LIFE IN MY NORTHERN TOWN

WELL, it’s that time of the year again – the same annual occasion that comes round with increasing rapidity and depressing regularity. Yep, it’s my birthday. Sorry to get all maudlin but it has been a pretty bad year for me.

My dear mother broke her hip in June and, due to other complications, is now in a care home.

I lost my job at Christmas and lost a friendship that lasted almost 20 years.

And then there is the football.

Bury being relegated and Rochdale staying up – congratulations, by the way, (He says through gritted teeth) – means that I am now living in a tent somewhere in Peru in an attempt to avoid the laughing hyenas in town.

Still – as Elton John said – “I’m Still Standing”.

So it is onward and upward as I pull myself out of a particularly slippery barrel – and I am lucky that I have my family and true friends to keep me warm in the winter of my life.

Gosh, this is all a bit deep, isn’t it?

It’s beginning to sound like a script for EastEnders.

Let’s lighten it up a bit shall we?

So the local council elections came and went without much notice and the results had a depressingly familiar look about them.

This is the thing I hate about politics, the people who run the show and are voted in are done so not on ability or what they do for the community , but what political party they are aligned to.

I would vote for my dog Audrey if she could do a better job – and she probably can.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we had a party-less system whereby people were voted in because the people who voted for them knew they would do a good job? There is always one good egg in the community – why not vote for them instead of someone who is only interested in toeing the party line? Doubtful, somehow. So with that thought, I will go on my way and hope the next year is better than the last.

It can’t get any worse, can it?