The festive season is never easy for a columnist.
Make sense of the last twelve months in less than one thousand words and by the end of the day, or else, my editor breezed. He quit polishing the thumbscrews and handed me a complementary cup of mulled wine.
Yes, sir! I said, pocketing a few mince pies and scurrying to my computer.
That was this morning. The office party had just begun. Now, seven hours and seventy-three words later, I can still hear the chink of fine crystal and the roar of merriment from the other side of my door.
I think theyre playing Twister.
My VDU is covered in post-it notes. They say things like wrap-up, best of, and a good read when youre dozing on the sofa after eating too much figgy pudding reminders of what I should be doing.
In the words of my editor, I am the instant historian, paid to summarise the past and predict the future. My job is to produce a snapshot of the age, a bitesize summary of key events. I must pass judgment on time was this an annus horribilis or an annus amazingis?
This is not as much fun as it sounds. As a journalist, I disguise the personal as the political. If I get an in-growing toe-nail on my left foot, I instantly use it as a metaphor for the conflict in the Middle East. I am the centre of the universe, the king of the world. I get to play God on a gypsys salary. My word is gospel until next week, when I change my mind.
So, before I wrap up the year 2003 for you, bear in mind that everything I write is egocentric and self-aggrandising. My profession demands nothing less.
The year began quite well. Id checked out of a spiritual sanctuary and was ready for a good war, and, following a quick trip to Texas (in search of the Bushmen), I got one. As it happened, I was lying in the operating theatre under general anaesthetic having my tonsils removed for the second time when the first bombs rained on Saddams palaces. What better metaphor could there be, I wonder? Those tonsils had been bothering me and the international community for at least thirteen years. It was time they went.
I awoke both shocked and awed. The TV above my hospital bed showed the war 24/7. I felt like I was there.
As luck would have it, I wasnt. My editor wanted me at the heart of the pro-Saddam anti-American insurrection, so I headed straight for Paris, braving some exquisite patisseries and less exquisite Marxist intellectuals, before taking in Anthrax and nipping off to Morocco in search of the French Foreign Legion.
By the time I arrived back home, the US troops were on the streets of Baghdad, and Comical Ali was declaring an Iraqi victory. I soon came into possession of a highly confidential document detailing Pentagon plans to re-brand the US on the model of Zapem Exterminators, Washington, a small pest control business run out of Georgetown.
Then, as all eyes were fixed on Iraq, I somehow wangled a series of world exclusives, being the first to report that China had covered up Tibet, and Iran applied for membership of the EU.
Next, in a lightning raid on the American political debate, an elegant spiking of neo-connery took me to Washington, then a peek at the Democrats saw me lost in Poland, Argentina, Las Vegas and New Hampshire.
It was only May, but my feet were getting tired.
After slaying the European dragon and taking part in a pro-war march in London, I finally made it to Iraq in July where I name-dropped Norman Mailer, got jiggy to the strains of LL Cool J, talked to the troops about Operation Holy Shiite and personally violated the no-fly zone.
Come August, and the lazy summer months, I was convinced of George Bushs superhero status, though not convinced enough to resist running against Arnie for the governorship of California.
When that failed, I begged my editor to send me to North Korea, something he said hed been trying to do for the past two years. I made it as far as Beijing before a friend in Moscow called and persuaded me to go to Russia and trawl through the newly-opened state archives in search of juicy gossip about Nikita Krushchev, his hairline, and Jackie Kennedy. Another exclusive was born.
It was now October, and time to weigh up the carbo-heavy diets of Europe and the UN compared to the new, lean, Atkins-obsessed America. After developing a theory of this magnitude, I was devastated not to win the Nobel Peace Prize, and used these pages to lament my inability to compete with people of greater social disadvantage in a world of unjust positive discrimination, before founding the human rights group Travesty International.
After that, I somehow maintained a streak of altruism, and shared with you 10 Fascinating Facts, before revealing intimate details of my days with JFK in a moving memoir of times past.
All that was left then was to subject you to the torture of a Poll Ease poll, and fob you off with this gimmicky re-hashing of old columns, eagerly described by one of my editors as like one of those cheap, cynical Simpsons cartoons which reuses old sequences.
As for 2004, Id like to see an amnesty on all unreturned library books. Other than that, Ill take whats coming to me.
Thank you. And happy new year!
