2016. A year to forget. Celebrity death-fest. The year that so many things broke. The year we got stuck. What a frankly cr*p year. I was going to title this with a slightly more banal "farewell" - then George Michael died. 
It was a very bad year to be a celebrity. Death seemed to stalk the famous this year. Not that a celebrity death is especially bad (one of my aunts passed away this year - now for me & my family that was really bad) but it seemed that for a while every time you turned the TV on there was another amazingly talented person gone too soon - David Bowie, Alan Rickman, Victoria Wood, Prince. We had a brief hiatus then 2016's death count rose again and again - Caroline Aherne, Carla Lane, Leonard Cohen, Gene Wilder, Alexis Arquette, Jimmy Young, Robert Vaughn, Pete Burns, Andrew Sachs, A.A.Gill, Zsa Zsa Gabor, George Michael, Carrie Fisher & Debbie Reynolds barely a day after her daughter. Enough already. In non celeb land, back in the summer, my mother was rushed to hospital with a pulmonary embolism and it was touch and go- thankfully she pulled through. But George died ... I have made my feelings about that one clear in the previous post.
And 2016 was also a year when big events impacted directly on our small FauxSurrey lives. We wanted to run away to our lovely Welsh Mill this year and start a brand new adventure. We did the due diligence, we checked the spreadsheet, we canvassed opinion from the experts and we decided that June was the time to sell up in Surrey and get going. We hadn't banked on the completely mad, bad and dangerous Brexit vote going completely the wrong way. 
As a result of the lunatic vote, the housing market froze. And despite 2 price cuts and changing agents we are still sat in limbo, 7 months later with no sign of moving on .. but critical immoveable deadlines are moving ever closer to us! Like FSHubby has resigned and we will be unemployed with 2 houses in April if something
doesn't give soon!
And talking of employment I can safely say that 2016 has been the WORST year ever for work for me. Basically I didn't have any. And I had a great contract - a save the day kind of contract - cancelled at the very last minute. So have been relying on hubby and dipping into the spreadsheet - yep, great.
But all of these things are tiny - let's not forget 2016 has seen the world slowly collapse - Brexit, the election of Donald Trump to the White House, Syria / Aleppo, the refugee crisis, increasing terrorist attacks, increasing racial tension & for London commuters HIDEOUS rail strikes. At times 2016 felt like the 1970's.
So p*ss off 2016, I will not miss you - I will be glad to see the back of you. Roll on 2017. And roll on 28th Jan 2017 when the year of the naughty, disruptive, damaging Monkey gives way to the year of the Fire Rooster (or fire chicken as some websites would have it they believe it's a female bird this year!), a creature associated with trustworthiness, timeliness and responsibility. Fingers and toes crossed!!
