LOVE AND KINDNESS
Illusionist Derren Brown believes we’ll be hugging our tailors
When the first lockdown lifted, I went to a nearby shop to get my jacket taken up. We’d all been through this weird thing together, and were still playing our customer and assistant t roles, but I wanted to give them a hug and find out how they’d been. I look forward ward to more reminders of how connected d we are. Derren Brown’s Showman tours next year, derrenbrown.co.uk
Santa Montefiore, author, has seen a better future ure in the tarot
I’m looking forward to the world opening up again; everyeryone will be full of enthusiasm sm and gratitude and with any ny luck people will be kinder to each other. The Death card in my tarot readings has come me up time and again for me and nd the world this year. It’s the he death of things that no longer er serve us in order to make way for the new. I’m manifesting the universal law of attraction – we create the world around us with our thoughts, thus if we all feel enthusiastic and positive the world will be a happier place.
Melissa Helmsley, chef and sustainability advocate, thinks that the mutuality of 2020 will live on
I am optim optimistic about community care and neighb neighbourhood spirit – peaceful protests, fre free school meals, street music, blanket don donation points at mosques and church hal halls, passing of loo rolls over fences, no no- food-waste sharing apps, notes th through doors saying, “let me help with shopping and medicin cine pick- ups”, more of key workers being thanked, more of farmers being respected, more friendly eye contact over masks, more pledges for r restaurants, more patience in queues, more reusables and refillables, more taking your rubbish home when the park bin is full.
Baroness Warsi, Conservative peer, will be trying her hand at stand-up comedy
I’m 50 next year, so I’m really looking forward to just lightening up a little bit. Last year, I took part in a TV programme called Stand Up to Cancer, where five people in public life were paired with professional comedians and taught the art of stand-up. The programme comes out in January and I’m really looking forward to it. We’ve had such a crazy year that just to be able to laugh at yourself and make other people laugh will be a great thing.
Louis de Bernières, author, sees an imminent upside to global warming
I am optimistic that global warming will mean that we can grow avocados in Norfolk and make red wine on Humberside, and that electric cars will cause a reversion to unexpected breakdowns in the middle of nowhere so that you have a chance to bond with complete strangers, and I am hoping that the pensions people will finally respond to my attempts to get one now that I am 66. I also hope to write one-and-a-half books, become a crack shot with a rifle, and persuade my son that he won’t do well at GCSEs unless he does some work.
Chef Marco Pierre White wishes everyone the joy of fish and chips
The other day I went to the Scallop Shell in Bath and had delicious seafood and fish and chips. (Restaurants were open in Bath, unlike in other parts of the country.) It’s been a devastating year for the restaurant industry. I’m just keeping my fingers crossed that being able to enjoy delicious food at a wonderful restaurant will be restored to everyone in the country.
Luccio’s, a restaurant run by Marco
Pierre White’s son, Luciano, opened this month in Dorchester
Johnnie Boden, entrepreneur, looks forward to a garden party summer
There is SO much to look forward to in 2021: travelling more ( golly, I miss Paris and NYC); and, who knows, shopping without masks. I’ll be looking forward to the return of our summer party, too: we have a massive all-day knees up at a country house with lots of games, boating, foraging, softball, dancing, bucking bronco and A LOT of very good food and drink. I am Mr Toad and I love it. It is also our 30th birthday at Boden in 2021, which will make the year even more special.
Anton Du Beke, from Strictly Come Dancing, will be reclaiming the fairway
One of the good things to come out of 2020 was the extra time with my gorgeous twins. Every moment is such a joy, even if there is the occasional tantrum. I am so excited to watch them grow and discover the world next year and to spend more time outside – we’ve all rediscovered the joy of the great outdoors this year and I can’t wait to play golf again in the new year.
A Christmas To Remember by Anton Du Beke (Zaffre, hardback, ebook and audio) is out now
Columnist Judith Woods will be grabbing opportunities for fun with both hands
Nothing fills me with more giddy delight than the prospect of letting the day unfold unexpectedly, the evening take me where it will. After months of tourniquet-tight regulation, what bliss to give myself over to “ooh it’s open, shall we pop in?” serendipity and “gosh, I had no idea you were coming tonight!” coincidence. As comedian Micky Flanagan puts it: “I want to go out out” (strictly speaking “aht aht”, as he’s more Cockney than a pearly barrow boy). Unlike “out”, out out is predicated on a go-with-the-flow mindset antithetical to lockdown. People go out for a film or a walk or a meal or a party; out out involves all four possibly with a spot of river swimming, escaped zoo animals or an Argentinian tango with a Ruritanian princeling beneath sodium street lights. You get the drift. And then you let the current carry you. La La Land meets Un Chien Andalou.
