The sight of that JeJu Air flight, careening off the runway into a reinforced concrete bunker, resulting in a 9-11-esque explosion, is a salutary close to 2024. My heart aches for those 179 souls on board who, in the previous three minutes, would have known a crisis was unfolding by way of a bird-strike to the right engine. Reaching terra firma must have seemed like progress, despite the violence of a gears-up, belly landing. But those passengers may also have noted that touchdown occurred late, halfway down the runway, and that the plane was now failing, noticeably, to slow. For a complicated cascade of reasons, yet to be unravelled, the red-eye from Bangkok to Muan, South Korea never reached its gate. Only two of the crew, positioned at the rear in jump seats, would avoid the fireball, and survive. One, a seriously injured young man, was photographed on a stretcher bound for Seoul. His face and torso were occluded from view, as a signal of respect. The lower part of his legs protruded from a blanket, clad in the beige, formal uniform of JeJu cabin-crew. The fabric of his trousers was rumpled, and also perfectly clean. I found this detail moving. I hope that he will be well.

***

On the same news cycle came word of President Jimmy Carter’s death, at the age of one hundred. I can trace my first awareness of American politics – the world outside my world – to his election campaign of 1976. “My name is Jimmy Carter, and I’m running for President”, he declared, to a hollering, hometown crowd. My ten-year-old self saw him as a forthright man, who spoke in straightforward language. And yet, Carter’s words were almost too brief. He had not, in that rallying cry, explained why he was running for President. This, then, was a first instruction on the power of tribe: being a peanut farmer from Georgia, well away from the Beltway, was already half the battle. For me, Jimmy Carter was always more than the four-year post he once held. He pursued a stellar career in diplomacy post-presidency, advocating for human rights and for the better functioning of democracy. In doing so, he often proved awkward – failing to toe the line of various incumbents at the White House, and, to their great annoyance, saying precisely what he thought. His energy was less that of a leader, more that of a preacher. His wise eyes, which I could pick out from a lineup of thousands, conjure humanity, sadness and resolve in their hooded saucers. I will remember him well.

***

The final weeks of the year had started off poorly in my own world. I received news that Annie, a young woman of great musical talent, with whom I had sung in a Gospel Choir, had died. As it is twenty years since I have seen her, I’m figuring her life ended in her early forties. The news seemed so incongruous to me, such was her vibrancy and playfulness. Losing people we have known, but no longer know, is a complicated affair. Annie sang that signature gospel song, O Happy Day, in our choir. I have a live recording of her somewhere. You can hear her giggle with joy towards the end of the recording. He washed our tears away. O happy day. Life being life, I was forced to multi-task as I joined her funeral online. It came from the same church, Gardiner Street, where we had met and sung together. The lyrics of another of those anthems reverberated in my head as I prepared for Christmas, finished up my business projects, and set out to host a long-standing lunch event. ‘There’s something inside so strong; I know that I can make it…Something inside so strong”. I realise that those couple of years singing Gospel were a stock-piling of affirming emotions, which I have carried forward with me. They lie close to my heart; and Annie’s sweet lilt carries the tune.

***

I continue to follow media coverage of the fallout in Muan, South Korea. This morning, there was a report of a grieving father who had lost his daughter on the flight. Filmed in a zone of the airport cordoned off for the victims’ families, the poor man is shown peering up at a television screen featuring the smouldering rubble of the ill-fated JeJu Air aircraft. In reality, it lies a stone’s throw away. “Only the tail remains”, he says, pointing to that part of the plane which sheltered the surviving flight attendants.

As the old year closes I repeat his words, playing with their meaning, to find meaning. Only the tail remains. Only the tale remains.