What was that all about?

Here we are on the 27th and it is all over bar the shouting and the singing of the fat lady. All that overindulgence will be replaced with a yearning for something other than turkey, and as the mail comes back to life tomorrow, the bills will trickle in along with the notifications of the January sales. The shops will soon be full again, with people trying to exchange things that are too small, the wrong colour or just in utter bad taste. Within a day or two though, some will be bracing themselves for the last night of the year - a chance to wear silly clothes and to drink to ridiculous excess before making resolutions that are repeats of the previous year's, and then 2010 will begin the teenies in an optimistic way, short lived though that might be.

It is a scary thought that I have seen (just), seven decades so far and next week it will be eight. I can't say that any of them was remarkable, though the changes that have taken place have been incredible. In my lifetime virtually everything has changed and not all of it for the worse. I have lived through most of the history of pop music for example. I was born at a good time for that, being an incipient teen when the Beatles and the rest of those bands raised pop music into a wonderfully creative and original art form. Since then, the likes of Simon Cowell has managed to transform it into mass produced plastic pap, an artistic equivalent to Christmas cracker contents made in China. Pretty soon the people's Republic will be exporting our entertainment along with everything else that is cheap and nasty.

I have seen the rise in Information Technology from the first hand held calculators to the amazing if frustrating broadband internet connections that we now take for granted. Photography, access to music, you name it, has all been transformed by easy access for everyone, and now most people have digital cameras, iPods and mobile phones, none of which was even conceivable when I was a child. Now of course it is hard to find something to strive for. When everyone has everything they want, where do we go from there?

I was dragged up to believe that if you wanted something, you saved for it and debt was seen as unacceptable. Such training has a way of sticking and even now I hate owing anyone anything. I guess that I am fortunate that I have no debts but I have always tried to live within my means. Now people are encouraged to take on debt by the banks and credit card companies, to the extent that they are taking on new debts in order to pay off the ones they already have. It is no wonder that our economy is in such a bad state. Capitalism seems to have reached it's logical conclusion. Infinite growth is neither possible nor desirable.

Well there - probably my last rant of the year. I have been less than regular lately and must endeavour to be more organised with my life. Gosh that sounds like a resolution of the kind that I never make.