Thank you and Goodbye, 2020.

Do you have New Year’s resolutions this year?

I don’t.

Well, except to survive. And finish my work before the baby pops out. I am increasingly worried I won’t be able to, as taking care of a toddler who now NEEDS to be challenged…. is, well.. CHALLENGING. Lol.

My husband and I watched Death to 2020 on Netflix last night after baby was in bed. We also shared a pizza. That is now called ‘date night’. The show is basically Charlie Brooker’s Yearly Wipe, but not on the BBC anymore, so the budget is much bigger. It’s a great thing to watch, and makes what has been a taxing year on many seem a little more light hearted. It got a few laughs out of us, and some sighs.

I have come to understand now why Britons spend much of winter in a state of ‘waiting’. See folks, I was born in this country, but brought up in another. A hot country. Where the sun beamed all year around and when a cloud was spotted, even a far away teeny tiny wisp of a thing, one prayed for rain. Where the ground was parched and the dust settled the moment you wiped it off a surface. Rain was a joyous celebration. All I knew of British weather was the summertime. Luscious, plentiful greenery and heady long days, the best of British weather.

Ten years ago my parents returned to their country, and brought me back with them. So it took me ten years to develop a sort of cold disdain towards winter. I used to love winter. Squelchy leaves underfoot, beautiful frosty mornings, warmth of an evening around a kitchen table with a hot drink, snow and ice and perpetual grey. Now I detest it. I think it might have something to do with me having moved to a tiny little ghost town called Crewe, which according to some, does not even exist and this is all a dream.

Some people are very proud of Crewe. It has a nice history of being a railway town, the biggest one up North, where they made the trains.

Now it is bedraggled and in need of some love, but all it gets is… well economic disappointment. Year in year out. And four years living here has really taken its toll on my soul. I wanna get out, folks. I WANNA GET OUT. I hope I do! Some say one never escapes Crewe. If that is true… shiver me timbers.

Anyway, as I said, a lot of Britons spend winter waiting for summer, and that is what I am doing this year. I want summer. I want heat. I want warmth in my heart and soul. I want family. I want the heat of the sun on my cheeks and burning in my hair. I want lots of things.

But I also want to learn how to be grateful for what I have.

That’s a huge lesson that I learnt this year, but one that still needs a lot of practise by me.

Be grateful.

Have a roof over your head? Heating? Food in the fridge? DESSERT? A job!? A family? A little boy who loves life? Lots of family? People who care?

BE GRATEFUL.

So that is my resolution for this year, then. To remember to be grateful and thankful and contented. To stop wanting things that are not meant for me just yet. To remember all the good things I do have, and hold them dear.

Now then. That was a good exercise in thinking about things. It’s also snowing here in Crewe for the first time since November last year. That’s quite nice. I shall enjoy that a bit.

Thank you and goodbye, 2020.

On the United Kingdom of Great Tiers

Folks the UK has gone mad. Well it feels like it has at any rate. Apparently food shortages now constitute of lack of availability of essential foods like lettuce and citrus fruits. Whatever will we do!?

I feel like the news outlets are contributing more to this mass hysteria and it makes me laugh, whilst simultaneously shaking my head in irritation. It’s like they go around finding random people in an otherwise well-stocked supermarket and asking them if they haven’t been able to find anything, and the one random guy goes ‘Er, yeah, the lettuce shelf is EMPTY. EMPTY, can you see? My wife is waiting for lettuce at home and THERE IS NONE LEFT.’

And then they pan over the shelves groaning under the weight of a million other foods, and finally rest the camera on a couple of empty plastic bins that once contained lettuce but now do not.

WhaTEVER will we DO!?!?

Now everybody wants to rush to Tesco to buy toilet roll and rice and eggs, for some reason, because doing their massive Christmas shop was not enough, somehow. And nobody is going to risk not having toilet paper because last time they ended up using lettuce instead and now there isn’t even that to fall back on.

