New Year Thoughts

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The death-knell is tolling for 2015, and although this is a time for reflecting on the year just passed, it's also a time for looking ahead. In fact, it's probably better to be looking toward 2016 at the moment. This can be a depressing time of the year, what with the Northern Hemisphere winter and all those Xmas stresses, so dreaming of what may be is likely to be a cheerier idea than reliving all those disappointments and fears of the year just gone. 2016 has been designated as the International Year of Pulses by the UN. Pulses, by the way, are protein-packed seed crops like dried peas and beans which are high in nutritional content and pretty easy to grow. While this may not sound as exciting as ending a war, the UN is hoping that greater awareness of and investment in pulses will save at least as many lives. I wonder how many wars will end in 2016? It's hard to see anything being resolved in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Burundi, Palestine, Northern Pakistan, Somalia, the Ukraine, Sudan, CAR, or any of those places with internecine conflicts too insignificant for the West to notice. And if recent trends continue, chances are we'll be adding a few more names to the list in 12 months time. When the dust settles, those pulses are going to come in handy, I suspect. 2016 is also going to be a Monkey year. Chinese New Year kicks off on Feb 8, and for people born in an earlier monkey year it's supposed to be a time of bad luck. Never fear, though: websites are up and running to help with this if your age is divisible by 12. Um, maybe looking forward isn't such a great idea? For my own part, I won't be making any New Year resolutions (I'd never keep them anyway) but I am going to designate 2016 my Personal Year of Trying New Things. I'm not yet sure what those might be, though I doubt folk-dancing will be on the agenda.