How I found some joy in that year of Zoom and gloom
CHEERS
Looking back over my diary, I see that the last time January 1 fell on a Friday was back in 2016. Which means it has been five years since I sat at my desk writing my column on a crisp, frosty New Year’s Day morning.
How different things were five years ago.
I was still in my forties! A whippersnapper of 49. I didn’t have a toddler running around, so I’m guessing my hangover would have been exponentially worse then than it is today.
On the personal front, I was looking forward to a long trip coming up in May, a t reat for my 50th bir thday: LA, then on to Australia and Thailand on holiday.
On the political front, it wa s becoming increasingly clear that Donald Trump – who had just cal led for protesters at his rallies to be beaten up – was an utter lunatic who was going to crash and burn long before the election at the end of that year. There was the EU referendum coming up that summer, in June, just after we returned from our trip. But that was nothing to worry about, was it? Brexit was still a fringe cause, believed in only by racist lunatics and greedy hedge fund managers looking to hammer the pound. Boris Johnson was still just an inept, ambitious Tory MP who had no chance of ever getting the top job.
Yes, some clouds on the horizon that morning but nothing to really be that concerned about and much to look forward to.
It’s safe to say I’m not sitting at my desk this New Year’s Day morning with quite such a laidback sense of optimism.
And this is the time of year where we all review what’s gone before and look towards what lies ahead. Like me, you might find yourself picking over the last 12 months and trying to find some happy moments, some shreds of good times from a 2020 that saw most of us becoming intimately familiar with the four walls of our own homes. Actually, when I sat down to think about it month by month, it wasn’t as grim as I’d imagined, with many moments of joy and beauty scattered throughout a difficult year.
I started by thinking of the blissfully ignorant early months of 2020, before the pandemic. Back in January we went to Los Angeles, freely strolling about airports without a care. I held a Burns supper for some LA pals and Greg Hemphill stole the thunder of my address to the haggis with his carefully crafted address to the lassies. The bugger.
In February I took my eldest daughter to New York for the first time, a combined birthday and Christmas present trip, to see the Beetlejuice musical on Broadway, her favourite thing in the world at the time. From
March unti l June, we did what everyone else did – discovered the world of Zoom calls and realised just how many times a day you could load a dishwasher.
Come late summer, like many people, we managed to sneak in some travel once again. In August we got up to Scotland for a couple of weeks, the last time we saw my mum. Ayrshire experienced a rare few days of perfect weather w and I had the always tremendous t joy of cooking lunch for the ever-ungrateful and complaining Alan Parks. Then we spent a magical few days on Islay, seeing friends, picking mussels on the beach, cooking lobsters and sipping malt whisky.
In September we got as far as Italy, to the Amal f i coast, where my youngest daughter was introduced to the delights of octopus for the first time. Where we also learned just how seriously the Ital ians took mask-wearing, not letting you near a shop or a restaurant without one on – a sharp contrast to how things were going back home.
In October, I spent a week traversing Germany on a socially distanced joint reading tour with my old pal Irvine Welsh. We were Covid tested on arrival and had our documentation checked in every city we visited, from Munich to Hamburg. Against all expectations, we managed to behave ourselves very well, until the final evening in Berlin, a session that produced a hangover so severe it’s probably still going on somewhere today.
In November I went to Norway, where a film I’d written was shooting. I spent five days in quarantine in a flat in Oslo, waiting for the results of a Covid test, before I was allowed to visit the set for a few days. The one upside was that my quarantine coincided with the US election, so I was able to experience the pleasure of ful l , uninterrupted viewing of Donald Trump slowly and painfully losing the presidency.
You’ll notice that in all of these European countries I mentioned visiting – Italy, Germany and Norway – there were strict, careful coronavirus procedures in place. Every time you returned to the UK? Not so much. Not even a temperature check at Heathrow.
Like me, you’ ll be praying our Government of incompetents don’t mismanage the roll-out of the vaccine too badly and that, perhaps come the summer, we’ll all be able to start doing these kinds of things again.
Even so, even from a year as terrible as the one we’ve just had, I could pick at least half a dozen high spots, moments of pure fun and joy.
I hope you can too.
I had the joy of seeing Trump slowly losing power