Throughout the whole year of 2020 it has felt like we’ve jumped from one mitigated disaster to the next.
Our Prime Minister deciding to take action just that little bit too late on so many occasions that I’ve lost count; missed Cobra meetings, shortages of PPE, too slow to lockdown, too slow to throw a safety net over social care and care homes, no ‘circuit breakers’.
His cries of the virus being ‘unprecedented’ and ‘unpredictable’ less and less easy to swallow with the scientific voice of reason often foreshadowing what we can clearly see will happen, often weeks or months in advance.
And the descent into Tier 4 is the cherry on the rum filled Christmas Cake that will end up stale because there’s no one around to eat it.
I’m old enough to remember when Boris Johnson promised a ‘normal Christmas’.
The most recent being, of course, less than a month ago. Yet the whole of London and large parts of the East and South East of England fell into a new, restrictive tier as of midnight last night.
These new restrictions hark back to the first lockdown when we were all washing our food shopping and leaving our post for two days to make sure it was safe to open.
Yet back then we had a glimpse of the end and promises of ‘normality’ to get us through it.
With the rest of England told that they can spend just one day with loved ones rather than the promised five days, it’s started to feel like GroundHog Day.
I’m not arguing that these new restrictions are wrong; I think we need to do all we can to keep our families and the vulnerable as safe as possible.
But I think the timing and the way the government disseminated the new tiers was handled with as much sensibility as a wet sponge.
For days our Prime Minister was spouting how it was too late to cancel Christmas—yet cancelled Eid with hours to spare—and now thousands of people have been thrown into disarray and confusion with another whip-lash inducing change of laws.
And while Matt Hancock sat there on the Sophie Ridge on Sunday show, smugly telling people who travelled out of London before the new tier hit that they were irresponsible, it made me wonder just how many of our courageous members of parliament will be jetting off to Chequers (other country pads available) to pass their Christmases with loved ones.
Especially as Hancock used the same mouth to judge those traveling last night as he used to praise Cummings only a few months previously for knowingly traveling with the virus to get his eyes tested. “We’re all in this together.”
But, putting aside my grievances with the way the whole pandemic has been handled, it shouldn’t be North versus South, it shouldn’t be people who travelled last night versus people who stayed put. Now is a time for harmony, not war.
We never know what another person is going through and while there will have been some who did travel irresponsibly, there may have been people who genuinely had no other choice.
Not one of us knows another person’s thoughts and feelings and situation.
And who am I to judge as I sit here in my safe—relatively speaking—tier three house sobbing into my Chrstmas chocolates that I won’t get to spend the day eating turkey with my parents for the first time in my life? Or that I haven’t hugged my partner since March.
We’ve all made sacrifices this year. We’ve all been through hell. Every single feeling that is coursing through your body right now is valid. Your anger, your hurt, your sadness, even your relief. Remember that you are not alone in this; we feel you, we hear you.
We will get through this together. One day at a time.
And it’s not all doom and gloom. A quick scroll of Twitter just now has my heart thawed slightly at the offers of Christmas food from those who were going to host to those who were going to travel.
There are offers of Zoom groups for those who are unexpectedly on their own, and Radio Four are playing a reading of The Boy, The Mole, The Fox, and the Horse with the first episode tomorrow (21st). Plus a collective scream out the window at 8pm on Christmas Eve, that’s nothing if not cathartic!
If you are feeling in need of someone to talk to, please contact any of the charities below:
Anxiety UK anxietyuk.org.uk 03444 775 774
Samaritans samaritans.org.uk 116 123
Papyrus papyrus-uk.org 0800 068 41 41
Bipolar UK bipolaruk.org.uk
Shout giveusashout.org text SHOUT to 85258
Refuge refuge.org.uk 0808 200 0247
Mind mind.org.uk 0300 123 3393
Young Minds youngminds.org.uk 0808 802 5544
OCD UK ocduk.org 0333 212 7890
Calm thecalmzone.net 0800 58 58 58
Beat b-eat.co.uk 0808 801 0677
Don’t suffer in silence.
