Moments of joy as we await finer days to come

IWRITE this column at my kitchen table, the same place I have written everything since March. A robin has just landed on the windowsill to peck at some birdseed.

My robin, I like to think of it, instantly recognisable thanks to a crooked wing on its back.

In a year that has felt so huge, so historic, incomprehensible and terrifying, my world has become small.

I rise each morning and make the short trek to the kitchen. Tea is made in the same, reassuring mug. I open the window and scatter some birdseed, wondering who will come to visit today. Work is conducted entirely through my laptop screen, colleagues flickering on video calls, emails like semaphores from another world.

Outside, traffic on my street has all but stopped, the time only discernible by the twice- daily clatter of children walking to and from school. Often as I work, the only sound I hear is my fiancé in the room across the hall, engrossed in his own working day.

At times, the house has felt like a prison. The air suffocating, the walls closing in, the news churning out ever-rising case numbers and death tolls.

Sometimes, even now, I catch myself thinking, is this actually happening? Is this real?

I go almost nowhere, and see hardly anyone. Since March I have been able to hug two people, my fiancé and my mum, and know I am extremely lucky to do so.

The weekly shop at the supermarket feels like an epic adventure. Masked, fearful, hand sanitiser bulging out of my handbag, I race round grabbing things off the shelves, then scuttle home with a marked sense of relief that it is all over for another week.

At night I read, plunging myself into alternate timelines where people dine out, travel, hug each other spontaneously and think nothing of sharing a plate of food.

Where people can get married, attend funerals without wearing a face mask, visit relatives whenever they want, and hold the dying hand of a loved one.

I know that, out there, life waits for me – as it does us all. I think of the newsroom desk I left nine months ago in a panicky hurry, firmly believing I’d return in just a few weeks, papers untouched, phone calls unanswered.

I console myself with the promise of future social engagements discussed over Zoom. The longed for meet-ups. The hugs. Sometimes I go on to Google Street View and wander the roads of a foreign city, just to remind myself that the world is still there.

And yet despite it all, this year has contained some moments of reprieve. Of beauty and happiness. Of hope.

And so when my world becomes particularly small, when the walls push in harder than ever, I try to remind myself of those slivers of normality, joy and even sadness.

I think of the long walks we took around the neighbourhood over the summer, exploring nooks and crannies we’d never thought to look for before.

THE day we found a covered bri dge over a stream, and followed it out into wide, strange streets we did not recognise. The time we went to feed the ducks in the park and discovered a family of white-beaked coots nestling by the rushes.

Of the l ate nights drinking brandy and playing Trivial Pursuit, laughing about nothing at all, thoughts of the virus outside our door forgotten, just for a few hours. The culinary experiments, some successful, others not, recreating the bright, bursting flavours of faraway places like Thailand and Spain while we dreamt of future travel plans.

I think of the moment when I should have been walking down the aisle on my wedding day, and instead sat on a park bench with my beloved, listening to the wind rustling in the trees, grateful just to be there, and together.

Of those last, peaceful hours with my beautiful little cat, who died in my arms in September after a brief and brutal illness, her last look as gentle and trusting as her first.

We have been in stasis for so much of this year, and yet life still has a funny way of cantering relentlessly forward, whether we like it or not.

This year has taught us so much about the good in people. Of those who step up to the plate, go above and beyond. The armies of helpful neighbours who have looked after the most vulnerable i n our communities, our tireless frontline workers.

It has taught us about resilience and hardship, and our ability to adapt to the most difficult of situations.

And it has also, I believe, taught us about cherishing the moment. Of not looking forwards, or backwards, but living in the now.

Because when you have no idea what will happen next, and the past has never felt more like a foreign country, what else can you do?

I hope you have had some small moments of reprieve in this long, hard year. Some memories you can look back on with happiness, even if it is simply the visit to your windowsill of a robin with a crooked wing. There is undoubtedly darkness ahead. Case numbers are spiralling. A new mutant strain is on the march. From today, most of the country is being plunged into another lockdown which will wreak further damage on the ragged economy, and our weary hearts.

More people will die. More still will become desperately ill. Families will be torn apart. Others will be forbidden from saying goodbye. For many of us, the vaccine still seems a long way away.

All we can do then, is hold on. To the small things, to hope.

Happy New Year when it comes. May 2021 bring light, and while we wait for the world to return to us, a few moments of joyful reprieve.