Balls to you, 2016
If you are reading this, then thank fuck, sweet baby Jesus, and all of the angels because that means it is January and we have made it out of 2016, as unlikely as it seemed at times.
Bloody hell, though. Has there ever been a more agonisingly drawn out and traumatic year? The deaths of pretty much everyone who ever made any kind of cultural contribution to the world (apart from you and me, obviously), terrorism, Syria, Brexit, the terrifying rise and election success of That Trump Thing, not to mention the number of times Michael Gove’s face appeared without any kind of warning. Logging onto social media began to be accompanied by an involuntary flinch and duck to avoid whatever technicolour yawn of bad news had just been fountained into our lives.
It wasn’t all bad though. OK, it was mostly bad, occasionally terrible, with a few doses of End Times, but if you ignore the outside world, then Norwich itself wasn’t too shabby. We made it into about 73 ‘best places to live/work/study/go out/stay in/move to/never leave/this city owns your soul now’ lists, the Millennium Library is still one of the most used in the country (which means that we are officially more intelligent than everyone else, because I say so), Alan Partridge came to visit, our response to Brexit was to give serious consideration to establishing our own EU city state, and local venue The Owl Sanctuary was saved thanks to the beautiful, generous, shiny people of this city who gave the traditional Norvicensian response of ‘Closed down? Bugger that!’
Oh, and then there was Balls. Ed Balls. Our very own Ed Balls. A one man mission to bring some kind of joy to 2016, via the medium of squirmingly embarrassing dance. The only man who seemed to make anyone happy during the hell mouth of a year we have endured. The only man to unite a nation in a state of dumbfounded shock at what we were witnessing. It’s ok, it’s over now. We’ve reached the New Year. Balls to you, 2016.
