As we recall those unlived years

100 Years of Remembrance

2021 marks the centenary of the year (1921) when different elements of Remembrance were combined to create the traditions we know today: Armistice Day, the poppy symbol, the two-minute silence, the service for the Unknown Warrior and the march-past of veterans and dignitaries at monuments around the UK, including the Cenotaph in London. Regular readers will know my admiration for the Royal British Legion and much more about the history of Remebrance can be found on their website.

Past, present, future

What I always reflect on is how inclusive remembrance is: men, women, young, old, all ethnicities, nationalities, religions and backgrounds can find a home within an act of remembrance. White, purple, black and rainbow poppy wearers can find a home. Most significantly, the grieving can find a home, “a moment stolen for a tear.” Lest we forget, we need to remember…. It is a process that should be applied to all aspects of leadership and political life…. We need to know the past to understand the present and plan for a better future.

We shall remember them

BFBS

British Forces Broadcasting Service (BFBS UK) aims to provide TV, radio and internet entertainment and information to Britain’s Armed Forces and their dependents. They reach people around the globe and have permanent studios in (to date) 10 countries, as far afield as, for example, the Falkland Islands and Bahrain. They began in Algiers in 1943 and have consistently transmitted military news, live sport, and movies as well as material like the BBC’s children’s content to an increasing number of bases in remote settings and to families stationed at home and abroad.

Ernie Rowe

Ernie Rowe worked for 30 years at BFBS and penned her own poem in 2019 to add to the world’s growing collection of Remembrance poetry:

Remembered still those souls that tried

To save the world, but many died.

A moment stolen for a tear,

As we recall those unlived years.

The camaraderie that flew those souls

Back home to those they knew,

And loved them dear and held them close

But for our sakes released to foes

The silence that they leave behind

Is space to calm the troubled minds

Of those they loved – and can’t rewind.

Again this day we give our thanks

For those returned from serving ranks

And them ‘as gave it all away

Forever in our minds will stay.

Previous blogs featuring Remembrance as a theme:

• In Flanders field the poppies blow – Saturday 7th November 2015

• Falling Leaves Like Snowflakes – Wednesday 11th November 2015

• Harry’s Last Stand – Saturday 28th May 2016

• Bastille Day 2016 – Saturday 13th August 2016

• There but not there – Sunday 11th November 2018

• The Last Post – Monday 11th November 2019

• Lockdown VE Day (Blog 300) – Saturday 9th May 2020

• Autumn Rain – Saturday 7th November 2020

I have spoken

Experimenting with a Father Christmas look, gorgeous flowers, yummy fajitas

“I don’t know if you heard but the Empire is gone.”

Thus says Mando….

“When one chooses to walk the Way of the Mandalore, you are both hunter and prey….” (Hunter, prey; Yin, yang; Chicken, egg; Jedi, Sith; Innocence, experience.) This week I have mostly been watching The Mandalorian with asides for Pan’s Labyrinth (whilst ironing) and Independence Day (with the Harry Potter Film Club.) In other words, I have spent very little time on Planet Earth as it is, and when not escaping to fantastic Other Worlds (which, let’s face it, are all about Planet Earth’s deepest darkest What Ifs) I have been writing about the history of My Own Invented Other World, Rhenium. Creative writing and fictional fantasies can be powerful distractions but inevitably crash into reality when the parallels with Here and Now lurch into view:

family, fascism, identity, gender, loyalty, love, fear, courage, oppression, freedom, hatred, migration, the “outsider,” prejudice….

Are these the themes for Pan’s Labyrinth or The Mandalorian or Independence Day or Rhenium Tales….? Or do they exist in them all? Old history, repeated history; old tales, freshly-minted tales; Yin, yang; the same thing can be both comforting and depressing. As William Blake would have it, the struggle between contrary forces is necessary to human existence. The prose and the passion. Only connect. "I have spoken."

Pan's Labyrinth, The Mandalorian, Independence Day  - Fantasy or (Subconscious) Reality?

Head above the parapet again

The scariest moment is always just before you start*

*Stephen King

So, I’ve been summoned back into the world of Rhenium where survivors of the human race attempt to create a better society on a new planet in a galaxy far, far away…. (if you want to see where I was back in August 2018 before I contacted agents and got a wide range of responses - some very pertinent and some just rude, click here.)  Covid-19 lockdowns didn’t boil creative juices inside me, just survivor instincts, so I put my magnum opus aside for the best part of three years in favour of reading, walking, feasting, watching TV and doing jigsaws.

