I shall come to the blog title shortly, first the recap. After a quiet day, we headed to Sophie and Dom’s for Boxing day dinner. Matt was charged with preparing the appetisers and as one recipe was quite fiddly, we were a little late. Joining us were Hervé and Elizabeth, two of the wards that Sophie occasionally cares for.
Matt’s appetisers were spinach and parmesan balls, and cherry tomatoes stuffed with a creamy cheesy sauce. To follow, Sophie made a fondue au bouillon, a variant on the traditional, melted cheese dish. The liquid is a stock made with white wine, and you dunk raw bits of chicken into it to cook. Hervé and Elizabeth made a sponge cake apiece for dessert: one a lemon curd and one chocolate. We left there very full at around 11.30pm.
The next few days will be very quick to resume: nothing happened. After our hectic run of socialising, we crashed to a halt on the 27th and did extremely little until the 31st. The weather’s been mostly been mild, but dreary and rainy. We had one cold night when it hit minus three – our first frost in weeks. On Sunday, it hit a balmy 13 and was sunny. For once, even the increasingly large Smeagol got out to enjoy the day.
We spent NYE around Manu & Mathilde’s along with quite a crowd. In attendance were Olivier and Sylvie plus their kids, Gael & Corinne, Mathilde’s cousin and her partner and Ulysses & Odille. Everyone contributed a dish or two and something to drink. Matt’s contribution was a repeat of the spinach and cheese balls, and a shredded spicy chicken dip in a creamy, cheesy sauce. We ended up staying until around 3am, getting quite inebriated along the way, with the traditional champagne toast at midnight, and lots of dancing.
Needless today, we were in no fit state yesterday, which was spent in pain and on sofas. And that concludes the story of our week, and for that matter, of 2017! And now, a digression. Around this time last year, I wrote a blog post called Reasons to be Optimistic, in which I celebrated the end of the Cursed Year that was 2016, and looked to the year ahead with some hope. In retrospect, 2017 was little better, with the twin horror shows of Trump and Brexit raining down misery upon misery. Meanwhile, Europe was ravaged by terrorist attacks, the US experienced yet more horrific shootings, emboldened white supremacists resurged, and the threat of conflict with North Korea became increasingly real.
There were, however, some things to cheer: the Eurozone economy is booming, and France under Macron feels like a shining beacon of hope and progress. What’s more, in 2018 I think we’ll have even more to celebrate. This is the year that the nightmares of Brexit and Trump both meet with cold, hard reality.
For Trump, this takes the form of the mid-term elections in November, for which he and his party are looking to be in poor shape. Obviously much could happen between now and the end of the year, but it seems likely the Democrats will win the House, which will go some way to restoring some balance and some sanity.
Far more interesting though, is the Mueller investigation. We don’t know yet when this will conclude, or whose scalps it will claim along the way. But it does feel like there’s an ever-tightening noose around the whole Trump administration and I am sure we can look forward to some major fireworks in the months to come.
Meanwhile in Britain, 2017 proved to be largely catastrophic for the cult of brexit. Brexiteers began the year in total control. A chilling speech from Theresa May in January made it clear she was adopting the most extreme interpretation of brexit and was seeking to sever all ties with the EU.
However, over the course of the year, she and her government lurched comically from own goal to disaster, even losing their majority in a pointless election along the way. From initially saying the EU could “go whistle” for its demands, the UK ultimately agreed to every one of them. Meanwhile, the pound lost 20% in value, the UK economy stalled, and a terrifying labour crisis is building up.
It’s distressing that despite all the evidence of the massive damage brexit is doing (and this before it’s even happened), that public support for it is largely unchanged. There has been a distinct shift to Remain, but it is small and progress is slow. But I fully expect that to change in 2018. Brexit-leaning politicians have been able to trade on lies and propaganda so far, promising all the benefits of membership without the costs. When the final deal is struck, these promises will be laid bare and the country will have a stark choice to make. The simple fact is that whatever deal they end up with will be vastly inferior to what they have now. Once this becomes obvious, all bets are off the table. All we need then is the mechanism: either a 2nd referendum, a general election, or an act of parliament. Any of these is possible in 2018, as long as public opinion backs it.
And crucially, the Irish border issue remains both unsolved and unsolvable. This alone has the power to kill brexit in its tracks.
So here’s to the year of the fightback.