But firstly, I must thank everyone for their wonderful messages after yesterday's blog. I hope I will never take my readers for granted and those messages of support do genuinely keep me going.
And keeping going is a kind of theme for this blog. For many this Christmas keeping going is going to be tough. In our road and the surrounding roads we are a pretty tightly knit community, looking after and helping each other. For us it's not a matter of survival but one of looking after each other and generally caring.
As one neighbour said to me yesterday. "I am fortunate. I have a roof over my head, I'm warm and I have food. So many others don't have those things."
She went on to praise the neighbourhood for caring about each other.
I can't remember a Christmas when so many people seem to be in need and the crippling increase in food prices and energy prices have made things so difficult.
But it's not just the poor who will be suffering this year. Mr and Mrs Everyman will be too because rail strikes, postal strikes and ambulance strikes will be affecting them. People looking forward to Christmas with family will be stranded due to the strikes. It's the worst industrial action situation since the bad old days of the 1970s.
We are truly in a lose lose situation. The government and management won't give an inch and the unions have become bloody minded and the people suffering are the legendary man and woman in the street- the yous and mes of this world.
It is hard to see how the deadlock will be broken. Give and take has upped and gone. The idea of working together has been lost. Supply and demand has gone AWOL. The stubborn and the immoveable have locked horns in a dance that is more a war dance than Strictly.
The unions say that they are not deliberately sabotaging Christmas but what else are they doing by striking throughout December? The Government says it cannot and will not meet what it claims are excessive demands. There's absolutely no wriggle room in the land of the immovable object and the insurmountable force.
I for one am sick to the back teeth with the politics with a small p involved here. Both sides may have a claim to be right and both sides may be right in claiming that the other side are wrong but that's not really the point. The point is that whatever the rights and wrongs it is all of us that are forced to suffer and at such an important time of the year that surely is wrong.
A change of Government might or might not sort some of the problems out, but I couldn't see it solving them all. It would certainly be interesting to see what happened but if things didn't go right interesting would soon turn to desperation.
The Labour party leader has talked about localism, about bringing the decision-making process down from central government to local level. This is something I have advocated for many years but just what is meant by local?
If powers are devolved from central to county areas with locally elected mayors, it will mean little or no change. Powers need to be devolved down to a really local level i.e parishes because the people who live in and represent the parish are the people who know what is going on and know what is needed.
But even that wouldn't work because parish councils have often been known to consist of members arguing amongst themselves. Also having had a surfeit of development most parish councils would turn into NIMBYS (not in my back yard) and that would probably put them at odds with national government whom I suspect would be very quick to take away their powers.
As we rush headlong towards 2023 there are so many imponderables that are going to test even the sharpest brain let along that of those with a few less brain cells (not mentioning any names).
I told you today's blog was going to be on the serious side. I promise that tomorrow's will be a little lighter in tone.