In the bleak midwinter
Dec. 20th, 2020 02:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dolorosa_12If you live in the UK, you'll share my contempt for our current government. I didn't think I could despise them any more, but this pack of incompetents never cease to find new depths to plumb.
For those of you not aware, the UK government originally announced ridiculous plans to relax the semi-lockdown restrictions that were in place across the country, for five days on and around Christmas. They didn't relax things to a complete free-for-all, but the rules were such that up to three households could meet and celebrate Christmas indoors. They doggedly stuck to this for weeks on end, in spite of spiraling cases, catastrophic strain on the NHS, and pleas from epidemiologists not to allow it.
They were still sticking to this Christmas permissiveness as recently as Thursday, when Keir Starmer quite reasonably asked in Parliament whether this was at all sensible (at which point the government started raking him over the coals and saying things like 'Keir Starmer just wants to cancel Christmas!!!!!!!!'). Some schools in London wanted to revert to online classes for the last two days of the year, but were taken to court by the education minister and forced to stay physically open. (Of course, all these schools were in Labour council areas, and there was no attempt to sue Eton, which had also closed early.)
And then, yesterday afternoon, after leaking the news to a favoured journalist, the government did a u-turn, announced that almost all of the country would have to go into hard lockdown, travel would not be possible except for essential work or caregiving after midnight on Saturday night, and there would be no Christmas relaxation of rules after all.
People, as you can imagine, were spitting flames with fury. Many had made travel plans, organised enough food to feed largish groups, or paused regular grocery deliveries because they assumed they would be fed elsewhere. A woman on Twitter went into a panic spiral as she had planned to collect her elderly, housebound mother from Birmingham and bring her to London to celebrate Christmas; she had cancelled her mother's visits from a careworker, and the mother had no food in the house. Restaurants and cafes in the locked down areas were stuck with huge amounts of perishable food which they had expected to be able to sell this week. Even soup kitchens for homeless people were being told they would not be able to operate.
My personal feeling is that the relaxation of rules should never have been allowed in the first place. I think the government should have apologetically announced in November that Christmas celebrations would have to be limited to households and support bubbles (if vulnerable individuals were involved), travel would not be permitted except for essential work and caregiving, and that would be it. There would have been whinging and disappointment, but at least you wouldn't have been left with the disaster that's now unfolding. People got their hopes up, and are now crushed with despair. People have wasted money on food that will go uneaten, others will struggle to feed themselves, and there's utter chaos in terms of travel. Last night, all the major London railway stations were packed with people trying to get out before the midnight curfew, no doubt spreading COVID all around.
For me personally it makes no difference. I was planning to go to Australia for Christmas this year, but that obviously didn't happen (I'd decided by June that we were not going to go, and we didn't buy tickets). Normally if we don't go to Australia we would go to Germany to spend Christmas with Matthias's family, but I was cautious about that and we decided in October that wasn't a good idea (and didn't buy tickets). Germany announced Christmas restrictions a few weeks ago, so even if we had gone we would have had to quarantine and spend Christmas alone — and now all the countries in Europe are closing their borders to flights from the UK, so we wouldn't have made it anyway. So I had always been planning to spend Christmas in Cambridge with Matthias, and nothing has changed in that regard. But I feel the way the government has handled things has been unspeakably cruel and shambolic.
Cambridge is in the weird situation of being in Tier 2 restrictions (limits on groups indoors, but all shops still open and restaurants/cafes/bars open to in-person dining for household groups), but surrounded on all sides by other counties in the tough Tier 4 restrictions. Tier 2 is basically the way I've been living all year, whether it was mandated by the government or not: working from home, close to zero travel outside of Cambridge, exercise only alone and outdoors, a handful of sit-down meals in restaurants outdoors but only with Matthias — so my life is essentially unchanged. But the situation more broadly is dire.
Meanwhile, over in Australia, thanks to the monumentally selfish behaviour of a couple of people in Sydney, things are also tense. Australia basically had no cases for several months, after the tough restrictions in Victoria managed to get things under control. And then two people came back from overseas, got an exemption from the mandatory fourteen-day hotel quarantine so that they could quarantine at home and ... didn't quarantine. Instead they visited what appears to be every restaurant and cafe in the northern beaches, plus several supermarkets, public transport, and a Bing Lee hardware store ... while positive with COVID. I am livid.
It is rather surreal to watch the contrasting ways people react to things, though. Australia has closed all state borders and is catastrophising as a result of 20 cases. Meanwhile, in the UK, there are routinely 20,000 new cases per day and people just shrug.
Today is my birthday. As you can imagine, it's been a rather subdued affair — but given I'm not one for big group parties anyway, I haven't felt like I missed out on anything. Matthias and I went out for a sun-drenched walk to Grantchester (photoset here). I'm planning a nice dinner with wine and cocktails. And I'm going to spend the evening reading seasonally appropriate books: rereads of Iona Datt Sharma and Katherine Fabian's novella Sing for the Coming of the Longest Night (see my review of this book from last year; the story is basically a celebration of family in all its forms, a restoration of love and light and compassion to illuminate and banish the darkness), and Katherine Arden's Winternight trilogy. I think we could all do with stories that are about hope in the dark, kindness warming the icy heart of winter, and the fire that can be a candle flame.
My heart will not give up, my heart will not give out, my heart will not give in.
For those of you not aware, the UK government originally announced ridiculous plans to relax the semi-lockdown restrictions that were in place across the country, for five days on and around Christmas. They didn't relax things to a complete free-for-all, but the rules were such that up to three households could meet and celebrate Christmas indoors. They doggedly stuck to this for weeks on end, in spite of spiraling cases, catastrophic strain on the NHS, and pleas from epidemiologists not to allow it.
They were still sticking to this Christmas permissiveness as recently as Thursday, when Keir Starmer quite reasonably asked in Parliament whether this was at all sensible (at which point the government started raking him over the coals and saying things like 'Keir Starmer just wants to cancel Christmas!!!!!!!!'). Some schools in London wanted to revert to online classes for the last two days of the year, but were taken to court by the education minister and forced to stay physically open. (Of course, all these schools were in Labour council areas, and there was no attempt to sue Eton, which had also closed early.)
And then, yesterday afternoon, after leaking the news to a favoured journalist, the government did a u-turn, announced that almost all of the country would have to go into hard lockdown, travel would not be possible except for essential work or caregiving after midnight on Saturday night, and there would be no Christmas relaxation of rules after all.
People, as you can imagine, were spitting flames with fury. Many had made travel plans, organised enough food to feed largish groups, or paused regular grocery deliveries because they assumed they would be fed elsewhere. A woman on Twitter went into a panic spiral as she had planned to collect her elderly, housebound mother from Birmingham and bring her to London to celebrate Christmas; she had cancelled her mother's visits from a careworker, and the mother had no food in the house. Restaurants and cafes in the locked down areas were stuck with huge amounts of perishable food which they had expected to be able to sell this week. Even soup kitchens for homeless people were being told they would not be able to operate.
My personal feeling is that the relaxation of rules should never have been allowed in the first place. I think the government should have apologetically announced in November that Christmas celebrations would have to be limited to households and support bubbles (if vulnerable individuals were involved), travel would not be permitted except for essential work and caregiving, and that would be it. There would have been whinging and disappointment, but at least you wouldn't have been left with the disaster that's now unfolding. People got their hopes up, and are now crushed with despair. People have wasted money on food that will go uneaten, others will struggle to feed themselves, and there's utter chaos in terms of travel. Last night, all the major London railway stations were packed with people trying to get out before the midnight curfew, no doubt spreading COVID all around.
For me personally it makes no difference. I was planning to go to Australia for Christmas this year, but that obviously didn't happen (I'd decided by June that we were not going to go, and we didn't buy tickets). Normally if we don't go to Australia we would go to Germany to spend Christmas with Matthias's family, but I was cautious about that and we decided in October that wasn't a good idea (and didn't buy tickets). Germany announced Christmas restrictions a few weeks ago, so even if we had gone we would have had to quarantine and spend Christmas alone — and now all the countries in Europe are closing their borders to flights from the UK, so we wouldn't have made it anyway. So I had always been planning to spend Christmas in Cambridge with Matthias, and nothing has changed in that regard. But I feel the way the government has handled things has been unspeakably cruel and shambolic.
Cambridge is in the weird situation of being in Tier 2 restrictions (limits on groups indoors, but all shops still open and restaurants/cafes/bars open to in-person dining for household groups), but surrounded on all sides by other counties in the tough Tier 4 restrictions. Tier 2 is basically the way I've been living all year, whether it was mandated by the government or not: working from home, close to zero travel outside of Cambridge, exercise only alone and outdoors, a handful of sit-down meals in restaurants outdoors but only with Matthias — so my life is essentially unchanged. But the situation more broadly is dire.
