Now, as far as ridiculocities go, 2020 is a bit of a toughie. It contains a little less ridiculous and a lot more atrocity than any self-respecting ridiculocity really should, but I'm going to stick it here, anyway. After all, I don't have an atrocities book, and I'm really hoping to keep it that way.

What a year. What an unholy, unprecedented, Bizarro World, perfect shit-storm of a year. The year in which something we couldn't see changed our lives in ways we couldn't miss.

Imagine the confusion of a time-traveller, transported from those rosy-hued, halcyon, pre-pandemic days of 2019, back when all we had to worry about were whackos in the Whitehouse and existential threats like climate change, arriving in the COVID-trashed wreckage of early 2021. 

Poor bastard.

What's Zoom? Why's there nobody in the CBD? Whaddya mean I can't go to the football/concert/restaurant/thing that is remotely in the same vicinity as being fun and/or reflective of normal life? Social distancing? Doesn't sound very social to me, but okay—if you say so. Oh well, I guess I'll just go to work, then. What's that? Work from home? Actually, don't worry about working for a bit? You know what, maybe don't work at all?

Hmm.

Let me see if I've got this straight. No family get-togethers, no travel, no social-life, no hand-shakes, no high-fives, no hugs. No hugs—seriously? Sheesh, okay. Right, what else: lockdowns, quarantine, don't cough, whoops—uh, I might have kind of sneezed. Why's everyone looking at me that way? What? I'm supposed to do it where? In my elbow? Right, now I have to wash my hands—wait, for how long? And I have to sing what? Twice? But it's not even my birthday.

Can I go back to 2019 now? I don't like it here. And I don't want to miss that Area 51 raid thingy. That sounds legit.

2020 was not a good year. 2020 was not even a mediocre year. 2020 was, without a shadow of a doubt, a bad year. 2020 sucked. 2020 blew. Boo, 2020, boo. It was the year in which a single strand of RNA and a few proteins—mindless and inconceivably tiny—tore the planet asunder, trashing economies, ending careers and, of course, taking lives. So many lives.

That's the real kicker, of course. Economies recover. People find new jobs. The cinemas and the stadiums and the shopping centres will still be there. But we're not getting back those we lost. Which, I guess, means that as crap as 2020 has been, the simple achievement of still being around to recognise its crapness probably counts as some sort of a win.

Huzzah?