It began and ended with Jan being off work sick and although she did manage a brief return to work in the autumn she spent most of the year off work and even had a couple of weeks in hospital.

My own health problems continued too as I lost track of the number of hospital appointments and tests I had last year. During 2016 my Dad also had a heart attack and we had to say goodbye to a very old friend, Ron Reeve, who we had known for over 20 years.

When Jan and I first moved to England from Scotland for work, way back in 1993, we stayed with Ron and his wife Lydia in Guisborough for several months where they ran a small B&B. By the time we moved out and into our own house they felt more like surrogate parents than landlords.

The help, support and above all else friendship they both gave to us made settling into a new area well away from family and friends so much easier to cope with and for that they both earned a special place in our heart.

So, despite the fact that Ron was in his late Eighties when he passed away it still affected us greatly when he died.

Most people would probably reckon by now that they’d had their share of bad luck for the year, but a few weeks after Ron passed away my sister-in-law Mary also died. Despite being much younger than Ron her death in November was less of a surprise as she’d been fighting cancer for a considerable time, but that did nothing really to soften the blow.

Mary was my wife’s only sister and at 59 was by today’s standards not only still a young woman, but one with much to live for. Despite having lost her Mum many years ago and her own son Alan to a tragic accident when he was in his Twenties, she and her husband Walter still had 3 daughters and several grandchildren.

I can remember when Mary was battling against the cancer and my own depression was at its worst thinking that if there was some way I could swap places with her I would. It just seemed so unfair that someone with so much still to live for should be taken away from her family at such a relatively young age.

So, as you can see, 2016 was not just a bad year, it was a terrible year … what the Queen herself might consider to be an annus horribilis and one that I was glad to see come to an end.

And so with hope for the future we welcomed in 2017, a New Year and one that surely couldn’t be any worse than the one that preceded it?

Less than 3 weeks in though and I have to say that it’s looking equally bleak. Not only is Jan still off work, but I spent 4 days in hospital getting various tests done before being told that I not only had several blood clots on my lungs, but that I also have pneumonia: not good news for someone who has no spleen and therefore a weakened immune system.

Then as if all of that wasn’t a bad enough start to 2017 a few days ago my father-in-law Bill passed away. Admittedly, he’d been ill for some time and had been in hospital for several weeks prior to his death, but it still shook us all considerably: not least Jan who has now lost both her sister and her Dad in less than 3 months.


Bill was an almost larger than life character whose sense of humour and cheeky banter endeared him to everyone that knew him. I will miss all of that along with his infectious smile and our chats about all things football, but I know he was ready to go. At 87 the shock of seeing one of his daughters die before him had affected him greatly and that along with poor health means that for him at least perhaps his death was a relief, but he still leaves a huge gap in all of our lives.

It would be nice to think that Bill is now “up there” along with his wife May, daughter Mary and grandson Alan looking down on us all and perhaps able to exert some influence to ensure an upturn in our fortunes.

However, whilst I don’t discount the theory of there being an afterlife of some sort, the last year has left me absolutely convinced that there is no divine power watching over us, over any of us for that matter.

If 2017 does indeed turn out to not be yet another annus horribilis it will be more down to luck and coincidence than it will be fate or any kind of divine intervention.

And yes, I know that things could be worse. I mean one only has to look at the news to see that to be true, but I still say this has been one horrible year.