There is some debate among the intelligentsia that the new decade is this time next year.
After all, a new-born child is not one until a year after its birth.
But I don’t care. Remembering to write 2020 is enough of a challenge. It looks like a new decade to me.
Now that I think of it, the days of remembering to write the new year on cheques is long past. I might write one cheque a year at the most, having used internet banking for nearly a decade. I don’t write letters but am a prodigious emailer and they don’t require a date. Texts don’t need a date. When you think about it, writing the date and remembering it’s a new year is a thing of the past.
It was 20 years ago we camped on top of Marlow Hill with several mates and all our kids to watch the new millennium come into being. We might have been a year early but we weren’t troubled about splitting hairs and nor was anyone else.
We counted down as we watched across Central Hawke’s Bay and wondered what impact Y2K would have. No lights went out, no explosions, nothing other than fireworks on other hilltops. Only Helen’s digital camera refused to take any more photos until reassured the world had not come to an abrupt end.
It was cold that night with a brisk northerly blowing at us.
This New Year’s Eve Jane and I spent with friends at a beach. It was chilly as well with one of the causes being a cooling effect from the smoke from the Australian bush fires in our upper atmosphere reckoned to lower our recent temperatures by up to two degrees. There’s some irony in that fact given the 30C to 40C days the Aussies are experiencing, which, along with the winds and ongoing drought, have fanned these appalling fires.
However, they have again shown how formidable they are on the cricket field on their own turf.
I know a lot of folk who went to the Boxing Day test in Melbourne and I envied them at the time. One mate left a grumpy wife and daughters behind as he winged across the Tasman on Christmas Day.
I did something rash myself. I’ve always been anti-gambling. Puritan even. Not from a religious perspective, just because I reckon it’s a mug’s game. The house will always win. You want to have a decent gamble? Buy shares in Sky City. Better to work for your money than think you will get lucky doing it easy.
I’ve never placed a bet, nor have I bothered to buy a Lotto ticket.
But after Perth I was sure the Black Caps would lift themselves. I heard the odds for a draw were seven to one. I agonised whether to break a lifelong pledge. I decided it would be the easiest $700 I’d ever make and sought advice on how to place a bet.
Now $100 poorer, I’ve learned my lesson and won’t ever trouble the TAB again.
I watched a red sun sink below the eastern hills on New Year’s Eve.
On a hunch I rose early and went down onto the beach at dawn on this first day of the new year.
Sure enough, a blood-soaked sun rose up from beyond the waves.
Its light refracted through smoke from fires over 2000 kilometres to our west.
Great forests, wildlife, homes, farms, livestock and even people’s ashes wafting on the wind.
All that pain and anguish and yet here was a marvel of nature.
I was joined by a man walking his dog and we stood and watched that crimson orb rise.
“All in a hot and cooper sky, the bloody sun at noon, right up above the mast did stand no bigger than the moon.”
A stanza drubbed into my mind by a headmaster determined to teach me some worth.
“Coleridge,” said my beach companion. “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.”
“Perhaps it is indeed the end of days,” I said to my literary mate.
“In which case maybe we should make the most of this day on the off chance.”
He continued his walk with the dog and I went back to sit and watch that sun climb on its celestial path.
