The Mindful Resolutionist
Jessica is greeting the new decade with love, with empathy, with the healing power of positivity. She is not giving up anything – so negative – and she does not drink and lives on spinach, so dieting is counterintuitive. No, Jessica is embracing kindness – “We are together in this world, no more sorrow” – and has resolved to smile at everyone. This makes her look a loony on Chipping Saintly station, where those furious by the cancellation of the 10.35 to Paddington are not in a receptive mood for beatific energy. But Jessica is on an exciting inner journey of self.
In 2020, she will accept her own shadows with insight, resilience and resourcefulness. Her husband wonders if this means she might clear out the attic. He’s channelling the spirit of optimism but, having taken the low road of Dry January, is also grumpy. Ditto moany about less strongminded individuals breathing white wine breath over him at dinner. “Complaining is bad for the soul,” says Jessica. “We must find conviction, overcome anxiety, ignore the bad and celebrate the good.”
This is challenging when confronted with the remains of Mimi Featherstonhaugh’s ham.
Jessica trills about the 2020s: “I am looking forward to an abundance of experience and new creative spaces.” Mimi, stacking the dishwasher, wonders if this means the new extension to the church hall. “We must not call it the Roaring Twenties, but the Regenerative Twenties.” This doesn’t have quite the same ring to it. Will icebergs refreeze? Will Greta Thunberg go back to school? Will Ghislaine Maxwell be found? “One thing is for certain,” says Harry Poppycock, who has eschewed Dry January, “The Queen will die.” The disappearance of the last certainty in a volatile world is a gloomy thought, not dispelled by Jessica’s mindful positivisms: “We must get up with each fall, help make change happen and make living itself an art. The Queen has done that.” The kitchen assembly collectively thinks Her Majesty is mercifully free of guff and has just bloody got on with it. Perhaps it would be better if Jessica had given up the spinach.
Will icebergs refreeze? Will Greta Thunberg go back to school?
Victoria Mather
There’ll Always Be An England: Social Stereotypes from The Daily Telegraph (Constable, £12.99); follow on Instagram/Facebook: @social_stereotypes