CAN it really be ten years since yours truly conducted the countdown into the new millennium at the Hogmanay bash in the old Nardinis cafe?

It was a brave new world promising prosperity, peace and the hopes of a different generation, in a cyberspace era, only to be swamped in tsunamis, terrorism, roadside bombs, bird flu, swine flu and economic collapse after a decade of property boom.

As many people stumble out of the so-called 'noughties' with nowt to show for it we are wise to be wary of what the next decade - the teenies? - will offer.

Thinking back to Hogmanay 1999 the glamour, glitz, and gusto of the celebrations was, perhaps, analagous to 'the night before' on the Titanic.

Little did anyone think - outside of the Nardini family - that Nardinis institution, under then owner and funeral director David Hendry, would end up buried!

Indeed, I would argue that the Lazarus-like resurrection of the new Nardinis unders Messrs, Fox, Equi and Marini is a modern miracle having to overcome, as it did, society's twin scourges of unbridled bankers and bureaucrats. The combination of these terrible twins almost suffocated the Nardini renaissance.

Part of the renaissance, incidentally, for those who don't know has been the expansion of the original Nardini spirit of enterprise. The new generation of cousins, Claudio and Aldo junior with their Moorings and Green Shutter cafes, and Alessandro (with mum Lauretta) at the Seaview Cafe, Wemyss Bay, will have great-grandfather Pietro smiling from his ice-cream kiosk in the sky.

As I entered the last decade I wasn't to guess that I would lose both mother and father and have four grandchildren appear.

I wouldn't have believed that my office would become a funeral parlour (I always said I would be taken out of Lade Street in a box) or that someone in Connecticut, Canberra or Cambodia could read this column, simply by logging on to largsandmillportnews.com So, you would truly need to be psychic (and I'm only practising) to conjecture as to what life will be like at the end of 2019.

All I know is that a new Largs Academy will be taking shape, Hunterston nuclear power station will still be operating in order to keep the lights on and that if anyone ever gets a carbon capture system to work properly they might revisit a 'clean' coal station proposal.

Largs will be a first choice for world sailing events thanks to increased facilities around Pencil Bay and Thistle will be shaping up to play Rangers in the Scottish Cup. (For those of you unacquainted with the new football set-up this is entirely possible).

There will be an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights over accountant Jim Perman's half-million pound costs against Largs Community Council (it did start at £8000 but watch out for inflation), and the Tories will be completing a ten year term in government on the back of record high property prices.

You will be restricted to one flight a year, due to carbon emissions, unless you are a banker, bureaucrat or politician but my Global Freezing campaign will be gaining momentum. However, there will still be talk of when a Fairlie by-pass might be built.

However, to end on a positive note for some of you, there will be a new editor by the end of the decade. I promise.