Bark, roses, flowers, outdoor eating.... summer 2021

Write. Write more. Edit. Edit more.

A combination of factors has brought Raydan Wakes back under the microscope and it is now subject to the laser-bright-brutal scrutiny of my editorial pen.

Go with me to my tent; where you shall see….

How calm and gentle I proceeded still

In all my writings.

Suffice to say, the new version seems (to me) radically different from the first (two, five, thirteen?) version(s). Some sections I cannot even remember writing…. Creative writing is a very peculiar hobby! But I’m back in the saddle again, clopping along the lonesome trail…. Giddy up, cowboy! (with thanks to the critters on the pioneer trail who cheer me on….)

The colours of Rhenium society and Nick Shelton's artist's impression of two key characters

Return to Maggie's Bar

Emily, Amy, Benji, Sally, Maggie, a May evening, a starry starry night

Inclusively Injected with love

Last Summer, we were invited to Maggie’s Bar (click here for reminder). Yesterday evening we returned to enjoy the additional gazebo which warded off the meterological uncertainties of Spring 2021. Benji sat on Sally’s knee (as in collage above.) Nibbles were nibbled. Discussions roamed around the past and our present lives, hopes, dreams and lockdown experiences, the prophetic Corona cushion, WhoGivesACrapRecycledToiletRoll, TV, cinema, theatre, the future….  On our return to the bar, we could toast the gospel that the entire Shipley branch of the Harry Potter Film Club have now been Covid-Vaccinated, Double-Jabbed, Inclusively-Injected…. There was also a Birthday Bonus present for Sally. Not only does Maggie run a very popular bar, but her eyes, hands and talents can craft lovingly produced Cross Stitch works of art. As Shakespeare truly muses:

I count myself in nothing else so happy

As in a soul remembering my good friends

A Cross Stitched gift, more signs of Spring, ecological toilet rolls....

Learning to dance in the rain

GQ’s Men of the Year

Lists of “Top Ten” or “Best Of” regularly appear in many places in the media to spark debate and highlight trends. I’d have to endorse Mr William Shakespeare as a Man of the Year in every one of my lists, as he was “not of an age, but for all time” (© Ben Jonson) and he inhabits my soul every day. But I’m also happy to concur with some of GQ’s Men of the Year:

• Russell T Davies (thanks for your TV series It’s A Sin and past creativity)
• Captain Tom Moore (thanks for your past service and current inspiration)
• Marcus Rashford (thanks for your tenacity and courage)
• Josh O’Connor and Riz Ahmed (thanks for all your performances, in particular recently in Romeo and Juliet and Sound of Metal, but formerly in God's Own Country and Nightcrawler)
• And Prince Phillip, HM Queen Elizabeth II’s “constant strength and guide” and “strength and stay.” 

Falling within a bell curve

Prince Phillip’s recent death (9th April) produced much broadcast material and many column inches about whether he was the last of a particular kind of man. Such dogmatic reasoning always falls flat in my head, maybe because I’m a Libran and can usually see an alternative argument for everything. Prince Phillip was not unique despite his context and background; stastical probability (given the planet’s billions of people) suggests there will be other Prince Phillip types in decades to come. The one we’ve recently lost was remarkable, I agree, and I liked his daughter, Princess Anne’s, quotation about him – “a life well lived and service freely given.” Shakespeare has Hamlet say, of his late father, “I shall not look upon his like again” but he idolises the memory of the late king and is in a profound state of grief. More empirically truthful, I think, is Tim Minchin’s lyric in If I didn’t have you (somebody else would do):

I mean, I think you’re special

But you fall within a bell curve

Outlaw’s Cave

Robin Hood, now there’s a man! Steals from the rich and distributes to the poor…. possibly? Any road up, on the day Prince Phillip died, we met Michael and Janet to complete an undulating walk in the secluded woodland of Conjure Alders in the twin valley of the Rivers Maun and Meden, at the edge of Sherwood Forest. We walked across fields with huge horizons, through woods filled with birch and alder trees, picked over tangled roots by the river and marvelled at the sandstone cliff outcrop concealing Robin Hood’s Cave. No sign of Maid Marian or the merry men (or a reduction of income inequality) in early April 2021…. Where’s Robin Hood when you need him the most?

