To say that Christmas would not be the same this year would be a mammoth understatement. The approaching weeks seemed to me to be something of a nightmare for me. Certainly dream like; in that it was like being suspended in a vacuum to me.
This whole year has been horrible putting it mildly; a slow creeping foreboding, from the start as we waited, in disbelief that this was happening to us. I cannot bring myself to write the name of the monster in our midst any more. To me, it is as if there has been a slow time-slip back into the middle ages where a vile unstoppable disease slid into our lives, and our homes, killing at random. At the same setting up a division among the people of our amazing planet. Half seem to have sailed off up a river in Egypt, where they can live in denial even in the face of the great piles of refrigerated corpses.
It’s true that this time, there are not primitive carts being dragged through to streets with a filthy wretch of a crier shouting, “Bring out your dead”. The death toll having passed 70.000 souls is shocking and as in the time of the Black Death during the middle ages, when in fairness the people had no idea what to do about it but throw the corpses on a shallow grave, on a fire or in the river, yet these dreadful statistics are being received with about as much importance as a gnat bite by all of us who know better or at least should.
The rest of us, the other half, have done our best to follow the guide lines and stay in our home as far as possible. To behave in a responsible way and try to safeguard, not just ourselves but also our families, friends and neighbours. It seems to me that we, the sensible set, have lost the battle to the rabble, who are leading their lives exactly as they always have, without a care in the world for the older or vulnerable older folk in our midst.
Somehow, I feel like Alice during her nightmare Adventures in Wonderland, being surrounded by things that are totally alien to normal life and a lot of characters and creatures that could be dangerous, like the Queen of hearts and her willing minions, the rest of the pack.
Christmas Eve was the first time we have gone into somebody’s home for a meal since last July when Steve celebrated his 70th birthday. My daughter Jacqueline and her husband Jacqueline had suggested that we spent Christmas Eve having dinner with them and exchanging gifts, as they had also done for Stephen’s birthday last summer. This celebration is something of a tradition between us and it was planned that we could still keep the required distance apart, since they have so much more space than we have in our own home. The most awful thing; not being able to embrace my own daughter was be an emotional experience, though unavoidable. It was a splendid evening with an imaginative table decoration theme and meal prepared with artistry and flair in a perfect Christmas atmosphere. I need only mention a perfectly cooked main course of dainty Pheasant and Partridge fillets on a soft bed of creamed potatoes with sliced Girolle mushrooms on the side to paint a picture of somebody who is very much at ease in the kitchen.
This was in stark contrast to my total failure to get to grips with the festive season myself. All I have forced myself to do has been to open the Christmas cards. In the frame of mind that has held me firmly with a sense of having lost touch with reality and the impression of feeling cursed for so long over this year, I have not even put them on display as I have always done in the past by attaching them to our pretty leaded glass doors in the hall by sticking them with white tack. I didn’t wrap presents either just gave them placed in a bag to loved one who deserved much better treatment. Even that much, I have found to be a challenge too far, at a time when I could not invite friends inside in our home for months on end. Ten months to be more exact.
Even in normal times I do not over do the decorations. I like to stick to what to me, is the whole point of Christmas time, that being; that I put out one of the two dainty nativity scenes that usually only spends a bit short of eleven months of the year packed carefully and lovingly away. That was always it, in our house; Nativity and Christmas greetings cards. No Streamers, no tree, certainly no balloons. Nothing this year, due to my total failure to place a rocket up my rear end and make an effort in the face of this miserable year that has really got me down.
At dawn on Christmas Eve, Stephen and I touch a lovely walk in the woods and along the banks of the River Arun in Arundel. The photos today were our record of what a wonderful day that was weather wise. The river surface was like glass, reflecting the beauty there abouts. A still river surface is rare on the Arun, a stretch of water that seems always to be moving under the surface. Thank God and all the angels for the beauty of nature.
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