A second lockdown isn’t really our main concern. What we’re holding our breath for is an announcement about Christmas. It would be the first time I’ve seen most of my family in nine months. I want to celebrate the birth of my niece, who was born in May, but who I haven’t yet held — atheists too have their idols.
If the Government tells us we will “be home in time for Christmas” — that phrase didn’t end too well in 1914 — I was thinking I’d be willing to keep my side of the bargain. I thought I’d happily wrap myself up in my duvet for the month, just a pig-in-blanket waiting for December to roll around. November gets pretty dull after you set off some fireworks. It would be OK if I knew that there might be one thing this year — the most comforting belly-hug of all rituals — which will look the same as it did in 2019.
But now, I’m not so sure I’d go home for Christmas — not just because the rule of six means I need to compete with my two-year-old nephew for an invite. My parents are well into their sixties, and having seen the curve of infections edge upwards again, my worst fear is giving them a Christmas gift for life, in a virus that has no cure.
The way I see it, it only takes one dud bulb to blow all the Christmas lights forever. I’d choose many more Christmases with my parents still alive over a one-off clink of champagne. I’m wary of spending December in isolation in preparation for seeing them — November locked down will be bad enough — and how can I be sure I won’t catch Covid on the train home?
My friends are fleeing London for Spain and Portugal before the second lockdown
But the way I see it, we will celebrate Christmas a little later, once we have a vaccine. Churches could put on a carol service, albeit with the good news foretold by an AstraZeneca PR rather than the Angel Gabriel, and Mary beaming at the syringe swaddled in her arms.
It might be confusing — not least because we’d also be celebrating Christmas alongside Eid, Diwali and Yom Kippur, all in midsummer. But the Queen won’t have to do her yearly speech of abstract meanderings about hope — she can speak about a hope which has actually been realised. We can be like that bloke who celebrates Christmas every day — we’ll be pulling crackers right through to Bonfire Night next year — all because we outlived Covid.
My friends are all fleeing London before the second lockdown comes into force — but this time not for the sticks. One’s gone to Spain, another’s joining her boyfriend’s family in Guernsey. My best friend is renting a “lads’ Airbnb” in Portugal with his mates. It comes with a pool and tennis court for £200 a month, a quarter of his rent in London. Because of tomorrow’s deadline for getting a flight out, travel agents are reporting record enquiries.
The Great Evacuation of London is happening at full pelt — only this time it’s middle-class young professionals.
If our generation’s jobs weren’t online before the pandemic, they certainly are now — lawyers, civil servants and bankers now have the geographical mobility of friends in start-ups. I worried more mates might do a runner, leaving me alone in London — when accountants become instagramming “digital nomads”, you know it’s getting serious. But then I remembered that when the end of the transition period comes in a couple of months, our passports — at least where Europe is concerned— will become about as useful as Equatorial Guinea’s. Who’d have thought I’d one day thank Brexit for saving my friendships?
