Jim Hopkins: Meet new year with brave heart

It's time to take stock - especially if you need to make gravy in a hurry. But also time for stock of the metaphorical kind, what with one year waxing and another on the wane.

We can probably blame the Scots for our obsession with the solstice.

Having chosen to live in a place specifically designed to encourage early extinction, Mel Gibson's frigid ancestors clearly needed to distract themselves any way they could.

Fighting the English helped for a while as did the invention of Presbyterianism, which meant the Scots could fight themselves as well.

Then, having spent an entire year battling their carnal instincts, they all went utterly macpotty at hogmanay, drinking haggis by the lochful and dropping their kilts at the flutter of a sporran.

Eventually, the clever ones realised nothing they did would make their benighted realm more hospitable so they legged it, upped stakes and emigrated, moving to places where summer and sun aren't simply words in some ghastly gaelic ballad of the type so frequently penned by Robbie Burns ...

Och, summa son gang aft aglae
Wi' summa lass come hogmanay
And, ohhhh, yon braes an hussy fair
Fie, timorous beastie, wids't ye dare
Tae doch her doris, crannly noot
I din'na ken wa' this is aboot!

Trouble is, when these wandering Celts left boggy Scotland they didn't only take tar seal, suspension bridges, cathode ray tubes, anaesthesia and the poetry of William Topaz McGonagall with them.

They also took their New Year celebrations, now an established part of life in civilised countries around the world - and also here in Outer Roa.

New Year is traditionally the time when most of us do nothing - apart from singing Auld Lang Syne and snogging imperfect strangers when the clock strikes 12. And while this may be jolly good fun for all concerned it is cold comfort for the hapless hacks employed in the fourth estate.

Journalism is always a dangerous career. It encourages people who can spell to believe they can think and, worse yet, affords a daily opportunity to prove them wrong.

Never is this more so than now. The fact that nothing's happening doesn't mean the scribes and scribblers can take a day off. They're still obliged to find something - anything - to fill the gaps between the ads.

And when the world's having a nana nap, speculation is the scribe's salvation. This is the time of year when all manner of pundits step up to the plate and pundificate about whatever takes their fancy until the space is filled.

Fear not, gentle reader! You mustn't worry your pretty little heads about their prognostications. Most of what goes to print won't come to pass. And the rest is your basic, bog-standard, self evident, bob-each-way stuff:

National will win the next election - unless it doesn't;
Winston Peters will be the king maker - unless he isn't;
The All Blacks will win the World Cup - unless they don't;
Things could get better - but they might get worse;
New evidence will prove Maori came here 10,000 years ago in UFOs - or maybe it won't;
The weather will be lousy - except when it's not

But occasionally, midst all those waffly words, opportunity and intellect will combine to offer a worthwhile insight; not earthshaking, perhaps, but thought-provoking nevertheless.

One such turned up in the Christmas issue of The Spectator. Asked by its editor what they thought may happen in 2011, various contributors consulted their tea leaves and offered predictions, some dire, some not.

Having dealt with the world, one writer, Lord Tebbit, focused on himself: "And personally? Well, at best I will get older. At worst I may not!"

What! you say. That's it! That's your great insight? Or, more precisely, his great insight which you are repeating.

Well, ummm, yes, it is. Because, you see, the good Lord is right. We'd all do well to have some appreciation of our mortality and the possibility of our demise. For it will come when it sees fit and not when we may wish it.

In the battle to be happy, we are always at war with time - as well as ourselves. And we make the mistake of thinking that we are our own worst enemy. We're not. We can moderate ourselves but we cannot moderate time.

Don't forget that tonight, when you stand by the bonfire on the beach and raise a glass to toast your uncertain tomorrow.

All any New Year really means is that we're twelve months closer to the instant of our exit. That's it. That's all that matters. Far better to live in one moment than worry about the next.

So whatever's coming your way, and that can never be predicted, resolve to meet it with a brave heart. Whatever your Culloden, fight it well. Whatever your whisky, drink it neat. Whatever your haggis, devour it with gusto.

Whatever you do, each day, all year, prove to yourself, if to no one else, that however bedraggled it may in truth be, there's nothing worn under your kilt.