Well, thats 2002 out of the way. All these things are very subjective and a year is inevitably curates eggish, but that was a motherfucker of a year and I am only too pleased to have got through it intact. I am talking emotionally and in terms of career here, not in terms of being a terrorist victim.
Personally, I have had some of my best times in this passing year, Nipper number one is an inspiration really, he takes things on and gives them a really good go. He decided to knock the football on the head but his karate and swimming came on in leaps and bounds as if to compensate. The footballing bullys are now his mates and it could so easily have gone the other way, and he is the sweetest natured most naive nipper you could ever meet. He takes after his mother.
The other two have grown apace too, the daughter is beautiful and sweet and funny and wilfull, to watch her grow and develop could almost make you believe in a deity. The nipperest nipper is a little sod, but again he has grown and developed. Admittedly into a little hooligan, a baby faced assassin but he has you in stitches constantly. I am told he looks and behaves like me when I was 2, what the chuff happened?
We had our best ever family holiday and I cannot imagine it ever being bettered; if next years is even half as good, we will have a fantastic holiday. Christmas in our house was the stuff of dreams and Jimmy Stewart movies, and the season continues, tomorrow should be good. So I should be ecstatic.
But, there is so much more.
Big events like holidays and Christmas are good because me and Mrs Buddha are prepared to put up with shit elsewhere. I often refer tongue in cheek to my gaffer, THE FUCK FACED COWBAG. The reality is that the work situation is very, very bad and I really don't know how I get through from week to week without killing someone. There are couple of us old style major dudes who moan constantly but guess who is the mug who speaks up, every time?? Still, I have made a pal. A guy who has been around even longer than me has turned out to be a good mate, and we never knew each other till the teams merged.

We try to subvert the bastards subtly. This year coming has the potential to be even worse than the last one, they have settled in now, but the oil rag is more pissed off than us with the FFC. Hah! I will have to re read Machiavelli.
Then there is Bush and Blair and complicity in previous atrocities and the certanty that war is coming and thousand upon thousand of people, including nippers as cute as mine will meet a grisly and distressing end and I despair.
Have a good one.