Opinion

Cabo Real, Mexico Some reflections at the end of 2012 — as I watch a Mexican sunrise. • My favourite newspaper headline at year end is “Past Imperfect, Future Tense.

Her Majesty, after her morning sherry, pins a new corgi calendar next to the Gainsborough and purses her lips. Endless reign is in her forecast.

Bling is in the air and here in Victoria, it isn’t frost crystals. Nor has it anything to do with Monday’s New Year festivities.

There’s a reason the term “starving student” has staying power and is a tired cliché — and it’s not just because of alliteration. It’s because “starving student” is a very real stage in many of our lives.

After a punch to the heart, the realization of an apocalyptic tragedy, there is time for shock, grieving, for prayer and, eventually, time for reflection and expressions of remorse, despair, hope and deliberation.

I cut through the Bay Centre last Friday on my way to meet a friend for lunch. It was busier than I’d expected, crowded with what I first took to be Christmas shoppers.

A friend and his wife were at a movie recently, saving three seats for friends, in the usual way — an umbrella on one seat and hats on the others.

Changing the rules in the middle of the game is almost certain to bring howls of protest from the other players. In some drinking establishments, it might bring more than that.

It would be nice to think that by now, politicians, male or female, could be judged on their abilities, their vision, their values and so on. Gender should not be a factor. But, sadly, we’re not there yet. In fact, it’s probably worse than ever.

The prison chaplain came home at dawn, his face haggard. Before he went to bed, Cyril Everitt told his grown son one thing about the hangings he’d just witnessed: “There was blood everywhere.” It was Toronto, Dec.