I was talking to my friend John Campbell the other day on my radio show at “The Breeze.”

It was post-Christchurch earthquake and he had rushed off to be ‘Johnny on the spot’, literally, spending the next four or five days in Canterbury.

He was saying how knackered he was.  He takes all his holidays over the Christmas period so he doesn’t have a break through the year.

I don’t think he is alone in feeling that way.  What with the economic crisis and the drought of last summer and the various disasters and controversies that have been highlighted this year, we’re all feeling stuffed.

That conversation with John, however, was before Pike River seared its way into our national psyche.

So he, and we, were knackered back then in September. By the time Christmas comes around, we’ll all be almost comatose with exhaustion.

Pike River has taken a tremendous toll on the country, but, of course, most especially the people of the Coast.  Then there were those few sparks causing a massive blaze at Silver Fern Farms facility in Te Aroha and families losing their livelihoods and facing a very bleak future.  There is the prospect of another drought in the Far North, although it seems that may turn 360 degrees over Christmas/New Year and become a flood if our old weather watcher mate Philip Duncan is correct!

This year, we have had terrible accidents to make us all feel grateful that we and our family members are still here, no matter the feelings of fatigue.

A couple of examples spring readily to mind - the camper innocently cleaning her teeth in a campground one night, shot dead by a spotlighting hunter.   The young English woman biking home along Auckland’s Tamaki Drive who, by trying to avoid a car door opening, fell in front of a truck and died. Then there’s the examples of child abuse that simply defy any hint of humanity. And to cap it off, just this week, the clubbing to death of the seals at Kaikoura.

Yes John, we’re all buggered.  2010 will go down as our ‘Annus Bloody Awfulness. ‘

But I guess things could be worse.   We could be Australia, losing to the All Blacks ten times in a row, losing to the Poms in the Ashes, losing the Netball Final at the Commonwealth Games.

Still, there is one shining light.   They’ll soon be eating our NZ apples!