Walking Still…

It’s grey windy and wet right now at 10.20AM so perhaps I won’t bother going for a walk today. I have been walking 7 miles day on most days for months now and that, plus weight-training over the last few weeks, is starting to give me periods when I’m completely knackered. The body needs to catch up.

Meanwhile, over the last few weeks, Spring has sprung. The snowdrops have finished flowering and now daffodils and primroses have opened. On some days I’ve even been able to head off with just T-shirt and jeans.

It’s been the same route every time: out of my house, by road down to Althorne Station, across the track and down to a marina by the river Crouch, along beside the river then up to Althorne and back by road. Each time during this walk I’ve seen the steady progress of this conversion of a water tower into a house.

Interesting views and all that, but it’ll be a lot nicer walking in the mountains of Crete. There I’ll start taking some different routes and start regularly walking some of the gorges.  

Second Eye Operation

I went back to Harley Street for my second operation on Friday the 13th – not an auspicious day if you believe in that nonsense. This time I took a camera in the hope of getting some shots of the procedure, so be warned if you’re squeamish – the shot of me in a hair net is quite horrible.

When I arrived there I was still slightly worried about the cloudiness in the eye that had been operated on. I use the word ‘cloudiness’ rather than ‘blur’ because it wasn’t as if I was straining to focus but to see through a dirty glass. After a chat with my surgeon Mr Samer Hamada (a guy whose letters after his name are about twice as long as his name) and his inspection of my eye, I felt reassured. Swelling from the surgery causes astigmatism until it goes down and there are also debris in the eye that take a while to clear. Sometimes these debris stick to the lens but can be quickly cleared at a later date with what’s called a YAG laser – this takes just a few minutes.

Also noticeable during this consultation was when he checked what I could read on a card. I could read even some of the small print not commonly used. The vision in that eye is improving daily.

Anyway, after a bit of a wait I had the drops in my second eye then, after a further wait went into surgery. I handed the camera over to one of the nurses and climbed onto the surgical table. Same procedure as before, obviously, though slightly different pains and lots more fluid squirted in. Maybe he was making sure to be rid of as much of the debris as possible.

Afterwards my vision had improved noticeably – there certainly didn’t seem to be any of the cloudiness as from the first operation. I went home, put my eye drops in then later found myself even able to read the text on my Ipad without strain. I later went to bed with two eye shields on and looking like a bug.

The next day things were a bit blurry but I didn’t let it worry me. I took a train into London yet again for an inspection at the Optimax clinic in Finchley Road. Everything was still looking good. This morning I’ve seen another improvement and suspect that the slight blurriness I now have is due to the scotch I drank last night rather than the surgery.

Later I’ll try to find a video animation I watched in the clinic yesterday showing in detail the procedures I’ve undergone. Can’t find it at the moment.

Eye Operation

A number of years ago, like most people heading into their 50s, I found that reading was starting to become difficult. Mostly it was a light thing. I picked up some +1.5 reading glasses which I used when the light was crappy and that is how it has always been. I could read in good light even when I moved to +2.5 and then admitted that my eyes still weren’t right and had them checked. About this time I suffered from a lot of styes mostly in one eye and it turned out that eye had developed astigmatism. Also it seemed my body had adjusted to the age-related inflexibility of my eye’s lenses by giving me one eye for reading and one for distance.

Because Caroline had had good results from laser eye surgery I went to see what could be done. Turns out that I had a choice: I could have my eyes lasered so I needed glasses only for reading or alternatively only for distance. Since I did not yet consider my distance vision sufficiently crappy I was a bit reluctant. Another alternative, at much higher cost, was refractive lens replacement. I booked to see the eye surgeon next time he was in the clinic but the appointment was cancelled because he wasn’t coming, so I just let it go. This was in 2012.
  

Over the ensuing years my vision worsened. The disparity between my eyes made it difficult to watch TV – I could read the time on the DVD player with one eye but not the other – and to drive at night. I ordered some glasses over the internet using my prescription but with the reading element taken off. These I used for driving at night, and then started to use for driving during the day. My eyes felt perpetually out of balance and tired.

Meanwhile, through my science reading, I learned about the new multi-focus lenses now being used in refractive lens replacement. So I decided to look into it again. I booked an appointment with Ultralase – where Caroline went – and learned that the clinic in Chelmsford had closed down. It turns out that Ultralase was bought out by Optimax and some clinics closed during the reorganisation. I went to a place in Southend and the results were much as before for laser, but by this time I was thinking what the hell, I’ll have the replacement lenses. The success rate for 20/20 vision is well into the upper 90%s and most failures can be corrected anyway. I am also aware that nothing is 100% and that usually the failures in any kind of surgery are with those who have something very seriously wrong or other health problems. Also the operation was a lot cheaper than previously quoted. And, in the end, an SF writer with cyborg eyes? Gotta be done. I paid the deposit and booked in.

The operations were to be in Harley Street – first one eye on the 6th February with a check-up in Southend on the 9th, second on the 13th with a check-up on the 14th (this time in London). I’ve now had the operation on my first eye. I was nervous about this and still wondering a little if I was doing the right thing. Were my eyes sufficiently bad for this? Would the result be a marked improvement or sort out the vision problems I had but just replace them with other drawbacks? I had read about problems with halos and adjustment to the change. In respect of eyes being sufficiently bad (or ripe for change) I learned from the surgeon that the earlier the better. The harder the lenses are when removed the higher the likelihood of damage to the eye during the operation.
After a talk with the surgeon and the signing of some ass-covering forms I sat in a room, had a x penned on my forehead to mark the eye to be operated on and drops put in to open the pupil to begin numbing it. I then went into the theatre where more drops were added and then some sticky fabric was used to hold my eyelids open. I was a bit worried because my eye did not feel numb at all. I could see nothing but three glaring lights. A nurse offered to hold my hand but I manned up and folded them on my chest. The surgeon began furtling about in my eye and I could see movement. He then told me the next bit was going to sting. It did. I could feel my eye being cut, but only briefly. More furtling ensued – painless – and then the operation came to an end. Briefly I noticed something: I could see individual diodes in two of those lights. Next an eye shield went on and I went into recovery – just a blood pressure check and five minutes sitting chatting to a nurse – then I headed off  home. In all I would classify this operation as much less traumatic than having a filling at the dentist.

My vision was heavily blurred and it was more comfortable to keep my eye closed. My eye felt as it does when you have a stye. I also felt quite tired afterwards – maybe stress. The blur remained throughout the day but even through it I can read the time on my DVD player, which I could do before with that eye. At one point I did notice halos but they’re not much of a bother. They only seem to be there when there is a bright light nearby. During daylight there is no sign of them. The blur reduces each time I put my eye drops in – two lots 4 times a day consisting of an antibiotic and an anti-inflammatory. Now, on the second day the blur has reduced by half, the eye more comfortable and I’m keeping it open more. I’ve popped a lens out of my reading glasses since wearing them makes the blur in that eye worse.

I’ll do some more blog posts about this later. I might even take a camera to my next operation to see if it’s possible to get a few pictures…     

Paul Di Filippo reviews Neal Asher – Locus Online

locus magazine banner
I particularly like this bit:
 “It’s a scenario that trembles on the edge of the Singularity while still being comprehensible to, and inhabitable by, the humans of the era and of course to us 21st-century dullards as well. Novelty and neologisms dominate nearly every page. Handled badly, such a strategy becomes confusing and frustrating. Asher does it well, though. And yet the reader needs to keep pace. There is just enough authorial guidance, but no condescending hand-holding. This type of SF is really the litmus test for separating serious readers from, say, media fans who might groove to Guardians of the Galaxy but blanch at A. E. van Vogt…”

Author AMA on Reddit

Well, I had no idea what an AMA was until a week or so ago. Apparently it is this:

About Science Fiction AMAs

AMA stands for “Ask Me Anything.” AMA threads on Reddit are basically an online interview where Redditors can ask questions to the writer or artist who made the post. It provides a way to interact with fans and the general Science Fiction community at large. Sometimes an AMA post is scheduled to coincide with the release of a new book or film, so the discussion is mostly focused on the new work. AMAs may also deal with a specific event and have multiple interviewees available for questions and comments.
AMAs are usually posted in the morning and run for a few hours on a single day. Some AMA-hosts are available to post replies all day long, but when time is short the thread is posted to set up the discussion, and then replies can be made when they return later in the day. That allows questions to be posted while the AMA-host is offline, and other Redditors can upvote popular questions to make it easier for the host to focus on popular topics. The AMA forum provides a very easy and direct way to connect with fans interested in the host and their work.
So, I’ll be doing an AMA on Wednesday 4th February at 11PM EST which is 5PM here in Britain. How it works i.e. whether you have to have a Reddit account to ask me questions and how you get to the page where I’m doing this AMA I don’t know. I’ll add to this post later as I find out.