Meanwhile, over in Australia, thanks to the monumentally selfish behaviour of a couple of people in Sydney, things are also tense. Australia basically had no cases for several months, after the tough restrictions in Victoria managed to get things under control. And then two people came back from overseas, got an exemption from the mandatory fourteen-day hotel quarantine so that they could quarantine at home and ... didn't quarantine. Instead they visited what appears to be every restaurant and cafe in the northern beaches, plus several supermarkets, public transport, and a Bing Lee hardware store ... while positive with COVID. I am livid.
It is rather surreal to watch the contrasting ways people react to things, though. Australia has closed all state borders and is catastrophising as a result of 20 cases. Meanwhile, in the UK, there are routinely 20,000 new cases per day and people just shrug.
Today is my birthday. As you can imagine, it's been a rather subdued affair — but given I'm not one for big group parties anyway, I haven't felt like I missed out on anything. Matthias and I went out for a sun-drenched walk to Grantchester (photoset here). I'm planning a nice dinner with wine and cocktails. And I'm going to spend the evening reading seasonally appropriate books: rereads of Iona Datt Sharma and Katherine Fabian's novella Sing for the Coming of the Longest Night (see my review of this book from last year; the story is basically a celebration of family in all its forms, a restoration of love and light and compassion to illuminate and banish the darkness), and Katherine Arden's Winternight trilogy. I think we could all do with stories that are about hope in the dark, kindness warming the icy heart of winter, and the fire that can be a candle flame.
My heart will not give up, my heart will not give out, my heart will not give in.
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Date: 2020-12-20 03:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-12-21 09:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-12-20 03:26 pm (UTC)Happy birthday though! It sounds like a perfect celebration to me. :D
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Date: 2020-12-21 09:30 am (UTC)Thanks for the birthday wishes.
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Date: 2020-12-20 03:34 pm (UTC)You're the second person who's mentioned this novella in the past day. I'm going to check it out.
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Date: 2020-12-21 09:31 am (UTC)I hope you enjoy the novella. It's gentle, and hopeful, and cozy, and exactly the right thing to read at this time of year.
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Date: 2020-12-20 04:09 pm (UTC)Also, I loved Winternight, though I thought the first book was both the best and the strongest.
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Date: 2020-12-21 09:32 am (UTC)I think I like the first book the best as well (although I love the third for ... shippy reasons). I think the difference is that the first one reads like a fairy tale, and the other two read like mythology, and Arden is better at the former than the latter.
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Date: 2020-12-21 11:35 am (UTC)I really liked it though, I still give away the first book as a present to a lot of people.
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Date: 2020-12-20 04:12 pm (UTC)I liked the Winternight trilogy! The second book was probably my favorite.
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Date: 2020-12-21 09:34 am (UTC)I love the Winternight trilogy. I'm nearly finished the first book, and I'm reminded again how wonderful the series is. I might make a winter reread an annual habit!
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Date: 2020-12-20 04:44 pm (UTC)We still have about a hundred dead each day here and it feels like that's barely mentioned in the news, äasdlkfäasd
Despite everything, happy birthday! May your next year be better than this one.
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Date: 2020-12-21 09:37 am (UTC)I think people here have become oblivious to the numbers of cases and deaths — the latter are in the hundreds every day, and it's like we've stopped noticing.
Thank you for the birthday wishes.
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Date: 2020-12-20 04:59 pm (UTC)Lovely photos, and happy birthday :)
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Date: 2020-12-21 09:39 am (UTC)Thanks for the birthday wishes.
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Date: 2020-12-20 05:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-12-21 09:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-12-20 05:14 pm (UTC)Happy birthday! Wine and cocktails with a nice dinner sounds great.
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Date: 2020-12-21 09:40 am (UTC)Thank you for the birthday wishes.
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Date: 2020-12-20 05:23 pm (UTC)Yeah, it's infuriating. My household had already decided to keep things very quiet and low-key for Christmas, and to not try to make use of the reduced restrictions (because they seemed far too risky to us - we're pretty risk averse to start with), but a number of family members are having to completely redo their plans and very upset about it.
