This Is The World We Live In

On the first day of the year, I awoke depressed and with a cracking headache, but this was no hard-won hangover – the previous evening I’d gone to bed at 11 with a mug of mint tea, intent on starting the new year fresh. Then I checked Instagram. Idiot.

- Jennie Ridyard

So the last thing I saw in 2024 was a big giraffe kicking a baby giraffe to death, which was exactly what I never wanted to see. Thanks algorithm, you utter bastard.

This was the final thing in a list of other horrible things I never wanted to see but nonetheless saw in 2024, including:

• the inside of a witness box during a rape trial;

• the further fraying of relations with a family member;

• a French pensioner drugged and raped repeatedly by her own husband and 50 other random everymen, by his invitation;

• some 2,200 migrants lost to the Mediterranean Sea;