Update 
Zebra Matt on Facebook has helpfully supplied some detail: 

OK, so at 5pm GMT you create your post on r/sciencefiction, and it’s just like creating a post on a forum so you’ll be able to grab the direct link and post it about. 

If someone wants to ask you something they need to have a Reddit account but setting one up is as easy as signing up to anything these days, and they can be totally anonymous, in case that’s an issue for some people.

After you create the post, folks will do one of two things – post a question or upvote someone else’s. Over the course of several hours this will result in a list of questions prioritised by majority voting. It is also possible to downvote, and by default posts with a low score won’t show up. And it’s also moderated manually, though they just deal with infractions of the rules.

Then you come back a few hours later and reply to the questions!
I guess this means I can’t post a link to it till I start…

You could tell interest parties to keep an eye onhttp://www.reddit.com/r/sciencefiction and pre-register and whatnot.

Also, I imagine once you’ve made the post, it’ll show up as the only hit on this search: 
http://www.reddit.com/r/sciencefiction/search…

reddit: the front page of the internet

So if you want to ask me some questions sign up to Reddit and get asking…

Update 2

Reddit AMA announcement here.

Forbidden Planet Signing

So, I turned up at the offices of Macmillan at about 12.20. I was a bit early but didn’t fancy mooching about the streets of London until it was time because it was bloody cold. After I’d signed in and sat down Louise Buckley came out to keep me company for a while. Only then did I spot my books in the display behind the reception desk.
Bella Pagan duly arrived and we headed out to a nearby pub/restaurant. A short while later the others arrived and an enjoyable 2 hour lunch ensued. From left to right these are James Long, Bella, Me, Julie Crisp and Sam Eades.

These guys had to go back to work afterwards so that left me at a loose end for a while. I took the tube over to Holborn and wandered towards Forbidden Planet, slipping into a pub called the Princess Louise for a glass of wine. There I was alone effectively in a booth by the bar so I had a stealthy vape or two. The barman spotted this and told me I could not do that in there. Fucking jobsworth. This annoyed me so I left. This, I decided, was probably a good thing because I did not want to turn up at my signing completely bladdered. I just turned in the opposite direction from Forbidden Planet and walked up High Holborn for half an hour as far as St. Paul’s before turning round and heading back.

I arrived at Forbidden Planet at about 5.20…
…and was conducted into their backroom offices. The décor there tells you precisely where you are, especially the aliens climbing out of the desk. 
The staff brought in a stack of my books to sign for pre-orders. Sam Eades turned up a little later for moral support as we waited for signing time. I had coffee and a chocolate biscuit, both of which I ended up abandoning when I was told there was a queue outside.

When I went out well there was a queue – about my first ever – but then I guess that’s what happens when you haven’t done a signing for 7 to 8 years. The first two guys here were collectors who had me sign 30 to 40 books. I recognised the first guy from a previous signing – tad unnerving to note he was right there are the front of the queue wearing surgical gloves!

The whole hour was used up signing books and standing up for photos. I’m told that out of 100 copies of Dark Intelligence there were 30 left. Whether the figures included those I signed for pre-order I don’t know. Here’s a few of the guys who were there.

After the signing, as was my habit on previous occasions there, I went round to The Angel for a beer or two. Some of my fans were there and an enjoyable evening ensued. Right now I must apologise to those who attended who didn’t know about this. I didn’t want to broadcast it and end up swamping the pub and sort-of assumed that those who follow me on Twitter and Facebook knew about it.
At kicking out time I finally managed to buy a round. Once that was gone I said my goodbyes and headed off. It was about midnight when I caught a train back towards Wickford. I remember seeing the first station it passed through then nothing afterwards until some woman shook me awake. I’d slept through numerous stops, missed the one at Wickford and now the train was parked up at Southend Victoria. Bugger. I was too knackered to think about getting a train back so got a taxi home, which cost me £50.
But in all, this was successful and enjoyable. It’s humbling to see fans who have travelled quite some way just to get my scrawl in a book. There were people there who had come from France, Germany and one even from Japan. If there’s anything that is going to reaffirm my intention to get back to writing properly then this is it. 