Happy birthday, and I do love Sing for the Coming of the Longest Night -I might borrow your idea and reread it this evening. I plan to start reading The Dark Is Rising to my kids tomorrow, at least the chapters that take place on 21 December, and see if they want to keep going during the rest of the week.
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Date: 2020-12-21 09:44 am (UTC)Thank you for the birthday wishes.
The Dark Is Rising is one of my seasonal rereads at this time of year, too. I hope you and your kids are enjoying it! I used to love that Will Stanton and I basically shared a birthday.
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Date: 2020-12-20 06:13 pm (UTC)*hugs*
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Date: 2020-12-21 09:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-12-20 06:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-12-21 09:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-12-20 06:31 pm (UTC)That's not only incompetent but downright evil. My own country also managed to make a mess of those last weeks of school before Christmas, but at least no one got sued. :(
I'm so sorry you have to live with this government. And happy birthday - may this one be as lovely as possible and the next one much easier.
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Date: 2020-12-21 09:46 am (UTC)Thank you for the birthday wishes.
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Date: 2020-12-20 07:07 pm (UTC)It's bad enough there's this virus out there that's programmed to try to kill us all. And there are always going to be idiots like those two people, but there are usually supposed to be health laws -- state, federal, city, whatever -- to restrain them. And "unspeakably cruel and shambolic" sums up a whole lot of countries at this point, especially the UK and US.
But happy birthday, definitely! That is important too! And I think I read Longest Night last year on your rec, and enjoyed it very much.
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Date: 2020-12-21 09:47 am (UTC)Thanks for the birthday wishes. It may have been me recommending Longest Night — I first read it around this time last year.
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Date: 2020-12-20 08:25 pm (UTC)They've made a right dog's dinner out of it.
Things are bad enough here without hearing such disappointing news from home.
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Date: 2020-12-21 09:48 am (UTC)And yes, they have utterly messed things up in the most appalling way. It's disgraceful. But this is what people voted for. Votes have consequences.
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Date: 2020-12-20 10:50 pm (UTC)We're on a "stay-at-home advisory" through the end of the year. We'll see how much of a clusterfuck things are.
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Date: 2020-12-21 09:50 am (UTC)I hope you're able to stay safe. It sounds scary over there.
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Date: 2020-12-21 04:40 pm (UTC)It's scary as fuck, but I've been out a total of once this month and that's about the norm. And it's not really going to change. I'm going to get the vaccine, but they haven't done any research on how the vaccine reacts in immunosuppressed people. So it's entirely possible that the vaccine won't really work well for me since I may not have enough of an immune system to get a strong response to the vaccine. But the simple chance for some protection is better than absolutely no chance, y'know?
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Date: 2020-12-21 02:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-12-21 09:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-12-21 03:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-12-21 09:51 am (UTC)Thank you for the birthday wishes.
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Date: 2020-12-21 08:55 am (UTC)Belated happy birthday. *hugs*
I will probably buy and read Sharma's novella over the holidays, I love her writing, it sounds like what I really need. Thanks for mentioning it.
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Date: 2020-12-21 09:55 am (UTC)I hope you and your family are able to have some semblance of a nice Christmas, in spite of everything.
I hope your enjoy the novella! (I think Sharma uses 'they' pronouns, rather than she/her, though.)
Thank you for the birthday wishes.
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Date: 2020-12-21 10:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-12-21 10:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-12-21 09:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-12-21 09:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-12-21 11:43 am (UTC)The UK government's mismanagement is on a total different level though. I suppose there will be less calls for the state governments to be abolished considering all this - the COVID responses have been incredibly popular (government policies getting 90+ approval ratings?? a marvel).
I missed your rec of Sing for the Coming of the Longest Night - having just read Iona Datt Sharma's delightful novella, it was an instant treat for myself.
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Date: 2020-12-21 12:22 pm (UTC)I'm sorry to hear about your father's cancelled plans, as well, especially since the whole situation was so easily prevented, and yet people can't make the most basic sacrifices for their communities.
I'm glad to have been able to recommend the novella! I hope you like it.
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Date: 2020-12-21 12:41 pm (UTC)Hopefully he can make the trip early 2021.
And happy birthday too :)
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Date: 2020-12-21 11:56 am (UTC)Sorry about the UK, though.
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Date: 2020-12-21 12:19 pm (UTC)