I noticed in one of the dafter end newspapers – or slush comics as my Grandfather used to call them – that a woman was predicting next year’s election results by consulting some asparagus. While I’m not an enemy of innovation, I think that in this case she’s gone a step too far. Asparagus is notoriously unreliable for predictions of this nature and nothing will shake me in my conviction that if you’re trying to predict the weather or discover whether rich uncle Barry will see the night out, your truest, most reliable guide is a a bit of seaweed. Hung under the rafters, it will also protect you from marauding sea elephants with 100% success.
There’s no secret to predicting the future. You just need to think about the present; place the piece of seaweed in a warm saucer of freshly collected seawater and take a deep breath; inbreathing its healing, slightly rotten fishy, sewage, perfume and exhaling – if at all possible without gagging. Then all you need to do is repeat hum de ha, hum de ho in a low and thoughtful manner and let the future flood into your mind; a spring tide of effluent and used condoms.
Alternatively you could read the newspapers or – as in my case - ask around. New Year’s Eve is possibly not the best time to ask the Potwell Inn regulars what’s going to happen because by 22.30 most of them won’t remember their names. So here, in stone cold sobriety, are a few of mine. The first few come as hybrids between resolutions and predictions, but I console myself with the knowledge that hybrids are often extremely vigorous.
- The Potwell Inn has already made it to 1000 posts
- We will reach 1000,000 (one million) words in 2024 – by my calculation in 41 weeks if I carry on writing at the same rate. However if I achieve the next objective it could be sooner.
- So 205 average sized posts would get me there – and I could be home by the Winter Solstice or –
- I could increase the length or frequency of posting and get there by the Autumn Equinox
Which all feeds into a conviction that I should be writing in longer form; not Lord of the Rings, but short story length – maybe 2,500 words, which will take some practice and patience (especially on Madame’s part) because they’ll each take between two and a half and three hours to write. I remember the story of a world famous golfer who was told by an admirer that he was incredibly lucky to be so gifted and replied that it was odd, but the more he practiced the luckier he seemed to get. Blogging – however unfashionable it may be these days – is hard work and it relies on having a real and full life outside the froth of narcissism that afflicts so many would be influencers. So many blogs with the germ of a good idea crash and burn within a year because the writer has nothing to say. The best advice I could give is to work hard and treat youth and beauty as just a phase you’re passing through. So, dear readers, I hope you’ll hang on through the inevitable turbulence of me doing something new. The one thing I can promise is that the Potwell Inn will be at the heart of it all.
But enough of that navel gazing. What is the seaweed saying about next year? Inevitably these are UK predictions because seaweed works on ultra high frequency and without kryptonite repeater stations on tiny islands it doesn’t do intercontinental predictions. I think that Labour will win the General Election which will be in May, but I also think the majority will be much smaller than they hope because they haven’t, so far, come up with any decent ideas. I very much hope that the Greens can win a few more seats and that the Tories will be routed. I would then set the present Cabinet to work as couriers, Deliveroo drivers and Amazon workers. Those refusing would be set to dig coal with their bare hands for 90 hours a week, carry it across the top of a mountain in unwieldy baskets and then tip it down a redundant shaft. When the second shaft was full the process would be reversed. I think this could work even better than my previous plan to force them to perform a live re-enactment of Rodin’s Burghers of Calais statue, outside parliament, with free rotten fruit funded by inheritance tax rises.
As a corollary to the above I predict that Green issues will begin, at last, to come to the fore and that the demand for SUV’s will begin to fall because they will evoke shame and disgust rather than envy. There may also be a sudden increase in lentil sales and that packets will have to be marked for food use only!
The Metropolitan Police will have to intervene to stop violent disorder between the thirteen Tory family factions that emerge from the general election and then they will arrest one another en masse for being horrible. Eton, Harrow and Westminster Schools will finally realize their destiny and become approved schools for the delinquent children of ultra processed food millionaires. Keir Starmer will refer the whole mess to a public enquiry chaired by Dominic Cummings.
Enough, enough! It’s been a horrible year and we’ve had COVID twice and I only have to see a newsreader on TV to have an AF attack. . Everything that we once treasured is being trashed by a government that behaves like a bunch of teenagers on a post GCSE holiday in Rock (that’s a bit subtle I know) and we just want a bit of hope; something to cling to that suggests that the great ship of state has finally grounded itself on the reef called reality; a metaphor worthy of the great Humphrey Littleton, I think. What’s left except to have a drink or three tonight and wish one another a happy new year without crossing our fingers behind our backs for the first time in over a decade.