In the bleak midwinter. The shared complicity of our shitty Christmas. Shitmass. Merry Shitmass. And a great pestilence had fallen on the land; who’d have thought that the end times would be so mundane? It’s so cold, it’s like the cold if you were dead, and this place reminds me of Santa’s workshop, except it smells like mushrooms and everyone looks like they want to hurt me. AstraZeneca’s share price fell when they announced that they had a vaccine. They’re going to sell it at cost. Investors don’t like at cost. There’s not much money in altruism. In the bleak midwinter; body bags, but decked with boughs of holly.
2020. It’s been a bit plague-y. A bit Rudi Giuliani. A bit mink-y (as in the Danish mink, with their meditations upon virus mutation, and resurrection, and ground water contamination). And wave after wave of human despair and misery, breaching the sea walls of our collective psyche like a laboured metaphor, the man – this nice old man – on the TV, on John Craven’s Newsround, microphone on a broom handle thrust into his face, and it’s when Craven goes “Tell us about your Covid-y wife” that this fella breaks down, a gravity well of pain and grief and heartbreak seared across his expression, an expression in close-up, filling the screen as if we’re viewing the onrushing moon through the porthole of our crappy lunar module – a laboured simile, this time – and this poor, old, loveable, huggable man, unable to hold his sweetheart’s hand as she passes away, or even get anywhere near the ICU perimeter, but I have zero attention span, and it’s Christmas after all, and maybe I’ve got it wrong; maybe Craven was enquiring after the time our nice old man was trapped in Ireland’s largest lingerie section instead.
Of course, getting yourself lost in Ireland’s largest lingerie section comes from a more innocent time. From back when we were busy feeding cows with the pelleted mulch of other diseased cows, instead of letting bats and pangolins get all jiggy, thus inadvertently curdling the narrative of late-stage capitalism.
Because I’m writing this in 2020, and a windswept, disappointing island where Christmas has been cancelled, our sperms and fibbers government has ordered us to stay at home and where the links to the outside world have been severed because the contagious virus responsible for a global pandemic has mutated into an even more contagious virus – the modern-day equivalent of the townsfolk nailing us in and daubing a red cross on our door.
Which reads like the synopsis for some really crap dystopian sci-fi or one of those cheap festive movies on Channel 5 where love conquers adversity and the actor playing Santa is addicted to brake fluid. And look – you’re going to have to do some of the heavy lifting here. So far in this diatribe I’ve referenced ‘Plainsong’ by The Cure, quoted from that Elf movie, talked about a kids’ TV show from the ‘70’s, and alluded to that Xmas episode of Father Ted where Father Dougal (correctly) yearns for a matador outfit and Mrs Doyle gets all sapphic with a tea-making machine – all without a simple thank you.
And is this what Christmas is? Little more than a conveyor belt of redundant popular culture references? We’ve been fucking the planet over for centuries, pillaging the natural environment, screwing with the balance of things (hence Covid; hence the mad cow disease that I cleverly referenced earlier), and all whilst voting Del-Boy-falls-through-the-bar as the funniest slice of TV ever. Fucking Del Boy, with his Brexit, and his institutionalised racism, and his burning down the rain forest before sending dick pics to Princess Margaret.
Is this what Christmas is? Thousands of stranded hauliers, wandering around Kent, shitting in the hedgerows? Ambulances dropping patients off at the local stable because the hospitals are full (“Get in that manger you Covid-y cunt”)? Lockdown has its own rhythms. Its own cadences. A suspicion that we’re not yet over the worst of things, the irony of a rampant virus during the one time of the year we’re supposed to be together (even if you’d rather be alone).
So much has happened in 2020 that it’s difficult to process. Many of us are still tethered to early March, when we climbed the hill at the edge of town and inhaled the view, the rooftops and spires and minarets and tower blocks, the thousands of people going about their strange, embittered lives, and dread was hugging us, taunting us, coiling in and around our presence like ivy.
And events have moved on yet the story arc remains gridlocked. A blocked cistern. Bad plumbing. Which isn’t very funny, when you think about it. Pandemics – like social media – have the annoying habit of showcasing society’s fault lines, and Jeez – this is getting grim. Where are the chestnuts? The open fires? The faces etched with delight? Del Boy, falling through the bar?
It was the philosopher Boy George who said: “In our world of plenty we can spread a smile of joy,” on that song the celebs sang on so that Bob Geldof could buy Africa or something. But there’s no joy this year; just a world of dread and fear, the clanging chimes of doom, and the bitter sting of tears – tears that belong to the chap Boy George handcuffed to a radiator whilst addled on Columbian and beat like a dog.
So that’s your 2020, boys and girls. The wolves are running. What did you get from Santa? The ‘rona. Ah. And in the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan. Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone.
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