A Beacon of Light to the World

Long have we laboured in grim silence our service unhallowed and unseen.  How many weary months did we drag aching bodies to the pitface and hack futilely at the exposed vein without hope of reward or acknowledgement?  While we're on the subject of hacking futilely at exposed veins I must remember to sharpen my kitchen knives.

Now all that sweat, pain and futile desperation has been rewarded.  A year, shiny and new, has been bestowed upon us from on high.  The travails of 2015 are firmly behind us hounded out by a dreadful New Years show from our national broadcaster which seems to forget that almost nobody finds it as entertaining as it does itself.

Yes, a new year glittering in its promise and magnificent in its unspoiled beauty slips across our work hunched shoulders like the softest of blankets bringing comfort and ease to a desperate people.  No longer will we have to make do with that tattered, shop soiled 2015 for here is the new model to give us hope and widen tear drowned eyes with joy. 

The people cry out in gratitude as the benevolent lords of all grant this, the greatest of all favours.  No price can be put on such munificence.  A year, an entire year the blankest of blank pages and renewal for the earth.  Hallelujah for we are saved!  From the smallest child to the elderly closest to death we rejoice.  The child will no longer have to grow up in that wretched 2015 of evil memory, the oldest can expire at peace, content with the knowledge that they lived to see the promised day arrive.

Well now its here.  In fact its been here for six days already.  Where's the world peace?  The mass prosperity?  The environmental restoration somehow compatible with providing seven billion people with a comfortable existence?  This year sucks!  We have been totally ripped off!  I demand answers, I demand apologies and most of all I demand compensation for my emotional suffering.

This is apparently a real thing.  Emotional suffering can now be given a dollar value.  Pretty soon you'll be able to trade it on the stock exchange.  The next financial crisis will no doubt be caused by the manipulation of the trauma futures market. 

In the meantime I suppose we're stuck with this year despite the fact that its already a wretched disappointment.  Back to the pitface guys and don't worry.  2017 is coming.  Then everything will be amazing.