To misquote Arkwright (Open all Hours), “It’s been a funny old year”, but sadly for most of us, 2020 profoundly lacked humour. The year started off fine, at least for me, but rapidly worsened as all my plans evaporated in March as I expect they did for most of us. I was reminded of the old Yiddish proverb, ‘We plan and God laughs’. In addition to Covid-19, my year had an early hiccup when I was knocked off my bike in January. I wasn’t badly injured, suffering a few minutes’ concussion and a broken collar bone, and after a few hours in hospital I was sent home to spend eleven weeks recovering before I could ride again. Thankfully, the car driver stopped, but even though she admitted liability, the insurance claim is still ongoing ten months later.
Because of the accident, I cancelled a short cycle tour in Derbyshire planned for February and then the virus forced the cancellation of four other cycling trips to the Yorkshire Dales, Sicily, Northern Scotland and the Italian Alps. This is good news for you since I appreciate that cycling is a great deal more fun to do than to read about, but now what subjects should I cover, with much of the year being spent confined to barracks? Well, actually, the ‘lockdown’ (I hate that term, but what other is there?) altered my life in unexpected ways.
Several jokes were doing the rounds of social media.
For over two years I’ve helped out in my local bike shop and in April, when the UK demanded bikes, this part time work rapidly and significantly increased. I was unwilling to work in the shop during this period, so instead I set myself up at home assembling new bikes and repairing old ones. After a month of this, the shop’s owner decided to establish a remote workshop nearby so I could work there alone very safely, with no danger of contracting the virus. Orders for new bikes were such that in May I worked 26 of the 31 days. June was similarly busy.
The restrictions also caused my local library to temporarily close necessitating me 8to begin reading e-books, a trend I’ve long resisted. However, I have now become accustomed to the process, although BorrowBox, the on-line library service selected by Lancashire County Council, has the worst search engine imaginable. It takes longer for me to find a book than it does to read it. OK, I may exaggerate, but it’s very frustrating. Once I’ve ‘borrowed’ a book the process is fine, and an additional benefit is that I am able to read ‘series’ books in the order of their publication. (I‘m currently working my way through the Peak District-based Cooper & Fry books by Stephen Booth, if you’re interested).
I began learning Italian in January in advance of three planned trips to Italy this year. Even though only one trip happened, I persevered with the on-line course and don’t want to stop now. In the early days, no doubt due to the limited vocabulary at the designers’ disposal, some of the sentences I was asked to learn were rather odd. ‘My snake eats your cakes’ and ‘Our monkey is hungry’ are just two examples. Unsurprisingly I never found an appropriate occasion to use either phrase whilst in Rome in January.
The trip to Rome with Geraldine was marvellous, and since we were pleasantly unaware of Covid-19 then, it was also very relaxed. The lire we threw into the Trevi fountain in 1981 must have worked since our hotel this year was but a coin-throw away. I was delighted to find Rome totally unchanged. Not that I expected anyone to have given the Colosseum a makeover or fitted stone cladding to the Pantheon, but it was good to see things just as I recalled them. We also loved St Peter’s Basilica, especially climbing the 521 steps to the top of the dome. Amazingly, there was a café on the roof of the basilica so we enjoyed a coffee sitting by the apostles on the façade of the main entrance.
We were also very lucky to enjoy a short trip to Malta in March and apart from being temperature-checked at the airport (we passed – and confirmed as cool dudes) we avoided any issues with Covid-19. We arrived just in time for the Mardi Gras carnival which was a huge street festival with a marvellous atmosphere. We like to be independent, so on one day we took a ferry across the bay and I even got a pensioner’s discount! It was just 90c rather than €2.80, so not a great saving, but it later paid for half an ice cream. We’d never been to this island before and we thoroughly enjoyed the visit. I’d heard that the British drive on the left, the Europeans on the right and the Maltese in the shade. I now know the truth.
The children are coping well with the upheaval caused by the virus, especially since both changed jobs during the year. In August Emily returned to work in the NHS after spending five years at a charity in Cheadle Hulme. She’s now employed as an Occupational Therapist at Stepping Hill hospital in Stockport. She is able to work from home and didn’t need to rely on the furlough scheme. Laurence was due to start work at a company in Chorley in mid April but thankfully, his old employer agreed to furlough him until July when he was able to start his new job. He has been working from home since then, and on the whole enjoys this new experience and also the new work, which is in the same field of digital marketing.