Food writer Diana Henry can’t wait to chat – and not chat – with her fellow Londoners
I can’t be the only person unsure about what their personality is now – am I an extrovert or introvert? – so I’ll be glad to get more of a sense of myself back. I’d never have guessed how much of you depends on interaction with people. Connected to this is my desire to be surrounded by other people while not necessarily having to talk to them: eavesdropping in cafés, taking the Tube into London and getting that buzz, browsing in book shops. I can’t wait to get on a plane or step on to a train.
Wine writer Susy Atkins foresees an abundance of home-grown lockdown veg
In the hot, dry spring lockdown plenty of my old friends, neighbours and colleagues were heading out, trowel in hand, to dig vegetable beds or take over allotments, surrounded by birdsong. It gave us something that wasn’t gloomy to talk about. So I feel optimistic about spring 2021, when I intend to be in both garden and greenhouse again. There must be hundreds of thousands of us itching to grow our own nutritious food again after discovering it during lockdown. That can only be a good thing.
Gardening writer Bunny Guinness predicts that horticulture may soon be
prescribed on the NHS
Gardening is fantastic for the planet, t, health and wellbeing and with Brexit having arrived, growing your own food may well be massively helpful if the shortages occur that are predicted of salad crops that are imported from Europe. Medical research is coming in thick and fast about the huge benefits of gardening, so much so that the National Health Service is in the process of prescribing gardening. Some say it should be coined the Natural Health Service. I have been self-prescribing this for many years, and there’s no waiting list!
Restaurateur Marcus Wareing says the feelgood factor is on its way back
It’s difficult at the moment – it’s dark early, the news is all doom and gloom and my industry is being restricted left, right and centre. I can’t wait for midnight on New Year’s Eve to say goodbye to all this and hello to freedom, being open again, and having customers. In spring, the flowers will come out, the days will get longer and the country will come back to life. Spring is a really lovely time to be a chef. I’m looking forward to that.
Columnist Debora Robertson proposes a year of promiscuous hugging
Even before Covid, my home was my universe and I was always happy pottering about in the kitchen or garden, so I suppose I was more temperamentally suited to lockdown and the other strictures that this year has brought with it than some. I have missed my family and friends, at times like a profound, physical ache, but as well as that, I have missed the spontaneity of my old life and I am quite giddy at the prospect that will return at some point next year. Having someone drop in for a cup of coffee, inviting friends back after the pub for bacon sandwiches, deciding on Friday lunchtime to have a tableful of friends for dinner that night, or taking off for the weekend to visit family at the last minute, the thought of being able to do these once very ordinary things again fills me with joy. And – fair warning if you know me and it’s not your thing – I am going to be hugging absolutely everyone like a lottery winner in a Rolls-Royce showroom, because to be honest that is exactly how I imagine seeing people freely again will feel. Only better.
Columnist Shane Watson won’t be afraid of missing out
One good thing the pandemic has done is cured us of the curse of Fomo. You would think you have to be 18 to experience the full force of Fomo, but not so. It had most of us in its grip, worrying about not being in the right place at the right time, making us rush to pack in more, while always looking over our shoulder and checking our phones. And then everything stopped: we couldn’t move, there was nowhere to go, no one to see, no jobs other people were getting that we might have wanted, no holiday villa that we should be booking now, quickly quickly before it goes. All went quiet and it was heaven. Everybody said so. The world stood still and we stood still in it and we hadn’t felt quite so sure that we were in the right place for a very long time. In 2021, we will get back to some sort of normal but we’ll know we don’t have to be everywhere all the time, and we won’t fear missing out because missing out had its advantages. Missing out taught us how to enjoy what we have.
Wine writer Victoria Moore is looking forward to looking forward
Mindfulness gurus are always keen to pr promote the idea that being present and liv living in the moment can make us ha happy. But what if that moment is a 3ft pi pile of ironing at 1am? Or the interminabl ble frayed multitask of home schooling an isolating small child while drafting po polite and professional responses to yo your inbox and answering the door to th the 14th courier to arrive that morning? I’m looking forward to being able to pl plan. Simply that. Planning enables the cr creative joy of dreaming. It also gives yo you things to look forward to and helps yo you to structure time. I don’t mind whether I’m planning an online yoga session e (a luxury that has been totally im impossible for most of the year, given th the demands on time imposed by lockdo downs and isolations), a train journey, a ho holiday, an evening of ballet or even more work. Just as long as there’s a chance h I’ll get to carry out some of the pl plans that don’t involve tins of tomatoes or mince.