Christmas is trying its best not to be. There is a forced quality about any celebratory approach to the time that makes it all the more unreal.
I have not, physically in a hands-on sense, bought any presents – apart of course from my ruinously expensive office chair, and with only a deposit paid and its not being available until January, I’m not sure that it counts. So, the Family’s presents have virtually all been bought and sent via Amazon; the Christmas cards will be (with few exceptions) virtual via email with a donation to Oxfam; the Christmas meal will be just the two of us with a possible Zoom element making everything just that little bit more embarrassing and uneasy!
Happy Covid Christmas and a Vaccinated New Year!
Of course, the best Christmas present this year is being around to be able to moan about the limitations of the festivities: there are plenty of Catalans and Welsh people who are unable to do so, and unless our respective governments approach the pandemic with something that is more appreciative about the risks involved, then potentially, hundreds of thousands more will die in the cause of political window dressing.
We have been told that half a million people in the UK have had the first dose of the vaccine. It’s a small start given the population, but at least it is something. Spain, together with the rest of the EU are not going to start the programme of vaccination until the 27th of December so lord alone knows when the programme will finally get to us in Castelldefels.
A friend in Istanbul wrote that he looked forward to travelling more freely by April. I think he is being charmingly optimistic. I do not think that there will be anything like free movement until the end of the summer next year, and in my mind I have virtually written off 2021 as a sort of year in abeyance. I think that 2022 will be the year in which things generally get back to normal, or what we will have accepted as normal by then.
I sense a real weariness about the restrictions from a lot of people that I see around me, and that quality of being fed up expresses its visible self in the laxity of many with the wearing of masks. In the centre of town people are generally (and legally) obliged to wear the masks and they do, but on the paseo and the nearer you get to the sand, the slacker the attitude is. To my mind, it doesn’t really matter if you are walking, running, dog walking, skateboarding, skating or whatever: you should wear a mask. I find the allowance made for smokers to wander about in peopled spaces without a mask because of their addiction to be frankly astonishing. Where is the logic in energetic exercise where the individual sweats and breathes more deeply and expels air more forcibly being exempt from mask wearing? It simply doesn’t make sense. At least to me. And to logic!
Johnson is coming under pressure to impose another strict lockdown. It is not something than anyone wants, but it is surely necessary to prevent horrendous loss of life.
I was going to say that there is nothing special about Christmas – and I could defend that statement theologically, socially, numerically, historically, culturally with lots of other -ly words thrown into the debate – but clearly the Day itself is, not only in Christian terms but also in Family terms significant. People want to be together. People want to be with their families. That is easily understandable. But, with a vaccine being rolled out throughout Europe in a few days’ time, even if individual know that they are not going to be in the first tranche of vaccinations, they will know that within months they will start to gain the protection that they need to visit their loved ones and, more importantly, not kill them by visiting.
It is asking a lot for people to be patient month after month and to see blatant unfairness, incompetence, corruption, lying and deceit – but the vaccines exist and, in time they will be given to everyone and we will then all have a degree of protection that will allow life as we knew it to become life as we know it. And for the restrictions to become a way of life or a bitter memory.
We went out for lunch today and ate inside the restaurant at spaced tables. When we go to restaurants Toni remembers to bring the bottle of soapless alcohol handwash and I remember to bring the pepper grinder. Nowadays communal cruets are a thing of the past and oil and vinegar come in one-use little individual bottles; ketchup and mayonnaise are in sachets and salt and pepper are in little paper containers. Pepper is the problem: while salt is always there, pepper is a wayward addition and I cannot rely on its availability, so I take my own.
A couple of times in the past I have had to rescue my pepper mill from clearing waiters’ hands and remind them that does not belong to them – but nowadays the appearance of my own condiment raises no eyebrows!
So, Johnson has had to U-turn on yet another of his empty reassurances and Christmas had had to be to all intents and purposes cancelled. We are not in such a Draconian lockdown in Catalonia, but I do not think for a moment that things are going to get better during the holiday period. We are all waiting for the vaccine.
Tomorrow is our final shop for Christmas. We still have not finally settled what it is we want to eat during our Christmas meal – but it is certainly not going to be turkey with all the trimmings! Toni has suggested prawns and that seems like something with which I can work, especially as I intend to have salmon scrambled eggs to start off Christmas Day in the right style! Alas! I will not be having a glass of Cava to accompany it. How many YEARS is it since I last had an alcoholic drink! I don’t miss it. Much. Though there are a few times with a good meal when a glass of decent red would go down a treat. According to my doctor I am “allowed” one small glass of red wine a day. It just simply does not sound like me. So, I am prepared to do without. And I make do with non-alcoholic beer. Which, to be fair, is much better than it was when I first tried it years ago! Even if it is really larger and not real bitter beer.
Still, the Christmas Meal will look good and I have bought a few little things to make the festive board look appetizing!
We will see how it goes and we will certainly take a photograph to remind us of the end of a truly awful year!
