A Merry Covid Christmas

Christmas 2020. Not a message of woe, but of seeking the spirit of Christmas and companionship.

 I’ve had many unconventional Christmases. For a start I’m Australian, so most of them have been hot, sweltering in 42 degrees humid heat with the oven on full blast half the day heating the house up even more. A few penniless ones while travelling, one with death, one where I was living in my car, and in various other cultures at different times.

I have been trying to ignore this one. It will be my first Christmas ever without my daughter who is now 25, and it’s over two years since I’ve seen my son and way too long since I’ve had Christmas with him.

A less glamourous (but isn’t that the way of it) Christmas photo from many years ago with my two still-gorgeous and amazing children.

I have been trying to ignore this one. It will be my first Christmas ever without my daughter who is now 25, and it’s over two years since I’ve seen my son and way too long since I’ve had Christmas with him.

But the last one still stands up in the bunch – Christmas 2020.

I had my flight already booked from Turkey to London for mid-December. I was 24 hours without wifi, between bus from Fethiye to Dalaman airport, overnight trying to sleep in a chair designed for massage and far from making a suitable mattress (the earliest bus was unlikely to get me there in time), then flights to Istanbul and London.

Before I left I was thorough as always checking information – I’d been watching developments for two months. Well actually, in a constant border hop with constantly changing situations, I’d been watching since January 2020.

Boris did a one month lockdown til 2nd December – to protect Christmas. It finished on time as promised. And Boris promised Christmas was safe. He promised it. I fell into the trap so many of us did.

I believed him.

Yet how many times have I made the joke – How do you know when a politician is telling a lie? – when he is speaking.

So after 24 hours in wifi-less transit, on arrival in London my daughter and I rushed to a pub for a meal and as many ciders at half price as we could manage.

Cos my 24 hours in transit had taken the UK from a no lockdowns through Christmas promise to –

A lockdown, starting the next day.

Shops, pubs and restaurants were to be closed from the Saturday, and half of London spent Friday rushing the train stations and jamming onto trains and the motorways trying to get home before the lockdown.

For pubs that meant millions of pounds of lost revenue, not just from lost Christmas sales, but also all the beer and cider they had to pour down the drains because they have to empty and clean all their pipes. Beer and cider simply won’t keep once tapped.

So drinks were massively discounted.

But at least Boris had in that same announcement confirmed his promise that Christmas was safe. The rules would be relaxed for five days around Christmas so people could celebrate and be with their families.

He would not cancel Christmas.

Naïve us.

He was lying again.

Just a few days later on the 19th of December – exactly a year ago today – he cancelled Christmas.

This was in spite of, in Boris’s very own words that day, saying of delta that “there is no evidence the variant causes more severe illness or higher mortality”.

This was shitty for everyone, not least of all the thousands of businesses with Christmas bookings who had already ordered and paid for supplies.

For me and my daughter it took an interesting side twist. We were staying in a hotel room, my daughter being between flats. I hadn’t been able to work the entire year, but my cheap Christmas fortnight fell through, in spite of what we had both been led to understand as a result of the several discussions about the shared Christmas lunch the roomie had been planning for us. But it became a – please move out. It’s just a week til Christmas but your comings and goings to get to work inconvenience me.

So we were in the cheapest hotel we could find.

Nice, you might think. And at a level it was. Clean and neat, a big wall tv, nice shower and ensuite etc. But Boris’s lockdowns meant that the hotel cafeteria was closed as were all eat-in places. And on Christmas day in England, everything closes for Christmas, including their takeaway services.

MacDonalds was closed. KFC was closed. Everything was closed.

And hotel rooms don’t come with kitchens. Not even kitchenettes. Or a microwave. Or a toaster.

Ours came with a jug to boil water.

Which means that our hot roast turkey and cranberry sauce with all the trimmings for Christmas dinner 2020 came in the shape of instant cuppa noodles.

I guarantee as Boris tucked into his lavish servings of all the traditional goodies, he did not spare a thought for those like us he had trapped. Or the extra people shivering on the streets because they’d run out of funds and homes. Or the people in places like the hostel I stayed at where there wasn’t even a jug, nowhere to sit or be other than their designated bunk, and you weren’t allowed food in the dorms. Or the thousands of families in trouble because of businesses going bankrupt and lives being turned upside down.

But don’t get me wrong – we did not have a terrible Christmas.

We armed ourselves with a list of movies for viewing, bought a couple of games of Exit (the ones which are an echo of being trapped in a locked room and you have to solve the clues in order to unlock the door and escape).

And large amounts of liquids. That seemed as good a way as any to fill our stomachs. Plus the space between the curtain and the window in December London proved a reasonably adequate fridge – though a tub of ice-cream needed to be eaten fairly immediately.

So we played our games, watched our movies, and drank our way around the drinks which had typified our stays through respective Christmases and other places in our travels (that blog is in process in Food Journeys 😊 )

Now I’m looking at Christmas 2021, just a few days away. This year I will be celebrating with a whole group, some of whom have become a sort of family to me, and who will all be Christmasing without their loved ones.

The borders of Morocco are currently closed, and no one can come or go to visit and be with their families, however long it may have been. Dads separated from their children, couples separated from their partners, families separated across oceans.

I have been avoiding thinking about Christmas so far this year. Being without my son and daughter is having a bigger impact than I realized. It is time I embraced Christmas 2021. So this week and in spite of the time difference, I will watch my two Christmas movies via zoom with my daughter: alone-not alone. The Holiday and Love Actually.

And as an extra treat I will watch an old favourite – Bad Santa.

I will find myself some sort of a Christmas tree – maybe buy that potplant I’ve been planning on for a while (seeing as it doesn’t appear I am going anywhere fast with my backpack at the minute) and some tinsel – and even though I have no idea how next year will pan out and if I will still have work, I will buy myself a Christmas present.

On Christmas eve we will all meet up for a Christmas dinner and party event together.

And we will all have a good Christmas.

While the traditions each of us have each Christmas are special, they also blend into a whole. When Christmas is out of the ordinary, then you remember that one. Christmas 2020 my daughter and I had each other. And we had a Christmas – another Christmas – to remember.

A very happy Christmas to all. And a special wish to all those separated from their loved ones this year. And my personal angle – take the situation you may be in by the balls and have a great day! (Remember, it’s up to you how you see it all.)

A Very Merry Christmas to all. Make this one count!!!