Geraldine celebrated her 60th birthday in June, although not in the manner we had anticipated. Our plan was to hire a room at the Cavendish Arms (our local pub) and invite friends to join in the celebrations. In spring, the pub planned to build an orangery over a little-used patio beside their beer garden, and we were anticipating being its first customers. Building plans were delayed and so the room wasn’t ready by late June, but even if it had been, people would not have been allowed to join in the celebrations. Instead, we invited close family and a few neighbours to a socially-distanced party in our garden with each couple having individual trays of snacks. I don’t think we infringed any then-current laws, but if we had, we’d planned to use the ‘Cummings defence’, or just claim that we only broke the law in a very limited and specific way.
The Cavendish has since built its orangery which is a beautiful room, perfect for a party when conditions allow it.
In May, the pub began serving takeaway food, which was a collect-only service from a reduced menu but just as delicious. We made the most of this option throughout the summer, and continued to use the service after they re-opened, feeling that it was a safer option for us.
By March when everything stopped, Geraldine had performed eight weddings, but she has since presided at a further 34 ceremonies between July and October. The numbers of people attending are much smaller, and the services are mainly held at the Registration Office in Blackburn, but the process appears very safe, with all but the bride and groom wearing face-coverings and everyone standing at least 2m apart. As I write, all ceremonies have been suspended once more, but I’m sure that demand will recover once the present restrictions are lifted.
We began emptying our lofts (yes, we have two – don’t ask!) last November so that roofers could fix a small leak that we’d discovered. We emptied stuff into a bedroom with a plan to sort things out, label them and only put items back that we really want to keep. A broken collar bone in January changed this plan, since I could no longer climb into the loft, so we had a cluttered back bedroom until late summer when finally we found the motivation to continue.
Some of the items we sorted were old LP records. I threw a lot of my collection away a few years ago when they appeared to be worthless and I no longer had the means (or desire) to play them. In the autumn, Geraldine offered a small selection of records for sale on Facebook Marketplace and we were astonished at the response. Within minutes, we’d sold them all, but the real surprise was that almost all enquirers wanted just one record from the set: Hatful of Hollow by The Smiths. It’s hardly a classic, so why the popularity? If we’d realised this, we’d certainly have increased the asking price, or offered it on an auction site instead. We sold several more records this way, but we kept hold of 30-odd albums that hold fond memories for us. We may never play them again, but the covers are very attractive and we can’t let them go just for a few pounds.
Geraldine and I spent many contented hours in the garden in the warm spring weather, although since I was working full time between May and July, I didn’t get much chance to enjoy it during that time. The best crop once again was raspberries. We grow two sorts, summer- and autumn-fruiting, and from picking the first fruit in mid June, we’ve enjoyed some every week since then, even picking a further ¼ pound in mid-November. The biggest disappointments were courgettes and runner beans. The courgette plants grew well, but the fruits didn’t fully develop. The problem with the runner beans was not with the plants, but with the fauna. In August, the scarlet flowers showed great promise, but by mid September we discovered all the young beans had been eaten along with much of the greenery up to about four feet from the ground. Hoof prints around the base of the plants directed the blame to some deer that were paying us nocturnal visits.
I have cycled much less this year and by December I guess I will have ridden just over 2000 miles, almost all locally. I managed just one trip away in September after some Youth Hostels reopened. I booked two nights at Grinton Lodge, a grade II listed building in Swaledale, North Yorkshire. I have strong feelings for this former shooting lodge because I first stayed there in 1975 and have visited several times since. As the dormitories were still closed, I booked a small camping pod which was just a fancy name for a shed with a bed. Evening meals were taken in a local pub with log fires, good beer and drool-worthy fish pie. Sublime!
We only managed to attend two concerts this year and the last band we saw (in March) were an American couple called Truckstop Honeymoon who now live in mid-Wales and sing some wonderful songs about their life in Kansas and before that, in New Orleans. They’re an odd pair (all the bands that I like appear to be), but write songs with great lyrics. One song has lines that go, There are big things happening and little things are happening too. What things are big and what things are little depends on what things matter to you. I feel that this is very relevant just now. As long as we decide what things are important to us and don’t worry about stuff we can’t control we’ll be fine.
It wouldn’t be a normal Christmas letter if I didn’t have a moan about something and so I’m back on my frequently-visited topic of misuse of the English language, specifically, stative versus dynamic verbs. Why do people now feel the need to say things like ‘I’m loving your hair’ rather than ‘I love your hair’? (It’s never said to me, of course, that’s just an example.) I am not knowing the answer to this, but I do know that it annoys me. I blame the McDonald’s advert. I hope that you are keeping well, and able to make the most of whatever we are allowed to do this Christmas whilst staying safe and virus-free.