Happy Christmas and Why I Won’t Let it End in Tiers

The worst kept secret this side of Watford Gap has just been announced. Halifax and West Yorkshire, where I live, have just been placed in the highest Tier; (Tier 3) by Boris et al, when ‘Lockdown 2’ ends on 2 December.

Thanks Boris: ‘Happy Birthday to me!’ Wednesday 2nd December just happens to be my birthday. Then 3 weeks till Christmas. “Happy Christmas’ Boris!

It made me start to think about how I will try to navigate the challenge of Covid 19, especially as it starts to impact on our Christmas of 2020.

Being graded as Tier 3 is not welcome news. I, like most people have started to suffer from ‘Covid fatigue’. We seem to have been at the highest level of restrictions for months In West Yorkshire. I calculate we have now ‘enjoyed’ extra restrictions for at least 12 weeks!

I miss so many of the simple things of my former life: the chance to visit others, the cinema, a live football match, friends and family…….. congregating with others!

Most of all, I miss people contact with those I love and care about most.

It is months since I enjoyed quality close contact time with my 3 kids. I haven’t seen my elderly and increasingly fragile mum since November 2019. Mum is 89, lives in a care home in the South of France and is confined to a wheelchair and profoundly deaf. As much as my own life is currently in ‘Lockdown’, for my mum, her ‘Life in Provence’ must be at a whole new level of self isolation.

But I have some good news to report: my Mum keeps on going. She has survived pneumonia twice in the winter of 2019/20 and she lost her husband, my stepfather, in June 2020. Lockdown has been very tough for her. But if she can keep on going, then I most certainly can.

So to hear today’s news of a Tier 3 grading is quite a relief in one sense. The speculation is over. ‘Will we?’ or ‘Won’t we?’ is no longer a subject to debate. We are a 3.

As a teenager I always dreaded the wait for suspected bad news to break. Today’s announcement reminded me of the day of my mock exam results in Year 11 at secondary school in Bristol. At that time, I was far from a conscientious scholar. I attempted the bare minimum and I knew that my ‘just desserts’ would be confirmed in the exam report I would be picking up later that day. My own kids, 40 years after the actual result still tease me about my mock Maths ‘O Level’ result in January 1978: 23% was not a good result!

With the latest Covid Tiers now released we all now know exactly where we stand. The speculation ends and I believe now that we all have to stop moaning, ‘suck it up’ and just get on with it.

So how will I try to protect my own sanity over the next 3 weeks until the Government reviews our West Yorkshire Tier 3 grading on 16 December?

Maybe the 10 ‘Steps to Sanity’ I propose below can be a help to you? I really hope so.

• Stick to a morning routine. Get up, get dressed, get your face on and get on with it. Structure is a definite support in lockdown.
• Reject moaning. Moaning saps, it sucks and it ends in tiers! I’ll keep trying my hardest to stay positive. This restricted lifestyle WILL end soon.
• Make the best of a ‘Covid Christmas’. My son Harry and his fiancée Emily return to Cambridge on Saturday and they won’t be able to come home for Christmas due to work commitments. So this Saturday (28 November) is now Christmas dinner day in our house. The tree goes up tomorrow! The wreath is on the door (see photo). Roast Lamb has been requested.
• Write a Christmas card and personalise your message. Human contact in this ‘Bleak Midwinter’ is more important than ever so I shall resist the temptation not to bother. People still matter. So I intend to try to tell them that they do in the traditional way.
• Keep on dreaming. We agreed the sale of our house 7 weeks ago and we have still yet to find a new place to live. That uncertainty can be a worry and a stress. It has been. Everyday we will try to count our blessings and see it as a new adventure: a voyage into the unknown.
• Apply the logic expressed in that George Michael song ‘Let’s go outside, in the sunshine’. We may find sunshine in limited supply at the moment, but getting out for some fresh air every day really does give you a boost.
• Try to take personal responsibility and to keep myself Covid secure by following the rules. I may hate them and resent them, but they have a value and purpose to keep me safe. So we will keep our distance for a little longer, even though we loathe it. We are already trying to prepare ourselves to ride through Covid should we be unfortunate enough to still catch it. We take vitamin C and D supplements every day and are trying to ensure we eat well. Managing consumption of the extras we still enjoy like alcohol and chocolate is important.
• Similarly controlling the amount of national news you listen to feels more important than ever. I really like Fiona Bruce and her colleagues. But I don’t enjoy their recurring messages so much these days. The daily news, vaccine apart, is generally rubbish. A self imposed limit on Covid 19 listening will hopefully save me from being dragged down.
• Learn a new skill. Thanks to Emily’s patient coaching earlier today, I have started to blog. This is my first official entry. It is stimulating and cathartic for me to write, even if what I write may be a load of rubbish to read.
• Life is worth celebrating. Life events and celebrations like birthdays and Christmas still count. That’s why our Covid 19 Christmas of 2020 will still be celebrated in our household and why I’m guessing my family will try to celebrate my 56th next week. Yes both will be restricted, more limited and some of our loved ones will be absent. But we will still celebrate. The key message of ‘Hope’ that lies in the Christmas story remains. Just how good will Christmas 2021 be when Covid 19 will hopefully be ‘living history!’

That is a thought to cheer us all up.

It doesn’t really have to end in ‘Tiers’ you know.