Happy Near Year
Written by Iam Hanuman on Tuesday the 11th of January 2011
As the new year pops youthfully into the receding face of the old, I see planets spinning on placemats, bodies gyrating through the heavens, visitors traversing realms previously unknown to them, layers being stripped back to reveal faceless masks of years diminishing into the beach of time. It is a beach full of the sands, of course. Sand-timers are donked at intervals and year numbers are burned into the acrylic clearness - 2008, 1943, 1174, 1350 and so forth. I'm trudging through the wet sand of a Southend-on-Sea summer and trying to make it to the next groyne where steps lead up to a partially vandalised seating area. There used to be a telescope contraption there years ago but someone had that away. The stump remains, yet that has been bashed to a paint-scratched mess by sand-timers no doubt. I'll check when I get up there.
It was a foul poo-like gas that cast the old year away - a sentient cloud which watched 2010 fall away to the pit with nonchalance. 2011 cares not for the one that was here. 2011 cares only for itself and the new year it begets in a twelve month. 2011 adds itself up and finds that the two 1s make another 2 and then that 2 plus 2 is 4. 2011 likes this. 2011 likes the number 4 as the number 4 has magical powers, mystical muscles it can flex to make interesting things happen. 4 is energetic and 4 is brawny in a supreme manner. 4 is also the number of fractured sand-timers I find in the vandalised seating area. They have been placed very carefully on the seat facing the sea, in a juxtaposition to the lack of care taken during what must have been a frenzied attack. I think to myself that only the good and large Queen Victoria herself bore a worse attack which resulted in the demolition of her royal nose. She was moved out of the way to avoid the brutes who mounted her. I think a bus-stop replaced her, or maybe it was a fountain.
Sitting next to the sand-timers, the clouds above me send down rays in a most unlikely way and allow me to see the years which the timers are branded with. They are 1974, 1979, 2001 and 2006. These are 4 years which are branded into my mind, 4 years of import to me most absolutely and I quickly sweep these artefacts up into my knapsack like a thief. Artful gesture, Fagan-like, prestidigitation of the highest degree.
And then - Leaping! I am a gazelle! I care no longer for pleasure piers which have been obliterated many times by boats and fire. Army launches bother me not in my bounding. I propel myself across the muddy estuary towards Canvey Island and with seven league boots I make it past Maidstone with one step. Another, I'm in the Channel. Mont-Saint-Michel here I come...
Another few steps and I'm there, tripping accidentally on Sark as I pass - many apologies. Ah the smell of it, the feel of it, the look of it! Like it's twin brother across the water it beckons me and welcomes me in with a wet clammy hand. My sack of yearly goodies on my back I squeeze myself into the first doorway I can find, sit my bottom down and sink into a small pool inside a hexagonal box marked with 2011.
Happy New Year