How could we have supposed, back in the distant past of the first lockdown, that here we would be, almost a year later? Of course we knew that the government kept easing restrictions (and urging us to eat out to help out - what a thought!) far too early, and too generously. But that December and January would come along and we'd be back in lockdown - I don't know what we would have made of that supposition. Yet here we are. The numbers are terrible - much worse than the first lockdown. There are vaccines, but until enough people are vaccinated, we can take absolutely nothing for granted.
Christmas 2020 was a strangely subdued affair. Mr K had gone to stay with his parents and then travel had been forbidden. I'd spent the earlier part of the winter alone in the house, until M came home from uni. Solitude sat well with me, though I did end up eating the same thing day in and day out. It wasn't a hardship. I was in a support bubble with L&C, and so was not completely isolated. M joined the bubble when she returned from Wales, and we settled back into lockdown life.
At Christmas, we decorated much as usual, though there were already plenty of fairy lights in the house - light to keep the darkness at bay. But we bought a tree, and decked the front room (erstwhile Mr K's bedroom) with lights and the Christmas table. L&C visited on Christmas Day, and we ate, and drank, and played Trivial Pursuit until it was time for them to leave.
Today, we've woken up to snow. L&C will be round for a swift jaunt in the snowy park before we all huddle up again indoors.
No snow days for workers or schoolchildren this time round - the pandemic has seen off the argument that if you can't get to your place of study or work, you get to have the day off. There are many positives about the increased possibility of working from home (I'm now 100% based at home, for both jobs, and by and large that suits me well), but the disappearance of the snow day is a sad one. We have fond memories of the girls abandoning formal learning, bundling themselves up in layers and layers, and taking to the snow in the park, then coming home with friends to snuggle by the fire, or one year, to make the fairy cakes they were to have made during school. Schoolchildren tomorrow will be at their laptops as though the weather simply weren't happening.
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