Predicting the New Year

PHEW! We’re nearly there.  2013 is just days away and since we have survived the gastronomic onslaught of Christmas as well as the Mayans’ forecast of apocalyptic doom last Friday (21st December), there appears to be a good chance that we will actually make it.

So what can we expect from the coming year?  Will it be a lucky 13th year of the second millennium and slither smoothly in line with the Chinese zodiac of the Snake?

It so happens that a friend recently showed me how to ‘read’ coffee residue and I have become fiendishly good at predicting the future; so armed with a packet of Segafredo’s finest and a rather large cup, I am delighted to share the lay of the land in 2013:

Royal baby joy fills the world, with great-grandma pictured knitting baby socks for the new-born through a paparazzi zoom lens.  In a bid to save the bedraggled euro, the EU decide to rename the currency ‘neuro’ and to welcome newcomer Croatia in July. All countries agree to assume their fiscal and monetary policies, since, frankly, the current ones didn’t really work anyway.

Policemen look even younger and launch their first miracle anti-ageing cream called ‘The Force’.  Fashion models turn invisible after losing even more weight.  Budget airlines introduce the new standing ticket, and charge for oxygen masks.  Russian Oligarchs jointly solve the world’s economic woes by donating loose change from their pockets.

Closer to home, like me, you will fully realise your new year’s resolutions:

1. In 2013 I shall drink less, maybe even taking a whole month off the sauce.  Starting after that New Year’s party, oh, and after King’s Day, of course…Then there is Uncle John’s birthday party… Oh, well.

2. My body will be a temple; I shall eat more vegetables and fruit than a herd of rabbits.  None of these nasty E additives, hydrogenated fats or genetically modified nonsense for me.  I may not live longer, but it will certainly feel like it.

3. I shall enrich my life with a new exciting hobby, just need to work out which one…That dancing lark looks like a breeze on TV, or maybe this is the year to perfect my back-hand or golf stroke.

4. I will dust off that gym membership and trainers and pound the treadmill, which will help me squeeze into those clothes I bought a size too small with good intentions…

5. Next year, for sure, I will be bantering with the locals in perfect castellano or catalan. Failing that, I will resort to a bit of Spanglish. It’s all about getting the ball over the net when it comes to communication, after all.

6. I will get to grips with all those horrid bills, tax declarations and other evil paperwork and not let it build up like the leaning tower of Pisa on my desk, or hidden in a drawer in deference to the ‘out of sight, out of mind’ principle.

So that’s it. Next year in a nutshell for you. Just one more forecast; in 2013, news reports of an Unidentified Flying Object are later confirmed to be the world’s first flying pig. 

I am all out of coffee residue now and I must rush off to open a bottle of wine. It is still 2012 after all and in the spirit of ‘no time like the present’…

I wish you all a very Happy New Year. Cheers!