Waiting for the storm to pass

Spring continues to springeth and daffodils to bloometh. No-one knows exactly how Covid-19’s infection rate will spread, nor how severely, so time and tide wait for no man…. so now seems a good time to hook up (safely) with other Men (and Women) of the Year…. Thank you, Brian and Sue, for the fish finger butties and chips under your verandah in Tollerton and the inspirational message:

Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass,

It’s about learning to dance in the rain

Once the pandemic is endemic and (hopefully) as ubiquitous and controlled as ‘flu, I imagine many people will continue to value nature and lobby decision-makers to tackle the global climate crisis and the over-exploitation of precious resources. Thank you, Nick and Graeme, for giving us a glimpse into the future with our proxy experiences of an electric car.

Sites opening up again

So if we live long enough to be in the market for a new car, electric will be the way to go. In the meantime, the pleasures of bread-making, flower arranging, table setting and dining at home are not to be abandoned lightly when the economy “opens up.” Buy locally? Travel locally? Save the planet? It’s been a pleasure to return to the (local-ish) Bolton Abbey Estate, and re-adding it to our repertoire of beauty spots, alongside the Leeds-Liverpool canal and the River Aire. A Man of the Year from the early 19th Century, Lord Byron, “mad, bad and dangerous to know,” expressed my feelings about walks and nature perfectly in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage:

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,

There is a rapture on the lonely shore,

There is society, where none intrudes,

By the deep Sea, and music in its roar:

I love not Man the less, but Nature more….

River Wharfe at Bolton Abbey, River Aire near Saltaire and Leeds-Liverpool canal

 

The Peace of Wild Things

A path diverging from the familiar....

Everything Old Is New Again

At President Joe Biden’s inauguration, the young poet, Amanda Gorman, speaking to “Americans, and The World,” expressed poetically how humans strive and thrive with passion and compassion (to borrow a phrase from another of my favourite poets, Maya Angelou):

   Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true:

   That even as we grieved, we grew,

   That even as we hurt, we hoped,

   That even as we tired, we tried.

I have to hope that the post-Covid world (when the disease is endemic rather than ripping across the globe without fear nor favour) will be a better world, where we can see things freshly and anew. Despite trudging many local byways over the years that I have lived in Saltaire, occasionally a new route presents itself and, on a familiar trail around the Bolton Abbey estate recently, we followed a signpost to Coney Warren and trod a path that was new to us.

Intrepid Exploration

Posforth Gill and Posforth Force

Negotating steep slopes, stiles, heathery fields, and walls by woods, it was reasonably easy to reach the Valley of Desolation where two falls, slightly tucked away but worth the find, thunder over drops. The higher falls, reached by a cul-de-sac path, is at Posforth Gill and the lower falls, the longer drops, are named Posforth Force. A perfect place for a picnic.

Reflecting back, projecting forward

Nature by day, TV by night! It’s notable that our TV-watching during this second or third Covid-lockdown (depending on whether you count local lockdowns) has mixed stressful police or medical dramas (Line of Duty, Unforgotten, ER) with gentler fare (Schitt’s Creek, Greyson’s Art Club, The Great Pottery Throw Down). It’s almost as if we need the distress to stay alert to issues and problems outside the pandemic and the beneficial stress (the eustress) to help us sleep. Whatever gets you through the night. I’ve found the poem The Peace of Wild Things a useful go-to poem during the last year. It was written by Wendell Berry (born 1934), a poet-philospher, essayist and novelist who is also a farmer and environmental activist.

Whatever Gets You Through The Night

The Peace of Wild Things

by Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

It is interesting that this poem was included in a collection, Tools of the trade: Poems for new doctors, given to all graduating doctors in Scotland between 2014 and 2018. By doing so, the medical organisations were acknowledging that poetry (or lyrics in general or more broadly the Arts) can play a vital role in contributing to the well being of all (both patients and health practitioners.) I have always believed this to be self-evident which is why the Tory party’s suggestion that ballerinas (and by implication all arts workers) should retrain to work in IT (Fatima’s next job could be in cyber – she just doesn’t know it yet) was so unenlightened and counter to the true “wealth of the nation” - the peace of wild things and the people who grew, hoped and tried.

Couple of Swells

Return to Top Withins

We're a couple of swells

We stop at the best hotels

But we prefer the country far away from the city smells

So we'll walk up the Avenue

Yes, we'll walk up the Avenue

And we’ll walk up to Top Withins is what we’ll do…

It’s been a while, but as Covid-19 restrictions are lifted, a picnic on the moors above Haworth is a great place to blow away the cobwebs and drink in the Yorkshire air.

