This Time Next Year…
Last year, I wrote a piece for Last Bus called ‘5 New Year’s Eves You Will Experience in your Teens and Twenties’. I spoke of chaotic house parties and long, drunken queues outside of crowded nightclubs. Imagine that!
As 2020 shudders to its end, I wonder what everyone has planned for the 31st.
Pre-pandemic, it was completely acceptable to go to a heaving nightclub and (come midnight) kiss a stranger. A stranger. A person whose name, nor antibody count, you did not know.
Other things you could do before the pandemic include:
Go to a buffet and help yourself to food that’s been breathed on by other customers.
Head-butt a stranger’s groin as you bend down to get your rucksack at 8.30am on a dangerously packed tube.
Visit a bar or club with a slightly sticky ball-pit.
Use water fountains which are an inch tall and spout warm water onto your chin.
Unashamedly eat food on public transport.
Help yourself to a sample of sorts at a supermarket. Maybe a tiny shot of Actimel or a cube of Jarlsberg.
Being at home for holidays this year feels odd, likely because most of us have spent more time with our loved ones this year than we ever thought possible. In the run-up to Christmas, it was difficult to feel cheerful as government announcements confused and then cancelled celebrations across the country. The nights are long and the days are dark, and there were no Christmas Eve pub trips to break the dreaded cycle of doom and gloom news.
To anyone who has planned Zoom celebrations for New Year’s Eve, I would advise you to cancel, now. It’ll be too bleak. Picture the scene. You’re peering at the tiny, pixelated faces of friends you haven’t seen in weeks while four people attempt to tell anecdotes at once. 2021 rolls around after three long hours and everyone’s blowing kisses at their screen. You close your laptop at 12.20 in the morning and find yourself drunk, in your room, alone. You’re swaying slightly as you mumble the words to Auld Lang Syne. No, the thought of it all is too much to bear. I suggest rewatching New Girl and getting an early night. Asleep by 11.35, lovely.
Perhaps it’d be comforting though, to look forward to the imagined 2021. If this year has taught us anything, it’s that plans can change. But if things get better, and if the vaccine is rolled out and the virus contained... if life is different by Easter, as the government has promised. Let’s imagine all the things we might have done by this time next year:
Forgotten how to log-in to Zoom.
Laughed at the idea of ordering food at a pub.
Visited your grandparents and stayed the night.
Queued for the club you last visited on A-Levels results day.
Forgotten what the difference is between tier 2 and tier 3.
Stayed until the lights came on.
Sat next to a stranger on a bus.
Got the night-tube home with your friends.
Given up baking sub-par cakes, biscuits and banana breads that your family politely nibble on.
Watched a crap film in the cinema.
Watched an excellent film in the cinema.
Spent less time thinking about Matt Hancock.
Achieved a work milestone.
Passed your driving test. (This is a personal one. Please God.)
Taken a spontaneous trip across the country to see your friends.
Had a drink spilled all over you at a gig.
Spent less time reading the news and more time outside.
Gone to Notting Hill Carnival and lost everyone you know.
Awkwardly smiled at 5 people you vaguely know as you walk into the library.
Failed to find a seat, at the very busy and non-socially-distanced library.
Gone on holiday with your mates.
Gone out-out with your mates.
Sunbathed in a baking hot park with hundreds of other people.
Made friends with a drunk girl in a bathroom on a night out.
Indulged in a summer series of Love Island.
Gone back to work.
Been to a festival with thousands and thousands of other people. (Surely not).
Waltzed into Sainsbury’s without queuing and without a mask.
Planned for an inevitably anti-climatic and messy new year.
This time last year, the new decade sparkled just out of reach. The perfect symmetry of 2020 seemed to promise opportunity and excitement. But I, like many of my friends, have been very lucky this year. It is a gift that my concerns over lockdown have been about my spiralling screen time and missing going out. I was not trapped in a university hall in a city I didn’t know and I didn’t lose anyone I loved to the virus.
It’s easy to hope that once the clock strikes midnight in a few days time, this virus-induced fever dream will just stop. While that seems unlikely, let’s hope that the wonky looking 2021 offers happier times for all of us. Let’s hope for less bad news, a fairer world and some positive change. Hope to see you all at a buffet somewhere in 2021, or perhaps in the queue for a ball pit.
