I suppose it is inevitable that one is ruminative as the old year passes into the new.
At our Christmas Eve dinner, we were encouraged to reflect on what the experience of 2016 has been. It has been a ghastly year. The first since 1979, in my adult lifetime, when there has been a big shift in the public and political mood towards the unpredictability and ominousness of the future and the possible irrationality and destructiveness of democratic choice: moving away from the postwar European settlement, formed in order to prevent the possibility of there ever being another European war; a strange, hoodlum President taking the helm of what has been considered the greatest country in the world.
On the other hand, I’m enjoying slipping into the New Year with Waterlog: A Swimmer’s Journey through Britain as Roger Deakin describes ever more adventurous and arduous swims, off the coast of Dorset, in the Dales of Yorkshire and now on Jura. There are more books to look forward to, by Deakin and other authors.
| Charles | Saumarez | Smith | 
Yes, let us hope that 2017 is not as ghastly as 2016 : I’m quietly optimistic notwithstanding Trump etc.
But there WERE really good things about 2016 – shows at the RA, especially the Abstract Expressionists; progress on 6 Burlington Gardens and David Chipperfields’s theatre; the wonderful atmosphere at the RA, thanks to you, Christopher and Richard Carew Pole; and, not least your Blog which has invariably given me daily pleasure. THANK YOU. I look forward to the Book in April.
And I expect that goes for all your readers .. .. ..
HAPPY NEW YEAR !
Dear Mark, Thank you ! I was going to say some of these things myself, but it sounded self-serving. Happy New Year to you, too. Charles
Don’t be too pessimistic, Charles. After all, we survived Thatcher and Regan, between them both hoodlum and destructive. And in spite of Thatcher we still have ‘society’ and, in most places in the UK, a good sense of community and neighbourliness. The big risk is that inequality and poverty will be increased still further by stateless global capitalism and the rich will fail to live up to the responsibilities that come with privilege.