A lousy glumness dulls my sense as if of Hancock I had drunk … texted a friend riffing on Keats. NY23 should be cause for celebration because it’s not 2022. But without wishing to piss on anybody’s chips, the deafening silence on Brexit on both sides of the political divide reminds us why things will probably get a whole lot worse.
The characteristic of the British is “the mood of those who have made their bargain with fate and are content to take what it offers without re-opening the deal”, wrote the historian Richard Tawney. If only this infuriating national trait stopped at Brexit, but it goes further. Astonishingly, some pollsters are suggesting the Tories might still win the next election despite everything, with voters even now wavering. If numbers of people are still willing to vote Conservative, then Thomas Jefferson’s “The government you elect is the government you deserve” holds true.
So 2023 could be The Rise of Rishi. Shiny, sleek, made from some rare-earth metal, it’s his utter belief in Money that’s so frightening. Unlike the Spaffer, he believes money has to be earned, but not by the sweat of your brow. You earn it with Maths. Just ask the Iron Chancellor.
This is the cold, dead-eyed world that those wavering voters might haplessly usher in next year.
It’s the vinyl countdown
As we spin into 2023 the million dollar question is whether vinyl records will, as predicted, become the largest physical (music) format in the market in terms of revenue. Millions of music lovers are getting into, or back to, the warm and mellow grooves of analogue.
Despite the old adage of never go back, there have been times when I’ve been tempted. It all got a bit biblical the other day following a rambling discussion with a fellow Dad in a certain gothic Lewes graveyard where I confessed to being tempted to buy a record player again.
It being late night Christmas shopping, later I found myself in a charity shop hunched over boxes of albums reconnecting with the soft caress of their finger-worn sleeves. The same friend I’d been talking to in the graveyard, was at my shoulder, like a latter day Mephistopheles, gently egging me on to return to the habit.
Perplexed and conflicted by my inexplicable urge to pay £10 for a copy of Joe Cocker’s double live Mad Dogs and Englishmen, and a Roxy album, both of which I’d sold for peanuts many moons ago, I sought solace in the scriptures. And specifically Jesus’s riposte to the Devil’s temptations with ‘It is written: Man shall not live on bread alone.’ I took this to be referring to the ubiquitous chazza shop staple The Best of Bread and cried “Get behind Me, Satan. For you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men”. Actually, it was more like “Get behind me Ed. For you do not have in mind how little I received for these albums when I sold them for beer money”.
New Year’s resolutions: Nein Danke
I’ve never been one for New Year resolutions on the basis that it’s like signing up for a hairshirt or reading Ulysses. You’re setting yourself up for a fall, and worse, another blow to your self-esteem when you fall short, or recidivate.
And tbh I’ve always considered self-denial, delayed gratification and self-improvement to be overrated. Carpe diem and all that. Better to go with what you’ve got and make the most of it, even if it’s the best of a bad job. And it’s been a relief this year to detect a shift away from all that resolution stuff. But maybe there’s a sense that 2022 was so grim we all need to go a bit easy on ourselves.
The early January release of the film Corsage has been a timely reminder of the strictures that can bind us by conforming to norms. Corsage is a fictional account of one year in the life of Empress Elisabeth of Austria. The corsage/corset she wears that’s tied ever tighter is a metaphor for the constrictions of a life of privilege but no power.
Within her small sphere, she can make demands of her ladies-in-waiting. But outside her rooms, she is constantly being told what to do by her husband and her son. Coming out of the film it was hard not to relate to her sense of oppression. Brexit, dissing nurses, things getting tighter. The antidote? Go easy on yourselves, all you out there, if you can.