Rolling Away The Metaphorical Stone

And because we can gather in gardens again, Sally’s birthday was resurrected, this time with a sit-down meal beneath a canopy, under fairy lights, wrapped up warm, with nearest and dearest…. And communing in real life is so much better than cyberchatting. Pixels don’t do justice to the breathing souls of human beings. Online meetups are all very well, but my understanding of the art and science of communication is that pauses, interruptions, false starts, ellisions, facial expressions and eyebrow twitches are all essential to comprehension. Software doesn’t allow simultaneous argument or overlap so bring on LIVING people in REAL LIFE…

With all the frills upon it

The screen is certainly good, though, for treats like Judy Garland, Fred Astaire, Ann Miller and Peter Lawford walking down that Avenue with their Easter bonnets, watching out for that fella with his umbrella, shaking the blues away, being drum crazy, loving a piano and stepping out with my baby…. A further significant movie experience during the week building up to Easter included Scorsese’s exquisite film of The Age of Innocence with Daniel Day Lewis, Michelle Pfeiffer, Winona Ryder and Miriam Margolyes

“Ah, good conversation - there's nothing like it, is there? The air of ideas is the only air worth breathing.”

Spring Fighting With Winter

Blossoms are appearing, tulips are opening, daffodils are fluttering as they should. But the nights are still frosty and the weather is unpredictable. But I’ve been feeling the unexpected budding buds of a scintilla of desire to get back to some creative writing. Whether or not I will write creatively again feels a bit immaterial at the moment, given the efforts needed to “get through” the tail end of the pandemic crisis. I hope the world isn’t exactly the same as it was before. I expect to continue hiking through the trees, beside the streams, under the skies and planning…. planning for the next stages of the endemic-Covid world…

Vaccinated Diamond Birthday

Six Months Later

So, six months after I was born in Wakefield, Sally Anne Allard was born on St Patrick’s Day in Bradford. March 2021 marked Sally’s Diamond Birthday. It wasn’t “normal” in that there was no meal out and no trip to the cinema or theatre…. But it was normal in keeping up the tradition of getting together with our daughters (even if we were walking two by two) and eating and drinking (a picnic in the open air, socially distanced.) Last March we began locking down before the government asked us to and this year we look forward to restrictions being lifted. So in the weeks and months to come I hope we’ll have a series of further birthday-style events….

St Patrick’s Day over the previous five years

• 2016 – Anomaleesa at The Everyman Cinema in Leeds
• 2017 – Gardening course and the live action Beauty and the Beast at The Everyman
• 2018 – Icy walk, wintry views and meal at home with (Sally’s choice of) Minority Report on the TV
• 2019 – The RSC touring production of Matilda at Bradford Alhambra and Green Book at Showcase
• 2020 – Almost UK-wide Lockdown, hikes (on different days) to the Druid’s Altar and Top Withins

No cinema, no theatre, but plenty still to enjoy

In the bullet-points above, I’ve mentioned cultural events that made 2016-19 distinctive, but all years have still included cards, a cake and presents revolving around themes of gardening, glamour, reading, flowers, food and drink. This year a parade of visitors passed by the garden gate to wish Many Happy Returns and delivery folk turned up at a steady pace…. Unusual gifts this year included a phone call from Australia, a home-knitted cardigan and a kit from Dishoom to make Naan-Bacon-Rolls. (After nearly 35 years of marriage we are learning to be cooperative in the kitchen!)

Birthday Talents

It’s easy to celebrate birthdays with Sally (or spend Christmas, or go on holiday, or do Bonfire Night, or do anything really….) All that’s needed are messages of love from family and friends and some time together making human connections. All the Lockdowns in the world can’t squash Sally’s talents for being generous and open-hearted to whatever can be achieved with whatever resources are at hand….

Spring in the air

The birds are nest-building, the daffodils are out, the buds are budding, the daylight hours are longer – these are all signifiers of Sally’s birthday every year – the Spring of the year. And in 2021, the Covid vaccine rollout continues apace…. A Spring-like birthday present from the scientific and medical community. What will St Patrick’s Day in March 2022 bring? We’ll be a year older. Will we still be socially distancing? Wearing masks? Time will tell.

