- One (hundred) business cards – somewhere in the post…
One Flu jab – which has made a huge difference I think in keeping chesty snotty coughs and head colds at bay this winter. Hard to tell tho cos I’m just not in groups and on public transport as much as I used to be….
One Marcus Rashford.. One Wakanda Forever - Chadwick Boseman.
- 2 blingy Christmas trees/2 Lockdowns/2 business shut downs as a self-employed furlough
- 3 Zoom dance parties with My Charleston – I’ve learned to Saturday Night Fever like John Travolta; hand jive like Sandy and Danny in Grease and Charleston like it’s 1920 (and I just don’t have the wardrobe to go with these dances!)
3 A Christmas Carol livestreams!
- 4 (hundred) and 60 amazing pounds raised by my sponsored sleepout for Webber Street day centre – THANK YOU SO MUCH!) Really appreciate the giving in such a rough year too.
- 5 live events before Lockdowns and Tiers kicked in – 3 art galleries, 1 play at the Bridge Theatre, 1 hiphop dance show
- 6 (ick) of online, Zooms, screens and messaging etc at many points, but profoundly grateful for them too – for online church, online dance classes and PE/Wake Up With Joe, whizzing round the world to the USA for Theater of War productions and National Arts Club lectures, even gigs and conferences; not to mention teaching on Teams! Also Come and Sing With Me keeping me sane and focused, and giving me a banter outlet. Also, Dr John M Perkins – a 90 year old with a terminal cancer diagnosis in the USA is still teaching the Bible – this is love =). He was horribly treated during the Civil Rights years, yet he just wants us to love one another. Lucy Worsley Crowdcasts – who knew 2020 was the year I’d become a fan of the Ravenmaster from the Tower of London. Merlin =)
Realised I'm much more of a be-er than a see-er as most people seem to be in 2020/2021, as well as parts of our new normal being triggering for me; wanting to be rather than see makes life problematic when it's being (unless 'face space place' strictly followed) that spreads the virus. I've become a tech Luddite - I can't sit and stare at screens for hours on end, especially when people fill the screen in little detailed boxes - hyper vigilance kicks in; noisy neighbours - garage gum across the road pumping out dance music; feeling and hearing more traffic going past and the house being shaken more often by the vibrations of heavy vehicles or the slamming of car/van doors; constant DIY as my neighbours transform their house and garden; seriously thumpy children - is Olympics, rugby or football going on behind there? conversations and kitchen/bathroom activities, not to mention a barking dog coming through newly thinned walls or bad acoustic conditions (high ceilings, wood floors, no carpets? no doors? no walls? Plywood divisions maybe?) also add to the issues of being on screens - I can't trust my environment to deliver the conditions I need to hear or concentrate properly (tho thankfully much of this has greatly improved now); the fidgets after an hour even with only the main speaker filling the screen. Also not feeling understood in this as people seem to be see-ers and just want me to do more, be more, reduce the exposure on screens for sure - but just do it, be like us and keep logging on! I also wonder about the validity of curating our lives on social media when we're in a Pandemic and there are so many people hurting and suffering - is it a good or a bad thing? I'm much less on Facebook than I was (it feels a boastful medium that I want to avoid); I struggle to want to type messages on screens; Insta and Twitter are more like museums of interesting things for me but still have to take care to broaden out who I follow cos... algorithms (and resist reading the panicky news headlines). But it is a problem tho - the new normal means that Zooms and online formats are the main ways of communicating and can make me feel quite isolated and alone - Tiers, the reduction and cutting of public transport in the evening and pre-booking of some trains, and the closure and cancellation of pretty much everything, friends being outside of the area/country and everyone being at different stages of meeting and interpreting the rules, not to mention health vulnerabilities and being being with families and work, are all thrown into the mix. I find myself inclining towards phones for... phone calls! It's also been a challenge when online forms shut down for a break; I feel bereft of community.