Dark Intelligence to Music

For this blog post I hand you over to Steve Buick:

I wrote the music for Dark Intelligence with the idea that long soundscapes could evoke the atmospheres in the book and enhance the reading experience without actually interfering with the reading itself. I did the same thing for Peter F Hamilton’s The Abyss Beyond Dreams, which kickstarted the concept. I noticed people on buses and trains reading while listening to music. Surely music that was created for the book would be the ideal environment for the story? Evokescape was born.
In Dark Intelligence there is a pace and energy that required musical transformations matching those of the characters with a continually moving tension. All overshadowed by deep and spiralling clouds of synths and sound effects. Layers of rhythms and pulses evolve, building with sounds that represent the dark technology of the story.
For some of these ideas I looked to 1970s/80s Tangerine Dream and Kraftwerk, with their insane sequencers and stark synths. I’ve always thought their albums felt like the soundtracks to unmade science fiction films and decided I would invent my own version of those creations somewhere down the line.
The mp3 album of three long tracks is available on Amazon, iTunes and other digital stores worldwide under the title Original Music for Neal Asher’s Dark Intelligence. Released on the same date as the book, January 29th.
Evokescape’s Steve Buick produces long, evolving musical soundscapes inspired by books to enhance the reader’s experience, creating the final seal to the outside world and deepening the reading experience.
Original Music for Neal Asher’s Dark Intelligence
Further Links:

SFX Interview

Freezing author poses in a field outside Bradwell Power Station.
When the photographer Will Ireland turned up at Althorne railway station I thought why not head down to the River Crouch? There’s some nice enough scenery down there that could be used as a backdrop. However I was forgetting that I was not in Crete where car parking is easy, but in England where someone wants money or some busybody complains. We ended up at the power station because, well, what kind of backdrop do you have for an SF writer? After posing in a field for a while I was reminded of that phrase (I think), ‘The most dangerous industry in Britain,’ from The Edge of Darkness when security guards came out to see what we were doing and take down details. Apparently they had decided not to release the dogs. Mr Ireland helpfully suggested that they did, while he sat in my car and took pictures of them chasing and pulling down the author.
This photograph shoot was all to accompany an interview that’s appeared in this month’s issue of SFX. Apparently there’s a not so good review of Dark Intelligence in there too but I’m not particularly bothered about that. Fan opinions are what count and I’ve already seen some reaction prior to this…

Anyway, since the interview was just sampled I thought it worthwhile publishing the full text here:

SFX Interview 
SFX: The new book, where did it spring from? (Without quite wishing to ask where do you get your ideas from..)

Neal: In a way my readers are a little bit responsible for that. What has happened here is similar to what happened in my 5 book Cormac series. In the first book, Gridlinked, I wrote about a character called Mr Crane – a rather large android made of brass – and the readers came back at me about that saying just how much they enjoyed him. The third book of the series I wrapped around Mr Crane. It was called Brass Man. But it was also my choice because I’m a fan at heart and really enjoyed writing about Mr Crane too. In Dark Intelligence I’ve revisited another character who first appeared in a short story called Alien Archaeology in Asimov’s and then in an off-shoot book from the Cormac series called The Technician. This ‘character’ is the blacklist AI Penny Royal. My readers rather liked that creation, and I like it too. Also, after writing a dystopia trilogy set in the near future of Earth, I felt the need to return to the Polity and do something sprawling. The ideas? They turn up at the keyboard as I write.   

SFX: A key theme seems to be transformation, and the effect of physical transformation on the psyche. Were you always consciously exploring that theme, or did it develop through the writing?

Neal: The theme of transformation has developed through the writing but has also been there right from the start. It was in some of my earliest short stories, for example the immortality imparting virus, spread by the bite of a leech, in a short story called ‘Spatterjay’, which formed the basis of my trilogy beginning with The Skinner. Immortality is another constant theme in my books – physical immortality through medical technology and through the recording and backing up of minds. Another of those stories concerned both ‘Always With You’ included a doctor mycelium inside the protagonist that kept him alive during a battle with one of the bad-ass aliens that appear in Dark Intelligence – the prador. I’ve been working with these from the start and thinking more and more on the second element you mention: the effect of transformation (and immortality) on the psyche. In The Skinner, for example, I looked at the ennui of immortality and that appears again in Dark Intelligence.  

