Roger Moroney suggests giving kids a diary for 2020.
Roger Moroney suggests giving kids a diary for 2020.
So that's another one gone.
I don't mean another year ... I mean another wicket.
These holiday season leather and willow sparring duels with Australia can be terribly challenging on the old nerves.
However (the only way I can get back on the pathway to what I was intending toscrawl is the use the word 'however' ... so, however, another year is on the verge of passing into history and 2020 awaits.
I can still very clearly remember the passing of 1999 into the year of 2000, and I remember it clearly for a very good reason.
And that is because it does not seem like that very long ago.
New Zealand fans clap New Zealand players, after losing the second cricket test match against Australia in Melbourne, Australia. Imagine the rapture if we had won. (AP Photo/Andy Brownbill)
Had I been asked what things might be like in 2020 back on the eve of 2000 I would have shaken my head and said something along the lines of "I can't really think that far ahead."
That bizarre Zager and Evans song about what'll be going down in the year 2525 and beyond no longer sounds like totally misguided science fiction because I get the unsettling feeling it'll be upon us in no time.
Not that we'll be here to muse upon it, as I doubt this globular slab of soil and water will make it that far the way we're going.
However (this literary introduction could become a habit) while I can recall some events of 1999 and into 2000, I am not so skilled up on exactly what has happened over the year we are about to wave goodbye to.
Which is why watching and reading those telly shows and print features about "the year that was" is rather intriguing because at some stage one will inevitably nod and murmur "that's right ... I'd forgotten about that".
I guess it comes down to selective memory.
You remember some names and some events but other ones just drift past because they don't rate in your selection tray.
It is a tray which consists of 365 invoices of daily time, and of those 365 notes I reckon a third maybe get put into the mind's disposal system.
I have a challenge here for your memory banks, and it is a challenge I reckon I could maybe get a 50 per cent result as I have to concede that my memory is not a strong component of the increasing vintage vehicle I inhabit.
Sit down and write out the 12 months of the year of 2019, and beside each of those months write down just one thing that happened, to you, or anyone, or anything, in that month and which has remained stored in your head.
What event or occurrence last May do you remember?
And July?
In my case, when I took on noting a particular event in the month of March I wrote "I think there was one day that month I thought it was May."
So yep, 365 days have been shown the door by Father Time and before we know it it will be 2525 ... I mean 2020.
Once upon a time, when I was about 12, I kept a diary for a year.
I don't quite know why, although I think it may have been one of the modest Christmas presents which mum and dad sent my way as the year of 1966 edged in.
And I did scribe some notes in it ... about going fishing with a mate or building a cart or putting coins on the railway track or watching the circus arrive in town.
I kept a weekly written tab of the top 5 on the hit parade as I was beginning to be drawn into the great net of pop music.
I uncovered the old diary a while back (not sure what month it was) and it was fascinating.
If only it had possessed a "spell check", but there you go.
They were plain and simple days and me and my couple of best mates just did plain and simple things ... like squirting a passing train with a hose.
No IT special effects required there, and the grumpy fist-shaking old chap in the guard's van taught us a couple of new words.
It occurs to me now that I remember more about what happened in the year of 1966 than I do in the year of 2019.
Because I wrote it down.
So here's the final thought for 2019.
Whip out and get the youngsters a diary, and encourage them to write down what happens on the 365 pages within.
For in half a century's time they will know exactly what they were doing, on any day and in any month, way back then in 2020.