A Birthday

by Christina Rossetti

My heart is like a singing bird

Whose nest is in a water’d shoot;

My heart is like an apple-tree

Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit;

My heart is like a rainbow shell

That paddles in a halcyon sea;

My heart is gladder than all these

Because my love is come to me. 

Raise me a dais of silk and down;

Hang it with vair and purple dyes;

Carve it in doves and pomegranates,

And peacocks with a hundred eyes;

Work it in gold and silver grapes,

In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys;

Because the birthday of my life

Is come, my love is come to me.

Talking Shakespeare Neljä (Four)

Dense, Juicy, Layered

David Oyelowo, speaking from Los Angeles, remembered a dusty (and intimidating) copy of Shakespeare’s plays in his family’s Islington council flat. He was later surprised to discover Kenneth Branagh’s film of Henry V was also written by Shakespeare, having watched it as a movie, not caring about the language. The real breakthrough for David, though, was seeing a live production at the National Theatre – the visceral production of Robert Lapage’s mudbath Midsummer Night’s Dream with Timothy Spall as Bottom. David started acting accidentally when he tried to impress a girl by joining a youth theatre and then standing in when another young actor couldn’t attend because of a tube strike. His Theatre Studies teacher, Jill Foster, encouraged him to consider acting as a profession and helped David audition (successfully) for LAMDA. His father fully expected him to “get it out of his system” when he was given small roles (seven lines in Antony and Cleopatra) at the Royal Shakespeare Company. But the bug had bitten and seeing someone like Mark Rylance in his fourth incarnation of Hamlet at The Globe deliver the language with “dexterity, musculariy and elasticity” further reinforced David’s conviction that Shakespeare is the “Everest of Acting… so dense, so juicy, so layered.” 

Greg Doran of the Royal Shakespeare Talking Shakespeare with David Oyelowo, Helen Mirren and Ian McKellen

Vulnerability and Frailty

He gave a very funny account of getting the role of Henry VI and loved “the journey” of his time on Michael Boyd’s production but became weary of the “pioneer” emphasis placed on him by the media wanting to interview him about being the first black actor at the RSC to play an English king. He detected a similarity between Dr Martin Luther King in the movie Selma and Henry VI where the abiding motivation for both characters, as he played them, was religious faith, leading to vulnerability and frailty. David felt that both MLK and Henry VI fully expected everyone around them to be imbued with the same values and were both destabilised when the. His other major Shakespeare role was playing Othello with Daniel Craig and Rachel Brosnahan (as Iago and Desdemona) in an intimate production in New York in 2015. Like Greg Doran, I hope he can be tempted away from Hollywood for more UK stage work in the future.

Selection of David Oyelowo roles: as Henry VI, Othello, Orlando in As You Like It and the movie Selma

Queen Helen

Helen Mirren is a multiple award winner: she has carried home an Oscar, a Tony and an Emmy and has famously played a line of queens: Queen Margaret in the Henry VI trilogy; and on TV and film: Catherine the Great, Elizabeth I and Elizabeth II. She also has the distinction of playing Cleopatra three times, first at the National Youth Theatre in 1963 and then later playing opposite Michael Gambon (1982) and Alan Rickman (1998) as her Antonys. I was lucky to see the 1982 Adrian Noble production (in The Other Place in Stratford-upon-Avon) and for me it became a benchmark production of how epic plays can be staged in small spaces. Helen’s early memories of working at the RSC include watching the generous Ian Richardson from the wings in Coriolanus.  She reminisced about working (warily) with the mercurial Nicol Williamson (on both stage and in the film Excalibur) and played Lady Anne, Julia in Two Gentlemen of Verona and Ophelia to Alan Howard’s Hamlet. She also vividly recounted the touring production of Troilus and Cressida which many argued brought the play back into favour in modern times and she described working with Peter Brook in the legendary project Conference of the Birds which toured the Saharan regions of Africa in 1979.

Helen Mirren as Cleopatra (three times), Cressida, Prospera in The Tempest and Rosalind in As You Like It

Sir Ian ("You shall not pass....")