SFX: There are plenty of horror elements in the book, errm, just how nasty is your imagination? More seriously, is there a desire to shock? If so, why?

Neal: My desire is to entertain and the horror elements, and the violence – the conflict – are a large part of that. Simply flick through the pages of SFX and point to a book, film or game that doesn’t contain them. I think you’ll find that difficult. There’s a large element of the voyeur in all of us of course. I guess my problem developed from when from a book about writing I read that there should be conflict on every page. I thought that meant exploding spaceships.

SFX: How does the novel fit into the existing Polity timeline?

Neal: Dark Intelligence starts a little while after the events in The Technician. The latter book was a sort of off-shoot from the second book in the Cormac series, The Line of Polity, but set twenty years later. So Dark Intelligence, and the ensuing two books of this trilogy, are set just a little while after the Cormac series and some centuries before the Spatterjay series.

SFX: Going back, were you someone who always wanted to be a writer?

Neal: Like so many people I had no idea what I wanted to do when I left school, beyond get some money in my pocket and go down the pub. I did, however, have many interests: biology also specifically mycology, chemistry, electronics, physics, painting and sculpture. I used to flit from one interest to another but not achieve much beyond learning a little more – it was after I was at school, for example, that I learned how thermionic valves and then transistors work. I also read a great deal – mostly science fiction – and at school wrote my first short story, which the teacher complimented (thank you teacher), and as a result writing became another of my pursuits. Over many years I inevitably wrote a fantasy trilogy. Only when I was in my mid 20s did I realise that writing was something that could incorporate all my other interests and only then did I really focus on it completely.      

SFX: Was there a breakthrough moment when you thought, yeah, I can do this?

Neal: For me there was no sudden break-through moment. I paused at every step up the hill. Years of nothing published at all then a short story in a magazine for which payment was a free copy of said magazine. More stories published, the odd novella, a couple of short story collections, even some money but not enough to make me think about giving up the day job. I had an agent once hawking that fantasy – no luck. I had novels taken by small publishers who crashed and burned before publication. Yes, when I got a phone call from my first editor at Macmillan that could be called a break-through, but I still didn’t give up the day job for a couple of years. I swiftly learned that getting a book with a big publisher doesn’t mean Champagne and big cars thereafter. What it means is your publisher/editor asking what you are going to produce next year, which is a step many fall flat on their faces over.

SFX: Of all the jobs you had pre-full-time writing, which would you least like to return to and why? And conversely, which would you happily do again?

Neal: I guess that delivering coal for two weeks in the freezing rain just before Christmas was the worst. Nothing like having to use a scrubbing brush to clean parts of the body that should never see such a brush at all. I think it’s also fair to say that I would hate to return to any of the highly physical jobs I did. Even though I keep active now I’m still aware that I am of the age when constant physical work starts causing problems: trapped nerves in the back, tendonitis, cranky knees. A job I would do again (but I think to say ‘happily’ is pushing it a bit) is one in engineering when I was operating milling machines and lathes and the like. But this would be the one when I was machining a wide variety of components and also programming and operating CNC machines. It wouldn’t be a similar job I had where the instruction might have been, ‘Neal, here are 2,000 aluminium blocks. I want you to bore a hole in each and slice the corner off.’   

SFX: Crete: are you still spending large amounts of time on the island? What’s your life like there?

Neal: As a writer, who of course can do his job anywhere he can take a laptop, it has been good. I don’t have internet in my mountain house so I tended to get a lot more work done! I could do my 2,000 words a day, which is my target when doing the first draft of a book, then go swimming in the early afternoon. Food and drink are relatively cheap, the temperature can climb into the 40s and the light is intense. Mostly you live outdoors. I enjoy growing stuff in my garden there that I can’t grow very well here. Chillies being a particular favourite, but also all sorts of weird and wonderful flowers and fruits. Things are relaxed and life there can be idyllic. However, it only reaches the above stages after a lot of effort. Too many people move there on the basis of what they saw on holiday and that isn’t the life at all. It can been quite a frustrating and maddening culture shock. If you are not the kind of person who has interests it can be boring – going to the beach has its limitations for many, and many find their entertainment in a bottle. A lot make the move there then after a few years give up and go back to Britain.
However, it is difficult for me to say much about my life there now since it has changed radically this last year – my wife died of bowel cancer last January. This year I did spent a lot of time walking in the mountains, and swimming and kayaking in the Libyan Sea. This was mostly to try and hold depression at bay. I have struggled to write, and to care about much at all.

