2016: reflections (AM)

I know that February seems  too early for reflections but January was pretty intense and  I feel it really deserves some reflection before we move on to enjoy the awesome year that 2016 is bound to be.

2015 ended fine, Christmas went for days but was pleasant and largely lazy and warm and all the good stuff. And 2016 began normally enough, I was in the countryside ringing in the new year with Blizzie and my babies and their babies and some friends of theirs and it was all lovely. Days passed, I went back to work, I quit my job and then hours after that happy moment, on the train home from work I got a message from a friend. 

I was so shocked. I guess it was not knowing he was sick. And he was so, so great. 

David Bowie has always been a great favourite of Miss Soft Crab and I feel like we need to take a moment to remember his excellence. The British legend, who died at 69 after a battle with cancer. 

I actually could not believe my ears when I heard on the radio three days later about Alan Rickman. The British legend, who died at 69 after a battle with cancer. Alan Rickman was so great. When I was little I used to watch this film my mum liked called Truly, Madly, Deeply. It was a romance in which Alan Rickman played a ghost. It was great. But why pretend that the most important part he played for me is anything other than Snape? Shit gets pretty real at the end of Harry Potter and Snape's role and their relationship, well it's pretty...moving (excuse me, I have something in my eye).

I couldn't stop thinking about it when Rickman died. He was a really great actor. I like him a lot. 

They say celebrity deaths happen in threes. But in this case it's just three deaths of old, great, codgers, because a couple of weeks after Alan Rickman, it was time for my parents' cat, Aphrodite. 

She would have been almost 19, we got her when I was around 17 or 18, she used to sleep on my bed and was so sweet. But then I moved out and she became a bitch (possibly unrelated). You had about 12 good seconds of patting her before she'd lash out with her claws but she was still sweet. Doing all that cat stuff like rubbing against your legs (when she wanted something), sleeping in the sun, deserting you. I loved her, but she died sleeping in some bushes as all cats should. 

January, you were not without your delights, but you, unlike others, we're not gone too soon. 2016 onwards and upwards.