As 2020 draws to a close and nights press ever more closely, it’s a fitting pagan response to confound the darkness with light. Evergreen Christmas trees offer hope that life can continue even when other trees stand silently skeletal in death. This all provides a fitting metaphor as this year of all years turns towards its final days. The origins of covid-19 may never be discovered, but the inhumanity of man to the other poor animal souls that share this planet is surely partly to blame. The rise of populist leaders around the world who promise so much and only deliver broken promises, starvation and death is suitably biblical even as a rare conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter form a ‘Christmas Star’ – last seen in 1623.
My next book is finished and waiting for submission, I have another to complete and then in 2021 I hope to start a new novel. It’s called making up for lost time – not that time was ever lost, more a case of time being in short supply and getting more so.
One thing a pandemic teaches us is not to take the simple pleasures for granted. Even meeting friends for a meal, going out for a gig or simply driving somewhere new for a walk seem like impossible goals at the moment. Thanks to Bill Gates and his microchip enhanced vaccines* 2021 is looking more hopeful.
To all my blog readers, (maybe one or two of you on a good day), have a safe and happy holiday and I wish you all the very best for 2021.
* Satire
Andrew James Greig - Writer 