Ian McKellen has had recent experience of remembering his distinguished acting career as part of his touring one-man show which raised considerable funds for small venues throughout the UK. (Tolkien, Shakespeare, Others and You.) With Greg Doran he shared early memories of seeing and loving theatre and getting involved in amateur and school productions. He always thought Shakespeare seemed fun and enjoyed travelling down from Bolton for school Shakespeare camps in Stratford-upon-Avon. He saw Laurence Olivier, Peggy Ashcroft and Charles Laughton in their prime (but also confessed to sleeping through Olivier’s Corialanus – it was a school trip, after all.) At Cambridge he joined the Marlowe Society and came under the influence of George Rylands who has mentored many of today’s great theatre directors as well as John Barton who persuaded young McKellen he could play the ancient Justice Shallow in Henry IV Part Two. He gave a moving account of working at Nottingham Playhouse with Tyrone Guthrie who gave McKellen confidence about becoming an actor and credits Maggie Smith with recommending him to Olivier to join the Old Vic. He was waspish about Franco Zefirelli and had insights into the impact of Olivier and of touring Shakespeare in the provinces and abroad with Prospect Theatre. I’ve seen many of his stage performances and been lucky to meet him both backstage after Waiting for Godot and at a UK showing of the film Gods and Monsters at Bradford’s Pictureville Cinema. Always gracious and always energetic, with a significant place in popular film history with his portrayals of Magneto and Gandalf, Sir Ian continues to be an astonishing creative force for good in the UK.

Ian McKellen as Romeo, Macbeth, Toby Belch in Twelfth Night (which I saw in Doncaster!), Coriolanus, Richard III, King Lear (twice) and Prospero in The Tempest at Leeds Playhouse

Then welcome, Winter

Hunkering down with Call My Agent and It's A Sin

Winter's costs and benefits

Although this year’s Winter has not included usual highlights like sitting by roaring fires in stately homes, getting a beer at a Christmas market, singing carols in the cloisters at Fountains Abbey or solving Murder Mysteries on New Year’s Eve, snow has still fallen appropriately, woolly clothes have been wrapped around, mulled wine has been glugged and boots have crunched on icy meadows. And I thank the Winter stars for the universe’s permission to savour stodgy pudding and custard at this time of year. I manage to stem the flow of inner tears when our weekly posh takeaway from La Rue restaurant in Saltaire doesn’t include a sponge pud as a dessert choice on their menu. But then I’m only human. Winter has costs but benefits too – hunkering down with movies and box sets, curtains shut, anticipating that Spring will come. Carpe diem.

Winter's Beauty
by W H Davies

Is it not fine to walk in Spring,
When leaves are born, and hear birds sing?
And when they lose their singing powers,
In Summer, watch the bees at flowers?
Is it not fine, when Summer's past,
To have the leaves, no longer fast,
Biting my heel where'er I go,
Or dancing lightly on my toe?
Now Winter's here and rivers freeze;
As I walk out I see the trees,
Wherein the pretty squirrels sleep,
All standing in the snow so deep:
And every twig, however small,
Is blossomed white and beautiful.
Then welcome, Winter, with thy power
To make this tree a big white flower;
To make this tree a lovely sight,
With fifty brown arms draped in white,
While thousands of small fingers show
In soft white gloves of purest snow.

One tree, Four Seasons.... (plus the real Frankie Valli and the movie-acting Four Seasons from Jersey Boys)

That Was The Year That Was

What do I know?

As screenwriter William Goldman (The Princess Bride) wrote in his 1982 memoir Adventures in the Screen Trade

Nobody Knows Anything

And looking back to January 2020, I could not have predicted that I would live through historic times:

• the stout guarding of George Eliot’s statue in Nuneaton Market Square in case any protestors felt the need to vandalise the author of Mill on the Floss;
• the (final) Brexit deal, heralding months and years of further bureaucratic wrangling (thank goodness the deal is “oven-ready”) but hopefully there is an end to the Tory EuroPsychoDrama which distracts, deflects and divides;
• the clear and democratic defeat of President Trump in a corrosive American election;
• the clamping down by Chinese authorities on civil liberties in Hong Kong;
• the (to date) almost 83,000,000 cases and almost 2,000,000 deaths from a global, deadly pandemic.

What I DO know.

I know I’ve done a lot of local walking, completed a lot of jigsaw puzzles, re-read Dickens's Martin Chuzzlewit and Dombey and Son, read a lot of other books (including my book of the year, Maggie O'Farrell's Hamnet), watched a lot of TV, attended lectures, interviews and Tai Chi classes online, watched theatre online and extracted every ounce of pleasure I could from the family and friends I’ve managed to see with the changing (and sometimes confusing) restrictions, lockdown and tiers. I know one daughter was furloughed for a time (and has worked from her home for much of the time.) I know another daughter continued training to become a nurse (including working on Covid wards and now helping deliver the vaccine.) I know my wife attended French and ballet classes and a book group online and I know she continued to work (safely) at a local Food Bank which, in 2010, delivered 600 bags a year and currently delivers 600 bags a week…. anyone care to speculate what social policies have led to the increase in the demand for food parcels?