Anyway it feels to me like our prime minister is a prime buffoon, who cares mostly about being popular hence the constant teetering on the edge of various rules and turning back on himself. He doesn’t know whether he is coming or going, to be honest, and reassures the public that he does in fact use a hairbrush when we know this is a lie, as he has been caught on camera mussing up his ridiculously blond hair… I think he likes looking like a deranged old owl.

London is now in Tier 4 which means total lockdown but that has not stopped people from the South of the UK travelling up to Tier 2 areas such as York for a quick pint, and getting arrested for doing so. Is that just an entitled attitude that southerners have? Because when us lot up North (I say ‘us lot’ but I am really a Southie by birth and heritage oh dear even though I do live up North) were in higher tiers of lockdown none of us took a jolly down South for a pint, did we? Well I didn’t hear of any of us getting arrested for doing so, at any rate.

Anyway I don’t care about Christmas being cancelled. I am heavily pregnant and have a lot of work to do in the 5 weeks before I give birth. I am so heavy, the heaviest I have ever been in my entire life. I am swollen and in pain and just generally feeling bLARGH. So I focus on other things to distract me from my discomfort and that tends to be the news, work and of course a busy toddler.

I just want to have my body back to be honest, and want coronavirus to piss off. I want to be able to lie on my back without feeling like I am suffocating and just… oh dearie me. It’s not a good time for much, folks, but it’s as good a time as we will get so we better make the most of it.

What are your Christmas plans?

Stone Cold Silent Still

It is different this year.

I can feel it and smell it and taste it.

There are more lights.

Twinkling through the night.

Signalling the happiness that seems to lie beyond reach but… oh hey, hullo, what is that softness I feel in my fingers as they graze the icy air? Could it be…?

Entire streets in my town are lit up. Santas climbing through windows and peering down chimneys and knocking on doors, carrying sacks of what we can only assume is hope. Desperate hope.

And people who never made an effort are making one.

It’s a bit like the American movies.

We take little one out for a small walk before dinner, when it’s pitch black under the heavy drapes of the winter sky at night. And all the houses are decked for conquest. Each competing with the other.

So eerie, if you stand still and let the breath cloud away in front of your face. Stone cold silent still, twinkling lights in the darkness. Sometimes faint bells ring and sometimes a disjointed jingle sears through the thickness of cold.

But then a pair of bright eyes meet yours from down somewhere by your knees, and tiny little fingers grasp your solid warm ones, and little feet stamp stamp stamp excitedly, and it’s not eerie after all. It’s joy. We all need a sprinkling of joy.

I see a light at the end of the tunnel. I am so so scared, but so hopeful too!

What are your plans for the holiday season this year, folks? Can you see and taste and smell it yet?

Dear December (in 2020)

Hello December.

You dawned frosty this year.

Coating the cars in a thin icy layer. Spreading over the grass and roads, hardening the mud that loves little hands and somehow gets into little wellies and smears itself on little socks.

Pretty, pretty frost.

Some say Jack Frost has been.

Others watch the morning clouds scud by, the steam rising from people’s pipes, cars, breath visible in the air.

Life, really.

But the sun has not risen yet.

It’s only dawn.

People still lie dreaming in their beds.

I drink your icy air, December, in the pitch blackness of winter dawn. The sunrise is in 1 hour and 24 minutes, and my fingers will freeze and my toes will fall off, but I will welcome this first sun of December… that’s if the cloud allows me to see her.

The first sun of the last month of a strange, strange year.

Did we think we would get here in one piece?

Did we think we would have our lives tipped over and tumbled out?

Resolutions made in 2019 froze 9 months ago, and now you are helping to usher in a new year. A new dawn. A new …. or not?

I won’t rush you December. I refuse to. I know how hard it feels to be rushed.

You must be feeling it this year. Many people are counting on you. People began decorating their homes and trees months ago in anticipation for you. They think you’re going to be some sort of saviour from the evil that has infiltrated the ranks of humanity.

But don’t worry, December.

You take your sweet old time. It’s not your fault you herald the turn of the year. You just keep on being you, frosty, twinkly, candy cane you. We will manage.