SFX: How has it changed since 2008 economic meltdown?

Neal: It depends where you go in Greece or in Crete. Generally it is not as bad as we see in the news where the impression is given of rioting all across Greece, when it is mainly just in Athens. However, in Sitia, where I get my shopping, there are apparently 120 families on the breadline. In Lidl there is a large basket by the exit where you can leave for them some of the food you’ve bought. In Makrigialos, where I go swimming – a tourist area with a lot more money about – change is not so evident. In fact the melt-down there is just a continuation of how things have been going downhill with the introduction of the Euro – tourists heading to other cheaper destinations, and businesses steadily going under. All Greeks are now being hit by new taxes as the government struggles to maintain its bloated bureaucracy while continuing to act as if ‘austerity’ is just for the public. There are property taxes now for people who are often described as property rich but dirt poor, and many simply cannot pay them. It seems that every few months we see a new tax – often abandoned when the government fails to collect it.   

SFX: You’re, as far as I can tell, politically conservative (I know, but best shorthand I can find). Does that make you feel like an outsider in the context of SF contemporaries who mostly seem to me to be left-leaning?

Neal: In Britain the divisions between left and right are a joke. I look at the two main parties in Westminster, supposedly left and right, and they both look like Orwell’s pigs. They both consist of career politicians who are divorced from reality by massive salaries, pensions and an over-privileged lifestyle. The true division now, to me, lies between authoritarian and libertarian. I can be described by that much-abused word ‘libertarian’ but, before anyone assumes that means I’m a gun-toting bible-belter, I am a libertarian in the sense of “classic liberal”. To quote: “individual well-being, prosperity and social harmony are fostered by ‘as much liberty as possible’ and ‘as little government as necessary’”.  
Yes, I do sometimes feel like I slipped under the fence and got into the SF world before anyone could release the dogs. I once chatted with an SF writer who was ‘politically conservative’ (whatever that means) who was amazed that I didn’t just keep my mouth shut and my head down. But my contention was that, even if you are writing some way out stuff, truth is one of your most important tools. However, I do tend to be more close-mouthed now simply because, over this last shitty year, my perspective on what is important in life has changed a great deal.   

Christmas Done.

The season of goodwill and good cheer and all that shite. Well, as I have learned, it’s about the worst time of year if someone you shared it with has died. I didn’t even consider getting out the decorations, since I always passed them from the loft down to Caroline and, really, it just seemed like an empty thing to do. And knew that I was going to bugger off somewhere. I think receiving Christmas cards addressed to Neal & Caroline just affirmed that. It’s a silly time of year often of pointless presents and, obviously, of meaningless Christmas card lists. Thankfully, my first boss at Macmillan, Peter Lavery, had a place for me to stay so I buggered off to Hastings.

Amazing how a bit of sunlight transforms a place and it was bright and sunny on Christmas day. A lot of wandering about ensued and since this is also the season of excessive boozing, that too.

Had to include this picture. This is Inspector Foyle’s house from Foyle’s War. I have other pictures on my phone, which I’ll download when I find or purchase the correct USB cable. These are of the house where Rider Haggard lived and the house where Alan Turing was born. I didn’t get a picture of the first pub I ever went into there – where Whistler drank – it’s been converted into four flats.

While there I met John Kaiine and Tanith Lee and had an excellent afternoon. I’ll talk more about that in another post, because people need to be aware that many of her 90 books (I’ve never read one I didn’t like) are being reissued and can now be picked up on Kindle. Above is the first I ever read. I was attracted by the cover probably because back then I was reading the Robert E Howard Conan books, but found something very different.

But I drank too much wine. This resulted in some stupid drunkenness and crashing depression. I came back home to a familiar stabbing in the guts and feelings I remembered from my earlier months in Crete, and which are somewhat more than hangover blues. And even a day later I’m still getting post alcoholic cringes. That’s Christmas over and done for me and the start now of the season of temperance. I’ll not toast in the New Year – just hope it’s a better one.