I remember Queen Elizabeth making a speech many years ago, where she said it was an “annus horribilis”. I just looked it up and it was 1992. I thought it was more recent than that but obviously time has flown by. That was nearly 30 years ago now.
Was this year – 2022 – going to be another annus horribilis? The past two years have felt pretty ordinary, so much so that I think I wouldn’t be alone in thinking surely we’re due for a break and this year would be better.
Covid continued its devastation and ravaged the start of the year with Omicron. Kabul/Afghanistan, China’s aggression, Putin’s bloody mindedness, and closer to home, ScoMo’s floundering. As worrying and disturbing as all of those were, none of them touched so many raw nerves as what happened between last Friday night and Saturday morning.
I woke up very early on Sat morning (for a pee) and couldnt go straight back to sleep. So I scrolled through my phone and caught someone saying how sad it is, to lose a great cricket icon. I think it was Jane Hume, the Victorian senator who made that post on FB. I thought she was talking about Rod Marsh but it would have been a bit unusual, as she is often very quick off the mark and Rod Marsh’s passing was nearly 24 hours ago (at that time). Then I caught that she was saying Shane Warne. I couldn’t believe what I saw and I looked up a few more sources and it was true. It blew me away. I turned to Tress and whispered to her “Shane Warne has died”. She muttered something to the effect that she was shocked.
For the rest of Sat morning, little else crossed my mind. That single news item overwhelmed the media. The greatest cricketer in the last 20-30 years, one of the all time greats, who was in the prime of his after-playing years, is gone. Only 52 years old. His commentary has been my goto – I always listened with more interest when he made observations in the course of a match. He was so very engaging and a great communicator.
I then thought about Sim several times that morning. Life can indeed be – is – fleeting. I also remembered Shelley’s line in Adonais that said something about life being a multicoloured dome that interrupted the radiance of a white light. I looked it up. It reads like so:
The One remains, the many change and pass;
Heaven’s light forever shines, Earth’s shadows fly;
Life, like a dome of many-colour’d glass,
Stains the white radiance of Eternity,
Until Death tramples it to fragments.—Die,
If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek!
Follow where all is fled!—Rome’s azure sky,
Flowers, ruins, statues, music, words, are weak
The glory they transfuse with fitting truth to speak.
How has life become so frantic I can no longer think or try to write like that. I have even lost the inclination to look up verses like that…
Closer to home, Tress had a tough day at work yesterday. Two of her colleagues have resigned. Both are her higher ups, and had been responsible for selecting and implementing a new ERP system that has dogged the organisation for the worse part of last year and has continued to wreak havoc in 2022. Yesterday, the little Padawan picked up a nasty bug while at the oval and came home in a sickly way. He got sick several times and looked a sad thing for the most part of the night. He was better this morning but right through yesterday, I wondered how tough 2022 has been. Would it be another annus horribilis? Or would the Lord relent? My reading at this time is the book of Job. I guess that just sort of nails the theme and I need to just keep my head down and let the Lord be God, and remind myself that I’m not.
Ante 