I had to an extent bought the myth that we're all growing closer to each other in 2020 - for me this isn't so - my neighbours and I can't see each other; they literally come out of their houses and jump into their cars and go; although I'm part of a local Residents group - in reality it's meant little more than an email newsletter. Everyone is hunkered down doing their own thing and it's hard to tell even when people are around, apart from the two cars outside each house, which are either there or gone. These barriers are keeping us safe, but long term it's not the kind of community I want to be in, and it's made me deeply sorrow, as my neighbours have all kind of left me to it, worked around me and almost acted like I didn't live there, that I was a kind of impediment to the play dates - even NHS clapping was done from back gardens; you could hear but not see people. Bizarrely we are less friendly now than we were pre-COVID and I don't know how to resolve this in the short term when it's so hard to bump into people or greet each other, and people are so self-sufficient - there isn't anyone to offer help to it seems in a consistent way. It's also been difficult as my neighbours have, unexpectedly, built right up against our shared fence - although they have tried to minimise acoustics, a patio right next to the shared back of our houses and a playhouse right next to my garden have made their presence much more invasive than formerly. Sadly they won't raise their short shared fence because it's 'sound' and this seems to have been extended to anything we share to do with the properties. With sunlight being redirected to basically my back fence and the noise levels (it can often be as tho they're shouting into my house when they stand on the patio and I am ventilating with windows open as we need to do!) plus the thin walls; I've had to go out more to get some peace and quiet - and it's basically every day, unless school is on; defeating the object of the stay home message and having my own place (if two downstairs rooms and the garden are pretty much unusable). Could be a lot worse such as 24/7 party houses, but it's not been a pleasant change, and again I feel disillusioned - guess I've learnt a lot and look forward to moving away as and when things settle down a bit work-wise.
Although I'm a be-er I have proceeded cautiously and the government's rush to get people together and ideally spending money, plus the sudden jump back to tough restrictions, has been hard to follow through consistently. I'm not a fan of all the channelling of Winston Churchill, Blitz spirit etc - it seems to trivialise people's genuine fears and underlying health issues and can be quite classist - forgetting the frontline workers, multiple job jugglers, those without effective PPE and those experiencing loss of jobs, homes, economic or work status and access to the basics of life, such as enough food or heating. I'm not sure we are in it together or that we can fight COVID on the beaches - I think we'd do much better to follow Marcus Rashford's example of practically helping others (long term not just short term), being kind and firmly truthful. I guess that's what I'm taking through to 2021 is how to be hopeful, how to live within all of this...
- 7 attempts at volunteering – still nothing happening =( But maybe 2021?
- 8 anything that could be shipped to me in the post – Rick Stein seafood, cream teas, Chawton House Christmas shortbread, breakfast boxes, build your own burgers…
- 9 - Crashy WIFI says NO =(
- 10 Zoom plays – must be! So glad theatre is still out there, alive and kicking, in so many forms!
- 11 (00? 000?) online gigs and concerts, atleast – Paul Weller, GoGo Penguin, Globe at Newcastle, Jazz at the Lescar, Lecrae x2, Pete Tong, Jules Buckley and the Heritage Orchestra (in a year that has all gone Pete Tong!) Sheku Kanneh-Mason, all the classicals from Barbican and Wigmore Hall and Turner Sims, Dan Tapfer, the varied frees from Royal Albert Hall, AStar on an Instagram gig, Lou and Nathan Fellingham, Olly Knight, Andrew Peterson, Guvna B x2 Allo Mate! Joe Bonamassa, an Andy Mineo Christmas special! With… Lecrae and Wande; Sam Amidon x2; album launches and even 2 music festivals – Gospel Hydration and Allo Mate 2020; virtual Glastonbury! Not to mention a comedy festival - sure there was singing in that too!
- 12 celebrity Zooms – atleast!! Or perhaps number of times I’ve seen Ian Rankin, Neil Gaiman, David Olusoga, William Dalyrymple or Hallie Rubenhold at a history or literary online festival!
12 tears atleast over Tier 4, and many that we need to keep remembering the names for until they get justice – George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Belly Mujinga and more…
Thankful that livestreaming has allowed me to do something I've always wanted to do - attend a Night Watch service and that 2020 has made me value beauty, exercise, being amongst people, community, travel much more and what that looks like. Think I've finally solved my craving for beauty, interesting walks and things to see within the Tier restrictions; mentally and emotionally I'm feeling better for it. Hoping 2021 will help me resolve the being too! Maybe we can all be avatars and meet in groups virtually whilst not staring at screens!
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