Thinking about the new year, Coco had been locked in a discussion with a linguistical friend, who could turn your Latin homework into better Latin than ever Pliny’s grandson would have even dreamed he could write, trying to find a better expression of ‘Spero meliora’ than is offered either by Google translate or by the owners of the motto. It seemed to Coco to be far too weak to be a good motto, though Coco had no doubt that to the literate Roman it carried much more weight that Micawber’s ‘Something will turn up’, which is all the poor English language can muster. Coco had hoped for better. ‘Semper ad Meliora’ is hardly an improvement, though ‘Semper meliora’ may be closer to that for which Coco had hoped. It was inevitable that Coco should come out of the discussion with a turnip nose, as in cauliflower ear, of which Coco had learned from the Third Programme’s heir at about 1845 this evening¹. Beware if you have such a thing lest when you use tobacco and blow smoke from it the fire wardens are not called out!

So what is the outcome of this, this is a new year, but we bring into the new year all that the old year has left with us, and no amount of resolution will change that – Brecht later in the evening², as a Marxist criticising Marx, said for all his agreement with the economic theory that Marx had failed to take into account human nature – but there is One who has not failed to take into account human nature and has given us not only a resolution but the power to change: ‘I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me.’ If he has taken hold of me that I may take hold of the prize, then surely we can know that we shall take hold of it.

So in this new year, it does not matter whether we say it in Latin or in English, it is the doing that matters: let us all press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

1. BBC Words and Music 2 January 2022 quoting an extended version of Samuel French Acting Edition of Bernhardt/Hamlet pages 89-90
2. Brecht: The Mother here and elsewhere.
3. The nose: