Exactly a year ago at this moment, Caroline and I were jumping in the car to head down to the Crab and Lobster in Sidlesham for an early New Year’s dinner for the two of us, before driving to Chichester Cineworld to watch Little Women. The end of our festivities was to come back home at about 11.30, and join our son Tom’s lively supper party for the rest of the evening. The next day, I think we took part in a mass walk in Petworth Park with assorted friends and relations. Basically, we did roughly what everyone always does.
Every one of those 99 words now fills me with an aching nostalgia, itself an almost unbearable expression of the extent to which I took freedom for granted for all those years.
I’m not going to list the heroes and villains of my year, nor the generosity and idiocy I have observed, and the brilliance and the blundering I have seen. Because you’ve seen them, too. I am not ashamed to say that, for the first time in my life, I have experienced a real and growing sense of anxiety; indeed, you may have felt this, too, perhaps even felt able to articulate it without feeling weakness.
Instead, I am going to try to set out how I am going to let it change me. For as grim as it is now, the more certain it is that it will be better soon enough.
I will try never again to take freedom for granted. I will say a little prayer of thanks every time I jump spontaneously in the car to go and see a friend, or down to the shops, or just off for a game of tennis.
Having said that, I want to bank a good portion of that sense of silence, and of peace, that came with the various restrictions. A half empty diary, I have learned, is not a bad thing, just like a quiet drink in a pub garden is better with one good friend than the unheard buzz of twenty of them.
I will hug more people, but shake the hands of many fewer. Having spent forty years getting physical proximity discomfort out of my system, I have missed hugging more than I can say. Equally, I wouldn’t mind if I never shook a hand again.
I will impose my custom gleefully on every small trader, pub, restaurant and business that I possibly can, and will simultaneously avoid large companies that weasel out of their taxes, and haven’t repaid furlough they never needed in the first place. I will make a point of eating out at least one a fortnight, even if it just a burger somewhere.
Before the end of January, will have booked at least six concerts or theatre performances because a) they need it, and b) there will come a time soon enough when the tickets are unavailable again.
I will buy a paper only twice a week, and will never watch a news programme after six in the evening.
I will only Zoom if someone’s life physically depends on it.
I will take 25% more off my carbon footprint for 2020, (which Covid had already reduced by about 35% for the previous year.) Not because I’m clever, or pious, but because if I don’t, who the hell should? But I will eat grass fed meat at least once a week because, if I don’t, what the hell will happen to our farmers?
I will buy a new tennis racket and three sheep.
I will walk cheerfully from the wicket when the umpire gives me out, leg before wicket. Obviously.
And in hoping never to hear the words ‘stay safe’ again in my life, I wish you all the most heartfelt good wishes for tonight, tomorrow and onwards.
Happy new year.
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