Rainbows everywhere

In windows, on hillsides, in the sky…. Rainbows expressed appreciation towards key workers. Compassion, kindness and solidarity triumphed over selfishness after the initial panic of the approaching first lockdown and before the cynicism of the Autumn. The environment bounced back. Birds filled the air. Nature triumphed. In the Spring and Summer children rode bicycles freely on emptier-than-usual roads. Until this year the record for the speed of developing a vaccine was held by the 1960s mumps jab, but the glory (and hard work) of scientists cooperating around the world have produced two safe and effective vaccines for Covid-19 within a year, and a third vaccine is imminent. Hopefully the days are over for those who believe Michael Gove’s soundbite that “people have had enough of experts….” (Particularly those who never heard Gove’s pitiful attempts to wriggle out of saying it in the months following.)

Women-led countries

An analysis by academics at Liverpool and Reading Universities of the initial governmental policy responses to Covid-19 up to 19th May, adjusted for variables (GDP, population density etc), concluded that countries led by women handled the pandemic “systematically and significantly better” than those led by men, particularly ones following a populist agenda (take a bow, Trump, Bolsanaro and BoJo.) So, let’s hear it for Finland’s Sanna Marin, Denmark’s Mette Frederiksen, New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern, Taiwan’s Tsai Ing-wen and Germany’s Angela Merkel. “When women-led countries are compared to countries similar to them along a range of characteristics, they have performed better, experiencing fewer cases as well as fewer deaths.”

So, looking back through the diary of my little life for 2020, what did I comment upon?

January & February 2020

• Confirmation reaches the UK Media that Chinese people are dying of a novel virus, probably originating in a wet market in Wuhan. (As the weeks go by, I convince myself that my 33 days of coughing and high temperature in November and December of 2019 are not connected. I am NOT Patient Zero.) The Republican-controlled Senate acquits President Trump of charges of abuse of power and obstructing congress; in February President Trump tells a rally that the now-identified Covid-19 virus will be gone by April.

In my little life I saw Cats, Little Women, Star Wars: the Rise of Skywalker, Jojo Rabbit, EMMA. and Parasite at the cinema. At the theatre I saw King John, A Museum in Baghdad and The Whip at the RSC, the musical Gypsy at Manchester’s Royal Exchange, Ballet Rambert at Bradford Alhambra and I went to a Van Gogh audio-visual display in York. I enjoyed a cheese and wine evening in Leeds with a pal, attended a school reunion in Wakefield and marvelled at the National Space Centre in Leicester. To celebrate Valentine’s Day, Sally and I chugged along on a steam train with Prosecco and afternoon tea. (Meanwhile, Covid-19 rolls down the line to Italy….)

March & April 2020

• The World Health Organisation declares that Covid-19 is a pandemic, Italy goes into full lockdown and, after increasing clamour from health experts, the UK government locks down, and the “Clap for Carers” begins on Thursday nights at 8pm. For a fortnight, supermarkets struggle to fill shelves with particular items. Boris Johnson, the UK Prime Minister is diagnosed with Covid-19 and Keir Starmer becomes Labour leader. Captain Tom Moore becomes a hero by doing laps of his garden on a zimmer frame and raising £32m for the NHS. The Queen reassures the nation. President Trump suggests injecting bleach and bringing light inside the body (worth quoting verbatim for the record):

"I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning, because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs…. I said supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way. And I think you said you're going to test that too... So, we'll see, but the whole concept of the light, the way it kills it in one minute - that's pretty powerful."

In my little life I saw Dark Waters, Military Wives and Onward at the cinema and Acosta Danza (Carlos Acosta dance group) at the Alhambra Theatre in Bradford. They were the final trips to the cinema and theatre until the Autumn because of lockdown or tier restrictions. Final meals out, final family gatherings, the beginnings of Skype and Zoom group calls, the scheduling of WALKING began. Emily returned home to live in our attic in isolation as she worked on a “hot ward” and subsequently recovered from what was almost certainly Covid symptoms. My niece, and then my sister, were diagnosed with (and hospitalised by) Covid-19 in April – thankfully both went on to recover. NT Live, YouTube, quality TV and lectures online filled time and Tai Chi classes switched to online.

