 1992.

We have this illusion that all of us are due for three score and ten years, but as C. S. Lewis points out in The Screwtape Letters (which I read again this year): ‘The majority of the human race dies in infancy; of the survivors, a good many die in youth.’ The trouble with reviewing the year just gone is you release that the chances of your staying around much longer are getting slimmer.

This was the year in which AIDs took a back seat to Abuse. Who needs mandatory reporting of the subject? We have so many people claiming abuse now that no one can keep up with it. The court cases of the land seem to deal with little else. Only murder, which started off the year in great style, takes precedence, and it has become so commonplace we barely notice its frequent grim reaping.

Abuse is like a cancer that’s been eating away at the nation, underground. This year it’s really come out in the open. As a nation we need to acknowledge our shame that this evil has gone unchecked for so long, and somehow deal it a death blow.

This was the year in which thousands of New Zealanders for the first time stood silently on the streets proclaiming that thousands of their fellow human beings had never seen the light of day. They were spat at, and cursed at. So was Jesus.

This was the year in which the trickle down approach to economics has begun to lose ground, internationally. Hopefully a different kind of trickle down in politics and economics will begin to make progress here, with people put before policies, however cost effective those policies may be.

This was the year in which millions of readers of tabloids and magazines encouraged the shameful actions of so-called journalists and aided them in destroying a family. That the family had made mistakes wasn’t the point – every family does. That the family suffered more and more intrusions on its privacy is a shameful indictment on the people who continue to buy garbage instead of boycotting it.

That hardly begins to sum up the year. Sorry – small columnists can only make small contributions.

I assume the family I mention towards the end was the Royal Family. In 1992 three couples split up: Princess Anne divorced Mark Phillips, Prince Andrew separated from Sarah Ferguson and Charles and Diana formally separated. On top of that, Windsor Castle was badly damaged in a huge fire, and the Queen summed up the year as her ‘annus horribilis.’

 As for the correspondence course I finished, I no longer have any idea what it was.