A not-normal year, and what to put in your Christmas cards

I’ve started writing my Christmas cards and some of them normally have letters in them. And I’m wondering: what can you say about this not-normal year that we are almost (and glad to be) finished with? For most of the recipients, I don’t even know whether 2020 has been relatively kind to them, as it has to me, or whether they have been more closely touched by the pandemic.

Looking back on 2020, there are a lot of things that made me anxious, depressed and angry. (Very angry. A lot.) I’m not going to write about them. You know what they are. You probably felt (and feel) much the same as I do.

So I am going to focus on the reasons to be cheerful (and a few ways to give back). I know I’ve been lucky so far. If you haven’t, I hope this isn’t too hard to read. 

Things I’ve learnt from lockdown

 

It’s late September and I really should be back at school… well, it’s early September, and I’ve got nowhere to go. But I’ve been away, and it feels like the end of summer and it feels like a time to take stock.

So, things I’ve learnt from lockdown.

I miss the sea

I think I’m officially old. I’ve started watching ‘Saga telly’. Programmes that are mainly about scenery. And if there are trains as well, that’s a bonus. (Disclaimer: nothing to do with Saga. It’s just my name for them.)

So when we found a programme called Scenic Railway Journeys, that was peak Saga telly.

Also, it has Bill Nighy doing the narration. Dead Ringers got it wrong with their running gag about Penelope Wilton having the most soothing voice in the world. It’s Bill Nighy. Also, he manages soothing AND sexy. And suave. All the positive alliterative adjectives.

I miss trains.

I miss the sea.

I miss my family.

Not a covid diary

This is the sort of thing I've been sharing on Facebook.

You probably haven’t noticed, because you’ve got your own lives, but I haven’t been here for the last three months.

I’ve been on Twitter, reporting racists. I’ve been on Facebook, joining groups for freelances who’ve lost work through the lockdown. And telling my friends, who know how shit the government is, how shit the government is.

But it didn’t feel right to be blogging. What was there to say? The small stuff is actually quite boring; the big stuff is too big to go there.

Let's hear it for non-amazing women

You missed one.

It was International Women’s Day last week. I couldn’t help wondering what was the point.