jupitersterrain four

steel guitar music    misc draft 

13.54    © Lizarikk, All Rights Reserved

wheelchair racer "Hurricane" Hannah Cockcroft

insanely quixotic 

dangerous beasts ridden only by half-wits

a luscious oasis of delight in this unending Sahara of economic despair

While the dreaded implosion of the eurozone was averted, or at least postponed

Beyond these shores, the Arab Spring became a broiling summer of discontent, above all in Syria, where Bashar al-Assad clung poisonously to power

Americans learnt to dread the name Sandy as the superstorm gave way to the slaughter at the Sandy Hook elementary school in Connecticut

Here, scandal, humiliation and tragedy left their indelible marks, none of the last of this unholy trinity being sadder than the death of a nurse after a childish prank call

Yet although the suicide of Jacintha Saldanha stripped the gloss from news of an impending royal arrival, this annus was mirabilissimus

No one has better access to the historical perspective lamented above for its absence than a monarch of 60 years’ standing

When the Olympics last came to London in 1948, they dispelled the gloom of perpetual austerity, and a few months later she produced an heir

Whatever Karl Marx thought to the contrary, repetitive history need be neither tragic nor farcical. With the Duchess’s pregnancy

the most staggering, jump-off-the-sofa-making-a-goldfish-face moment was Her Majesty’s debut, albeit slightly cast to type, as an actor

By the time her stunt double had parachuted into the Olympic Park, in what would later be relegated to the second most bizarre skyfall of 2012, scepticism about Britain’s ability to execute such a massive project was in retreat

Danny Boyle’s majestic opening ceremony, beautifully written by Frank Cottrell Boyce, did more than calm first night nerves already frayed by the G4S cock up and hints of transport calamities to come
Without romanticising the past or sugar-coating the present, it offered a vision of the United Kingdom not as a cantankerous geriatric plagued by phantasmal pain in the limb of empire that had already been amputated the last time the Games came to town
It presented us to the world as a vibrant, merry, gently ironic, tolerant nation, by and large at ease with the dramatic social and cultural transformations
After the ceremony plastered as broad a grin on the national face as the Jubilee before it, the Games opened the lachrymal floodgates. We never stopped blubbing as compatriots of all shades of colour, class and creed repealed the malevolent cosmic law which dictated that our athletes must be crushed beneath the weight of expectations
bathed Britain in a lambent, golden glow
putting the icing of an Olympic title on the gateau

Andy Murray avenging his Wimbledon defeat by dismantling Roger Federer


Murray would build on that at the US Open to end the brief hiatus since Britain’s last male Grand Slam champion

outlandish successes – Ian Poulter’s pivotal role in Europe’s miraculous Ryder Cup comeback

abject disgrace

This sporting year was unlike any other, and at the heart of its uniqueness

the eruptions of patriotic pride

laying her silvery ghosts on the water, or the adorable Nicola Adams becoming the first woman to win an Olympic boxing title

No one more touchingly expressed uncontainable parental pride than Bert le Clos, the father of South African swimming champion Chad, whose “unbeleeeeevable”, “look at him, such a beautiful boy!” and mock horror on seeing his bulging belly on the monitor helped to make Clare Balding the only vaguely credible rival to Sebastian Coe for the title “Most Glory-Laden Non-Competitor”.

yeah chuck some real pedophiloia in there ....