This year can best be described as a vicious game of netball

This year can best be described as a particularly vicious game of netball. Which, given that netball is – by its very nature – particularly vicious, is fucking saying something. 

Stick with me on the netball thing. 

It has been a year of fouls, free passes and staggering obstructions. A year of razor-sharp fingernails, boisterous bosoms and sneaky sharp elbows in the ribs when the umpire’s distracted by non-regulation knickers.

Quite honestly, I’ve spent most of this year face first on the bitumen, trying to hold my glass of wine safely aloft.  

This year – with all my futile attempts to keep at least one foot grounded, while my mum screamed supportive obscenities from the sidelines – has been a bit of a pisser, much like a netball game in the bleak midwinter, warmed only by an ever-loyal Wing Defence (stoic, supportive, never wavering) and a hot Milo and a Twix to soften the blow of a 32-0 loss to those bitches from Gosnells.

On the one hand, nothing catastrophic has happened, unless you count that time all three children shat themselves dramatically and had to be hosed off, like cows in a field. That was bad. Oh, and my dad falling from the top of a ladder. That was also bad. 

My best friend moved back from France, two out of my three children excelled at school (another got suspended for odd socks) and we got a pool. A pool! Aside from the shitting and sniffles, we all spent 2019 in smug good health, while pennies – for the first time in our nine-year marriage – weren’t scraped and snaffled. We went to Bali. Bali!  

And yet – AND YET – it wasn’t the rosiest of years. People I loved, lost so much. People I liked, turned out to be deeply unlikeable. My son got suspended over his socks. I wobbled a bit this year, and then hated myself for being a 42-year-old wobbly woman. I shouldn’t be wobbly woman who cries in Croissant Express, but there you have it; this year, I was a wobbly woman who cries in Croissant Express. WHAT’S MORE, these tears were caused by other people, which made me both wobbly and fucking furious, because if I’m going to cry, I’d like it to be as a result of watching the Great British Bake Off; not because of cunt in cullotes. 

There will be no more tears in 2020. There will be optimism and appreciation. Because the BEST PART about shit situations, of course, is that the not-shit situations seem all the sweeter when they finally eventuate. You know, sunshine after the clouds, and all that jazz. Shit situations also force you out of your comfort zone. Shit situations compel you to come up with creative ways to get out of your current shit situation, because shit situations – and this is my best advice to you for the new decade – should never be accepted as permanent. You should always try your level best to remove yourself from shit situations. I’m trying to, certainly. I suggest you do, too. JUST THNK HOW LOVELY THAT NEW SITUATION WILL BE WHEN YOU GET THERE, FIRST AND FOREMOST BECAUSE IT’S NOT THE SHIT SITUATION THAT YOU USED TO BE IN. 

Shall we continue the netball analogy? Yes, let’s. If the last year has been a vicious game of netball, then perhaps it’s time to consider this: netball may not be the game for you. Perhaps you’re more of a bingo girl. Fuck netball; embrace bingo. 

I wish you well, hombres. Here’s to a new decade. And bingo.