Farewell to the Year and Some Old Friends, Seismic Social Change is Happening.

The castle at Penela lit up for the Festive Season

Although I am seventy-six years old, this New Year will be my seventy-seventh on this earth. The earliest New Year's I have little or no recollection of other than staying up until midnight watching my parents welcome the ‘First Footers.’  Many of the middle years I do, mainly due to the company I was with and their association with the venues. More recently, the year-ends come upon me at such an incredible pace that I have difficulty differentiating between them.  In childhood, youth, and our productive adult life, we looked forward to life’s adventures with a willingness to take risks in search of the good fortune we felt we deserved.

“The question is, would we look forward to good fortune if we did not think we deserved it? It is human nature for us each New Year to ignore our follies of the past year with the expectation of good fortune in the next, deserved or not.” - Peter McSporran 

I am now at a stage in my life where my own and my loved ones' good health, not forgetting my friends, is paramount, along with the hope of spending as much time as possible in the next year with friends and family. Not very ambitious, you may say, but my ambition is all about the comfort of body and mind rather than self-gain. I remember clearly as a child driving around the farms with my father when my mother was seriously ill, it turns out, terminally ill with cancer, saying, “Money means nothing without your health.”. Wasted words then, as my whole focus on that day was the purchase of a bicycle. I need to change.

The crowded beach at Nazarre on New Year's Eve

Sadly, as you get into old age, more and more of your peers leave this world each year, and 2025 was no exception. It is not always friends that affect you with their passing, sometimes it is icons from your youth or working life. I do not want to mention all, but there are a few whose demise gave me more than a little pause for thought. Let's start with the icon, Chris Rea. How I loved his reflective music on human circumstance, almost nostalgic. I also admired his battle with cancer and especially enjoyed one Mortimer and Whitehouse TV episode where he, as a guest,  reflected on it. His music is his legacy, much more than many of us will leave.

“Take me back to the place where we used to meet / Before the world started to fade away.” - Chris Rhea: The  Memory of a Good Friend.

The next one is Jeff Somner. Although we saw him only briefly over the past twenty-five years, I often reflected on some of the events in his life and his brother Henry’s, who visited us last year and is the remaining Somner brother still alive. The Somner brothers lost their brother Mark, killed by dissidents way back in 1985, but despite this, they continued to ranch and build an empire where others faltered. Surprisingly, he never seemed to hold a grudge over his brother's death and continued to help the locals living on the boundaries of his ranch. I always remember visiting Jeff’s ranch near Bulawayo in the late eighties and watching him go out to meet tribesmen, each with a steer or cow on a rope and offer a fair price for the animal. They travelled many miles to sell to him rather than accept the low prices provided by the parastatal Cold Storage Commission. This did not say there was some haggling; it was in Jeff’s genes to do so. It can be said from our first meeting, Jeff and I used to “take each other's piss”, out of one another, be it at the horse racing or at a bull sale.

The same beach spotless at first light the next day

The second one was also recent: the death of Chris Thorne. I had known Chris for many years as our daughters were in the same classes at Arundel School, Harare and then more so during my time as president of the Commercial farmers Union (CFU) when he used to hassle me on the promotion of the proposed Bindura/Shamva sugar project known as Lomax and later the building of the Grain Storage facility at Bindura, both requiring the tacit support of the CFU. This was despite his and his cohorts' more often than not disdain for us at the CFU. Something that amused me as in those days a farmer one way or another would rely on the services of the CFU.I always admired his intelligence; he was an entrepreneur par excellence, but very tough in business, yes. When he decided to accept my offer in a partnership in my company, Agricultural Advisors International (AAI), in early 2001, when we were losing our farms, I was thrilled. Without Chris, who replaced Ernst and Young as my partner, AAI would not have grown to what it became, the top agricultural consulting organisation in Zambia, if not the region. Chris was a very family-oriented man, and he and his wife, Rose, became very good friends of ours.

Finally, in a post just before Christmas, Rob Jones informed me that an old army mate, from right back to my National Service days in 4 Independent Company, Wankie, George Kafizas, had suffered a severe heart attack and gone into a coma following surgery for gallstones of all things. George and I had not seen much of each other for many years, but had remained loosely in contact, mainly through mutual friends. Army memories never fade, and army friends remain friends forever. In the coma, he was pronounced brain dead, and finally, at Christmas, he made his exit from this world after a tough decision by his family. My sincere condolences to his wife, Sue and their children and grandchildren.

Once again, I am writing this on Monday, as on Wednesday we head for Nazaare, the place of big waves, for the fourth time in a row to bring in the New Year. I certainly am a person of habit; if something is good, why not do it again? As I review the blog before posting with my daughter Janine in America, I will have to do this on Tuesday night before my departure to ensure I meet my self-imposed deadline of Friday night. By the way, I was surprised by the number of readers of this dirge who said they did not think 2,500 words was too long. As the writer, I beg to differ, and am therefore strengthening my position on the 1,500 or less next year. This coming year, I also plan to set aside time to get the paints and brushes out again, not for the walls but for passing the time. I am probably the world’s worst painter, but despite Rozanne’s nagging about the mess I make, I find it quite therapeutic. In four weeks, I will be allowed to garden again following my latest surgery, just in time for pruning and getting ready for spring. Isn't there so much to look forward to even in old age?

Seismic Change, a Greater Division emerging between the ‘Haves and Have Nots’.

When Maggie and Selby continued their travels, they left their cat with us. You can see he has made himself at home

I believe this subject requires a standalone heading, as I think the approaching ‘Age of Intelligence’, as it is sometimes known, will have a seismic impact on our lives, socially and politically, just as the Reformation did in the church and the Industrial Revolution did in productivity. It is going to change what we consider normal in our workplace, in our relationships, in business and in private life, the very structures of our society. Sadly, I fear it will increase the gulf between the haves and have-nots, not just in wealth but also in access to knowledge as a tool and in the use of that knowledge in everyday life. It will impact access to employment, where we work, and the curriculum in schools, shifting from traditional education to technology-driven education. Much of it, I fear, will not be to the good of society and our human interaction. It will make us much more insular, even as we expand our access to knowledge. I raise this subject on my blog because this past month we had our son, Selby, and his wife, Maggie, staying with us, which, as expected, did not interfere with their day jobs. Of course, Selby and I got chatting about what the future will hold, especially in relation to what the so-called’Age of Intelligence’ will bring and how it will impact people’s lives, especially future generations.

“In my mind intelligence and knowledge can be just as toxic as ignorance. I have found malice is a common trait amongst both the educated and uneducated. In fact in the educated class it is much more dangerous as it often instigates premeditated evil without the mitigation of ignorance.” - Peter McSporran

For myself, I was born into the age of information, brought about initially by the transistor radio, which we listened to under our pillow at boarding school or at home for fear of the prefect or parent telling us to switch it off, or even worse, confiscation. It supplied us news and the music of the sixties twenty-four hours a day, freeing us from the conventional large radio that got switched on at breakfast and off at bedtime, found in the kitchen or snug. Channels of choice were the pirate radio stations Luxembourg and Caroline in the UK, and Radio Lourenço Marquess in southern Africa. In those days, the answers to unknown facts were found in the tomes of Encyclopedia Britannica. Then came the eighties, along came the computer and more recently, the internet. Meanwhile, for most of my working life, people went to their place of work or to where a specific task needed to be carried out, no matter their profession, white- or blue-collar. Shit, this is going beyond the 1,500 words, so I am going to close and continue articulating my fears of the future next week in the New Year.

Disclaimer: Copyright Peter McSporran. The content in this blog represents my personal views and does not reflect corporate entities.