May & June 2020

• Health Secretary Matt Hancock’s claim of delivering 100,000 Covid tests a day is debunked when he has to admit that what he meant was that the bulk of them had been put in the post. UK government credibility is undermined by advisor Dominic Cummings’s ludicrous version of his trip to County Durham and Barnard Castle. George Floyd, an unarmed black man, is unlawfully killed by police in Minneapolis. Marcus Rashford leads a successful campaign for free school meals for disadvantaged children.

In my little life I attended my first Zoom funeral (very impressive) and phrases like “socially distanced” became ubiquitous. The Hay Festival successfully broadcast its talks and performances online. Our future holidays were cancelled. We got a new bed and in May became an “empty nest” again.

July & August 2020

• Chancellor Rishi Sunak launches an Eat Out To Help Out scheme to revive the hospitality industry. Joe Biden chooses Kamala Harris as a running mate to stand against Donald Trump later in the year. The awarding of GCSE and A Level results is a fiasco that was predicted and could easily have been avoided and the hapless Education Secretary, Gavin Williamson, keeps his job after the first of what seems like a series of gaffes and U-turns that continues through the rest of the year.

In my little life we celebrated our 34th wedding anniversary with a picnic and walk on Penistone Hill. We were able to meet friends in the garden – but only until August 1st. The birth of Great Niece Charlotte added new life to the wider Johnson clan, a welcome miracle in the middle of the year. The RSC started broadcasting the Talking Shakespeare series of interviews. Pre-Covid arrangements and maskless supermarket shopping seemed to be a very distant memory.

September & October 2020

• The “world-beating” (organised by the PM’s private sector chums) Test and Trace system fails as schools and office workers return at the same time to superspread Covid-19 and kickstart the second wave of infections. Jacinda Ardern wins a landslide victory in the New Zealand elections having shown clear leadership in dealing with the pandemic. Having publicly argued with the Mayors of Middlesborough and Manchester about regional lockdown rules, Boris Johnson announces a second national lockdown for November.

In my little life I went to the cinema once: The Perfect Candidate and, gloriously, went to Leeds Playhouse to see some socially distanced theatre: Orpheus in the Record Shop, Krapp’s Last Tape and La Voix Humaine. My 60th birthday came and went without pomp but with good food, a terrific hike and Katherine Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby.

November & December 2020

• The second national lockdown makes some, but not enough, impact on the rising cases of Covid-19 but the world celebrates as a German-Turkish couple, Özlem Türeci and Uğur Şahin, produce an effective vaccine at Pfizer. Dominic Cummings (and Lee Cain) exit from UK power struggles in 10 Downing Street and Joe Biden and Kamala Harris decisively win the US Presidential election with a bigger margin than Trump beat Clinton in 2016. A 90-year old grandmother from Coventry, Margaret Keenan, becomes the first (non-clinical-trial) person in the world to receive a fully-tested and approved Covid vaccine. Second in line for the jab in Warwickshire was 81-year old William Shakespeare….!

In my little life, I squeezed in one cinema trip: Uncle Vanya and was deliriously happy when the US election made sense of my hope in humanity. I started my re-reading of all Shakespeare’s works with Two Gentlemen of Verona and we began having posh takeaways delivered once a week to “celebrate” another week survived. As the year ended we managed to see a good number of friends in outdoor venues and the Christmas spirit endured in spite of the government’s poor communication skills.

So what next?

It would be good to think that 2021 will be the year when lessons learned from the pandemic begin to bear fruit. That....

• the “rat race” is not the only way to live
• home working is possible
• a long daily commute is not conducive to good living
• nature is indispensable
• a cleaner environment is achievable
• community resources are value for money
• the arts bring entertainment, inspiration and solace to millions
• local expertise is invaluable
• experts are worth attending to
• heroes come in all shapes, sizes, creeds and colour
• an equal right for one is an equal right for all
• carers, volunteers and key workers are more important in a crisis than pin-striped hedge-fund managers
• compassion and kindness are free
• the welfare state is as precious as the NHS
• magic money trees are not and have never been real – because where there’s a (political) will, there’s a (financial) way.

New Year. New Decade. Welcome to the future....