As it is the end of the year, I thought I would spoil myself by writing about my favourite subject, which is of course me.
After 12 months of opinions, observations, grumbles, and the occasional attempt at optimism, it seems only fair that my final column of 2025 should turn inward for a moment, if only to explain why I am feeling more hopeful about the year ahead than I have for quite some time.
2025 has marked the start of a new way of life for me, not in the vague aspirational sense beloved of lifestyle columns, but in a practical, measurable way that shows up in blood tests and medical conversations that have become noticeably more relaxed. I have been taking the magic drug Mounjaro and, rather remarkably, my fat has started to fade away, steadily rather than dramatically, which turns out to be far more important.
Along with the shrinking waistband has come something better. I feel better. My blood results are better. My internal organs, which had been staging a quiet rebellion for years, now appear to be behaving themselves again. In the space of three months I have stopped being type 2 diabetic. Not even pre-diabetic. Something I was told, repeatedly, was unlikely to happen at my age.
My mobility has improved. My fitness is improving. And the long list of medicines I have been dutifully swallowing every day for years has been drastically reduced, with a realistic expectation that it will be reduced further. All of which will no doubt come as a relief to the impoverished Guernsey taxpayer who has been funding my free prescriptions for more than six years and who may now reasonably expect a modest return on that investment.
Yes, Mounjaro costs money. That is obvious. But it does not take an accountant, a policy letter, or a Treasury working group to see that a thinner, fitter, more active Horace is likely to be considerably cheaper to care for over the long term than the alternative version who was heading steadily towards more medication, more complications, and more contact with the healthcare system.
There is also the small matter of economic activity. Getting out into the real world again means spending money rather than simply absorbing it, and my first planned contribution to local commerce will be an e-bike, which should benefit a retailer and reduce the chances of me being discovered halfway up a Guernsey hill wondering whose idea this all was.
I am genuinely looking forward to 2026 with anticipation rather than resignation, including the prospect of rejoining the population in a more physical sense rather than observing it largely through windows and windscreens. Whether that is a good thing for everyone else remains to be seen, but it will certainly be a good thing for me.
I am also hoping to be able to see properly again next year once the cataract in my eye is eventually removed, although I am told that the ophthalmic service is something of a disaster at the moment, so I am not holding my breath. If the wait becomes too long I may simply adopt a pirate’s eye patch and pretend it is all a deliberate stylistic choice.
All of which leads me to an uncomfortable but unavoidable thought. The States of Guernsey now has within its grasp a proven medical intervention that could reduce long-term healthcare costs, improve quality of life, and increase economic participation for a significant number of islanders. It involves spending money now to save money later. Which is, historically, not something governments find easy.
What makes this particularly awkward is that it does not require a grand project, a new building, or a glossy strategy document. Our private GP practices are already equipped to deliver this kind of treatment safely and effectively. There is no ribbon to cut and no plaque to unveil. Just quieter savings and better outcomes over time.
I am aware that some readers will bristle at this point and mutter about personal responsibility, eating less, moving more, and why expensive drugs should be wasted on fat beggars who only have themselves to blame. To those people I can only say that if you think like that, there is a good chance you have never been fat.
I have lost hundreds of pounds of weight over my lifetime and put hundreds more back on. Each time I did exactly what I was told. I ate less. I moved more. And each time I was hungry. Constantly. I never felt full. I never stopped thinking about food. Plates were always cleared. Seconds were inevitable.
What Mounjaro has done is not remove willpower from the equation but normalise my relationship with food. For the first time in my life I know when I am full, and it does not take much at all. I do not plan my day around eating. I do not think about food very much. I now finally understand those people who leave half their meal on the plate and say they are full, something that would once have seemed either dishonest or morally suspect.
We are perfectly prepared to fix broken legs and spend fortunes attempting to cure cancer, yet restoring normal working conditions to someone’s gut still provokes moral lectures rather than clinical discussion. That says more about our attitudes than it does about the medicine.
The only real downside to getting out more is that it has forced me to notice what has been happening to my island while I was otherwise occupied. And I am sorry to say that the view is not always encouraging.
We have not had such incongruous and, in my view, frankly ugly buildings around our coastline since the Germans left in 1945. Many of the new homes resemble office blocks, warehouses, or agricultural barns. The rest look like bunkers, which might at least be historically consistent if nothing else.
Somehow we have combined very high cost with very little charm. Coastal developments that could be anywhere. Materials that have nothing to do with Guernsey. Forms that fight the landscape rather than sit within it. And do not even suggest wooden cladding, which may look fine in Norfolk but has no place squatting along our west coast shoreline in full view of the sea.
Perhaps it is time to put island beauty at the very top of our development priorities, not as a vague aspiration but as a hard constraint. If something is ugly, inappropriate, or hostile to the character of the island, it simply should not be built. If we need help remembering what Guernsey looks like at its best, we could always ask the King to champion our building heritage. At this point that might be safer than leaving the job to ourselves.
Which brings me, finally, to my reader, Benedict, whose loyalty has been such that it seems only right to dedicate my final column of the year to him. Thank you for reading. Thank you for indulging me. And thank you for allowing me, once a year, to write about my favourite subject.
Here’s to 2026. A thinner Horace, a fitter Horace, and possibly a slightly angrier Horace too, which I am reliably informed may be a side effect of weight loss and the small matter of testosterone production returning to levels last seen sometime before decimalisation. I mention this not as a warning but as an explanation, and possibly an apology in advance. If any of this is later described as toxic masculinity, I can only say that it appears to be medically induced and administered under supervision.
