2017 the Fire Rooster – A Day with Richard Ashworth

The Fire Rooster
2017 : the Year of the Turkey.

“Meet the New Boss, same as the old boss” – Pete Townsend, “Won’t get fooled again.”

The Fire Rooster is a capricious bird. Blessed with the charm to inspire life-long devotion, he often chooses instead to hold back, satisfied with simply dazzling. So 2017 is likely to be a year when show, publicity and packaging disguise content. It’s a year to ask difficult questions. In any case the Rooster’s yin Metal nature makes it the year both of research and subterfuge.

This quality of making an empty impression indicates the year’s underlying nature. The Dragons (1940, 1952, 1964, 1976, 1988) will tend to have something of a free ticket (good news for less balanced ones such as Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage and Vladimir Putin btw). It’s possible they will use it to burst bubbles and highlight what’s worth highlighting. Snakes (1953, 1965, 1977, 1989) however like Tony Blair and Basharat al-Assad prosper beyond all reasonable expectation as do Oxen – among them Barack Obama. It’s the year of the overstayed welcome as well as of the empty posture.

The annual lo shu or “magic square” of the year has at its centre the Watery 1 of communication. So set the controls for a year of talk, negotiation and spin. The trick will be to not allow this jaw-jaw to be empty. The Rabbit has a big role here – to challenge bad faith and half-truth. You’ll win through as long as you stick to what matters. Angelina Jolie, this means you; your time is better spent calling governments on their arms-selling record than your ex on his spliff habit. In 2017 older Dogs will tend to bark less; Bill Clinton, George W Bush and Donald Trump – all born 1946 – will fade away. This is the last wag of the old guard; they are sleeping dogs, let them lie.

In our houses,the Eastern area will call for very careful treatment to forestall a plague of boils, as will the South. This makes it a year of deft manoeuvering for the 50% of us designated East Group by our birth. A saving grace is that a South East door looks handy as does (unusually) Water in the tai chi or “heart” of the house. More I’m not going to give away before December.

Internationally the likely trouble spots are unsurprising: the Far East of course but also Eastern and Southern regions; flooding is likely for instance in East Anglia and hurricanes along the Carolina coast though they’ll tend to be more destructive in the Gulf of Mexico. Eastern Ukraine, the North West frontier (that’s Eastern Afghanistan) are trouble spots, as is Moscow and the Great Barrier Reef. In Europe the turmoil moves East – from for instance Austria to Hungary and Berlin to Warsaw. Not the greatest year in Canary Wharf either. Or the White House. And let’s not forget that it is not simply because turkeys are voting for Christmas worldwide that I’m calling this the year of the turkey. This may well be the year of Turkey.

I could go on. I won’t. I’ll be talking a lot more about all of this at the Pepperpot, Godalming High Street between 10 and 5 on the 3rd December. Join us. The future starts here.

Richard Ashworth.

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