Happy 2022. Or at least happier than 2021

Happy New Year, everyone!

That’s what we say to each other every time January comes bearing down on us. Hope, they say, springs eternal in the human breast. So it’s always with optimism that we approach a new year, hoping for something better than the old one.

This time, Danielle and I marked the occasion by going to a New Year concert of Strauss music in our local city of Valencia. It was a taste of Vienna in Spain, as the promotional literature claimed. 

Strauss with joy from the Orchestra of the Mediterranean
Not so wet, or so fishy, as the name might make it sound
Note the New Year's wishes.

Ah, the memories, the memories. My mother was a fan of the Vienna New Year’s concert and would watch it on TV every year, right up to her last one. I watched with her on several occasions, and we’d smile together to The Blue Danube or thrill to The Radetzky March. It was a lot of fun. Danielle and I enjoyed the Valencia concert just as much.

Of course, we felt a slight pang of guilt at having sneaked off to it and left our son, Nicky, and daughter-in-law, Sheena, on their own to look after our grandkids, Matilda and Elliott. A small pang, to be honest. Delightful company though Matilda and Elliott certainly are, it can be quite restful to do something else occasionally. Which may explain why the lunch afterwards, with two new acquaintances who I think could easily become friends, lasted until 4:30.

One of those potential new friends was an American who came to Valencia for a sabbatical. That was twenty years ago and she’s never left. 

“Valencia’s like a black hole,” she told us, “once you’re in you just don’t leave.”

That doesn’t sound complimentary, but I’m sure she meant our fine city was like a black hole in a good way. Totally.

If we sneaked out today, we will at least return the favour. We’ll take the grandkids and let their parents go out together on their own. They won’t get a New Year’s concert, of course – that ship’s sailed for this year – but they’ll get a rest, just like we did.

Now we can settle down and start seeing how 2022 can be made better than 2021. I suspect it will be for quite a few people. After all, the big annoyance last year was Covid. Now, the Omicron variant, highly infectious though it is, seems far less severe and, above all, far less fatal than the Delta version we were struggling with before.

Incidentally, it does rather worry me that we got so fast from Delta to Omicron. Was I distracted while the rest of the Greek alphabet trooped past? Were Epsilon, Zeta, Eta, Theta, Iota, Kappa, Lambda, Mu, Nu and Xi just skipped or was I asleep?

Actually, at today’s lunch one of the new friends explained that Xi might indeed have been deliberately skipped. It suggests the name of that painfully powerful international figure, the Chinese president (even though the name of the letter is pronounced to rhyme with ‘why’).

The other terrible threat hanging over us is climate change, which has its own whole set of deniers. Possibly the same people. After all, once you’ve spent that long denying one thing, it must get easy to deny others. 

In any case, I imagine the worst effects of climate change will still be limited geographically for the next year or two. Most of us will probably get through 2022 without seeing anything particularly awful on that front. 

Some countries, though, are condemned to having a lousy new year. Take the case of poor old Britain, for instance. There the New Year has got off to a lousy start.

I mean, even on Covid, it’s not going well. With a Prime Minister who’s been setting an unfortunate example by flouting Covid regulations, a lot of other people are ignoring simple measures that might limit the spread of the disease. What’s more, despite a glowing start to the vaccination programme in Britain, something over which Johnson still gloats regularly, he failed to see the process far enough through. There are still five million unvaccinated adults, a dangerously large pool of people in which the virus can spread and mutate unchecked. 

And it’s not just Covid. Britain is also still dealing with the ongoing car crash that is Brexit. Rules came into effect on New Year’s Day governing imports from the European Union. Last year, a lot of companies suffered when rules governing exports came in; now a lot more will suffer because of the restrictions on imports. 

What’s more, the EU has just signed a new deal with the United States, to make trade in steel easier again, after Trump applied tariffs during his unfortunate tenure of power. Britain is, of course, excluded as a non-member of the EU. But, worse than that, since the US has left barriers in place against imports from the EU if any of the steel originated in non-member nations, the deal is likely to reduce British steel exports even into the EU.

A double whammy, in fact.

It’s no surprise that the Prime Minister is boasting about having got the crown symbol put back on pint beer glasses. A symbolic achievement, certainly. But when you have no substantial ones, what else can you boast about?

Johnson’s most significant achievement

Poor old Brits. A bare majority got suckered into Brexit, and now the whole country is going to suffer the consequences. Not a pleasant prospect for 2022.

So as many of us move into a New Year that may well be better than the old one, spare a thought for those, like Britain, less fortunate than us. All I can offer as consolation is the thought that Johnson is certainly not going to last for ever. And, eventually, Brexit can be reversed.

In the meantime, I can recommend Strauss as a gentle way to calm the nerves.

Happy New Year!