Head to Chinatown or Trafalgar Square today and you can celebrate Chinese New Year with dancing, culture and cuisine courtesy of the London Chinatown Chinese Association and the Mayor of London. That's because the new moon on 29th January triggered the Year of the Snake (蛇), a period traditionally symbolised by wisdom, intuition and transformation.
It's particularly symbolic for me because I was born in the Year of the Snake and they don't come round very often, only every twelve years, a rare marker of the inexorable passage of time. It's even more symbolic because officially it's the year of the Wood Snake, an elemental prefix based on a five-yearly cycle, just as it was the year of the Wood Snake 5×12=60 years ago.
I thought I'd look back and see what I was doing when the Year of the Snake came round previously, aided and abetted by the fact that I started keeping a diary when I was 11¾ so I do actually have a record of each.
2 February 1965(Wood Snake)
I've not been born yet, I'm somewhere around 33 weeks and kicking occasionally.
18 February 1977(Fire Snake)
I'm in my first year of secondary school and it's the day before half term. Writing a diary is new to me and I'm only penning about 30 words a day. Last week we all had our BCG injections (I still have the scar), my Dad failed to pass his driving test and I proved incapable of making progress towards my BAGA 4 athletics award. Today we have a debate in English on the subject of pirate radio, our history teacher allows us to play games and our music teacher fails to turn up. My diary says "Mark ran round school three times" which I have to confess means nothing to me now but if you've ever seen the film The History Boys you'll have a good idea what the course looked like. This evening sees the final performance of Haydn's Creation in the local church because I've already been drafted into the school choir and they take concerts really seriously. Tomorrow I'll be going shopping in Watford and trying to find the latest copy of Krazy comic, which I still reckon is the best comic of all time although you may disagree because 2000AD was launched the following week. We also go grocery shopping in the new Mac Market in Charter Place, which has just opened, and which I see I rated "good". Simpler times, most of which I would completely have forgotten had my 11 year-old self not diligently recorded them.
6 February 1989(Earth Snake)
I have passed through school and university and am at work doing my first job. It's an unusually mild day for early February (15°C) so I'm not wearing a coat. Even in 1989 the news was suggesting that the greenhouse effect might have contributed. Today is my grandmother's 84th birthday and I have forgotten to send her a card, which is remiss but I will attempt to make amends at the weekend by dropping in with a basket of mini roses. Kashaf is back at work after having been abroad for three months and he's brought us a present from the Punjab. Lunch is spaghetti bolognaise. In the afternoon I am mildly rebuked for copyright reasons, sorry Wendy, but I have learned an important lesson. Workmen from a cable TV company are busy digging up the pavement down our street which is appropriate because Sky TV started broadcasting yesterday. At present barely 60,000 homes can access it and there's no indication its four channel offering (entertainment/news/movies/sport) will be successful. On terrestrial TV tonight Wogan launches plans for Red Nose Day 2 and ITV are heavily previewing Home and Away which they hope will compete with uber-popular Neighbours. Next week Mick Fleetwood and Sam Fox will be hosting that Brit Awards show and I'll be going to Penzance for the day because a ticket is only £19.
24 January 2001(Metal Snake)
I'm in the last months of Job 3 and yesterday I met the new boss who's about to inspire me to leave for Job 4. He's breezed in smiling but before long we'll deduce he's all mouth and lazy self-promotion. The office is full of gossip. Scott Mills is sitting in on the Radio 1 Breakfast show this week, which just goes to show how little things change. I'm not feeling 100%, I have a bubbly cough and a discoloured tongue. My work today involves driving to a hub on the A143 and attempting to be more helpful than the usual manager, including a lot of photocopier action. When I get home I open my Orange phone bill and it's quite high because I've sent a lot of 6p text messages. Playing Sim City 3000, which I've just bought, proves rather cheaper. Then tonight an email arrives confirming that the nicest person in upper management is leaving, probably not coincidentally, and suddenly my work environment is careering off in uncomfortable directions. However by taking advice and being canny I'll have negotiated a payrise by Monday, and within months I'll be quitting for Job 4 in London which is essentially where my life turns around. It didn't look great at the time, but you'd not be reading this blog were it not for machinations at the start of the year of the Metal Snake.
10 February 2013(Water Snake)
I'm blogging now so you'll know all about this. Today's post is about National Libraries Day, specifically Kensal Rise and the Horniman which I visited yesterday. Tonight I'm going to write up my trip to Queen's Park, including my grandfather's grave, Daleks and the fact you can buy toilet rolls in Singhsbury's Superstore. Best of all I'm about to write two posts about the potential for a Bakerloo line extension, having walked across Burgess Park and Walworth, and 12 years later I am still writing about London's inability to kickstart this project. On this particular Sunday my fridge is empty so I walk down to the big Tesco only to discover they've shifted their opening time from 10am to noon so I have to go to the Co-op instead. Later I download a new app on my smartphone and receive disappointing feedback, make sure I've posted a golden wedding card to my brother's in-laws and watch a light sprinkling of snow fall just before midnight. The week ahead includes an appraisal meeting at work, a trip to the opticians and a big night out in Nine Elms, and looking back it feels almost recent but is actually 20% of my life ago.
29 January 2025(Wood Snake)
And here I am back in the Year of the Snake again, walking the streets of Crofton Park and having bacon and Brussels sprouts for dinner. What amazes me is how few Snakes it's taken to reach my 60th year and what unnerves me is how few I still have to go, maybe just the one. Such is wisdom, intuition and transformation.
