The words 'pride' and 'fall' come to mind when I think about the future…or at least what was my immediate future when I wrote my 2019 Christmas cards.
2020 was sorted. A couple of our beloved train trips in Europe, festivals, gigs, family visits. How was I going to fit it all in with a job I loved as well? Wasn't I lucky to have that dilemma?
And didn't John Lennon’s 'life is what happens while you're busy making plans' ever seem more apposite?
Was there some prescience in the setting of this year's subject? Because all that certainty about the future flew out of the window on the day I was sent home from work...for being old.
Old? Moi? In terms of mere numbers I had to admit I was on borrowed time – at least if you think of three score years and ten as being all you're actually entitled to. But I didn't feel old (who does?) and people said I didn't look old (and what does old look like anyway?). I was fortunate with my health – indeed with my genes, having grandparents and parents who lived and are living to grand old ages – and had been blithely assuming I still had plenty of time to do all the things I wanted to do.
And then the future suddenly became problematic. Apparently I was too vulnerable to even go out and certainly couldn't work for the time being.
So there I was at home, forced to confront the fact that not only had my current plans been abruptly cancelled but danger lurked and my future, like everyone else's, had become uncertain. Indeed, the only certainty was that life, 'going forward' as the modern jargon has it, would never be the same again.
That was okay though. Not being very good with routine and quite relishing the unexpected and serendipitous, I didn't find that thought too irksome. I'd never really thought too much about the future, happy, mostly, to let it take its course.
And as 'lockdown' became a way of life and others fretted about plans thwarted I counted my blessings, living as I do in a beautiful place with plenty of space around. I had no financial pressures, no young children to worry about. In fact life at home changed very little: it was simply a case of sitting it out.
However, while I'd always been optimistic that there were lots of adventures still to be had, I became aware that as the weeks went on I was slowly beginning to hear 'time's winged chariot hurrying near' a little more loudly than usual. The older you are, the more impact months of restrictions will inevitably make in terms of what time you have left. Perhaps my chickens were coming home to roost and I was being taught a hard lesson about ignoring the 'deserts of vast eternity' that lie ahead.
But then they always do. Whether you're seven, seventeen or seventy we're all heading in the same direction. In which case, the only way to deal with the future is to concentrate on the present, counter-intuitive as that may seem.
I shall be doing as many of the things I love to do – walking, reading, listening to music, dancing, watching films, talking to friends and family – for as long as I can do them and when opportunities I can't even imagine from here come up I will say 'yes please' and see where that takes me.
As the great Ursula Le Guin said, 'The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next.'
My future? Who knows and who cares who knows? I'm sticking my fingers in my ears, singing 'la la la' and continuing to ignore those eternal deserts. That chariot will arrive eventually. Why worry about when?
Concrete plans, actually booking tickets for train journeys or gigs, may have to be on hold: no more smug confidence about what I'll be doing next month, next year, let alone for the number of years I have left but then as recent events suggest, wasn't that confidence always misplaced?
Meanwhile, the only guarantee about my future is that there will be joy and laughter and fun, there will be sadness and pain and grief, there will be friends and family, there will be journeys and there will be music. There will be disappointment and frustration, there will be success and achievement and there will be surprises – especially surprises.
As long as the sun comes up every day there will be something...bring it on.