After the details of the EU-UK trade agreement had been published, I read that the EHIC card would be honoured as long as it was current but then was due to be replaced (details not yet worked out) So I went to look at our EHIC cards to ascertain when they were to expire only to discover that they had actually expired last September. By rather indirect means, I got onto the website that issues new EHIC cards and put in an application for Meg and myself – they may last as long as 5 years and, of course, are provided free of charge by the government. The issuing authority may take the view that if an application has been made before the deadline of 31st December 2020 and although it indicates that the application may take 10 days for the cards to be delivered, then we might prove lucky and get new ones. On the other hand, the government could take the view that any unfilled order by 1st January 2021 is void and refuse to fulfil our order. Having said that, I suspect the latter but we will have to wait and see. I went down to collect our newspapers by car to get back in time for the Andrew Marr show at 9 am only to find that the show was not on this morning.

After breakfast, we went on our normal walk to the park where it was quite busy with children and dogs as you might expect.On the way back we met with both of our sets of friends. One of the couples informed us that their son and daughter-in-law (I think I have this the right way round) has tested positive for COVID-19, as well as their two next-door neighbours so we really do get the impression that the virus is ‘moving ever closer’  Tomorrow morning, Meg and I may well to go down to the newly opened test centre and see if we can get an ‘on-the-spot’ test. In the meantime, we are determined to be very watchful in the next few weeks until we ourselves get vaccinated, perhaps towards the end of February. The local Arts Centre has also been converted into a vaccination centre so we are just waiting for our number to be called which, of course, will reflect the priorities by age-group ( I am in the 3rd category down according to the published criteria)

This afternoon, I had intended to spend some time betting more supplied of damson gin. I attempted to contact our close friends in Spain as I have done for the last day or so but to no avail. Then we received a telephone call from one of the nieces in Harrogate, N. Yorkshire, where we exchanged a lot of information about COVID-19 and how it was impinging upon various members of the family in Yorkshire. We are resolved to have some kind of ‘open house’ party in the Spring-Summer when the grip of the virus has lessened so that we can see the newest member of the family (now about 15 months old) as well as other family members.

As might be expected, a lot of attention is being paid to how EU-UK trade agreement was arrived at and what compromises had to be made and by whom. I m not sure whether the journalists had access to the full 1,426-page document before they began their analysis. The consensus view that has emerged so far is that we have a deal but an incredibly ‘thin’ deal (e.g. no services are included) which is near to a ‘no deal’ Brexit as it is possible to get. Many of our legislators are going to try and examine the deal in great detail before the one day debate next Wednesday and it seems very likely that, just like a Budget, that which seems OK at first sight, all kinds of little ‘nasties’ will emerge in the fullness of time. The New York Times has published a very good and objective analysis under the title ‘Brexit Deal Done, Britain Now Scrambles to see How it Will Work’ and their conclusion, at the end of the day, is given by the analyst called Kibasi who has concluded that ‘But the way it’ll play out is by damaging investment in the UK, so it’s a slow puncture, not a quick crash‘ Of course, to the ardent Brexiteers, the deal was never actually going to be about trade ‘per se’ because all they ever wanted was a dis-entanglement from the EU in order to regain ‘sovereignty’ whatever the economic cost to the nation.

Well, if there was such a thing as a typical Boxing Day then today was it. Meg and I were a little slow to get going this morning, having stayed up a little later than normal to watch a film about Maria Callas, the great 1960’s opera diva. Today was a bit colder and more blustery than yesterday but we were a little dismayed when we got to our normal newspaper shop to find it shut. So we trotted around the corner to pick up our Saturday newspapers from Waitrose only to find that closed as well. That was quite irritating because today would have been the first full day after the EU-UK trade agreement had been completed on Christmas Eve and we were anxious to see what the informed journalists had made of the deal. So we drank our coffee as usual in the park and resolved to go out and collect the newspapers by car. First, I made a trip to our local BP garage and managed to pick up a copy of the Guardian but not the Times. However, this was remedied by another car trip so I could walk down our local High Street where I found a newsagent that had copies of the Times. As it happens, I was particularly pleased to have secured copies of the newspapers today. The Times weekend magazine had devoted itself entirely to a review of the year in political cartoons by their award-winning cartoonist, Peter Brookes.  He has the facility to link together what has been happening on the political scene with other elements of popular culture. I will give you four examples of what I mean. The cover of the Times magazine has Boris Johnson masquerading as Vicky Pollard (the Little Britain character, played by Matt Lucas who as an irresponsible teenager will never accept the blame for any of her transgressions) The cartoon shows Boris Jonson in the guise of Vicky Pollard at the Downing Street press briefing. Where the podium is normally adorned with NHS slogans, now we have Vicky Pollard excuses such as ‘Yeah But’, ‘No But’ and ‘Yeah But’. In another cartoon, you have a make-believe film poster for the Good (portrayed by Richi Sunak), the Bad (played by Boris Johnson) and the Ugly (portrayed by Dominic Cummings). The American election is also brilliantly covered by showing Joe Biden at his desk in the Oval Office of the White House saying ‘Phew! I thought he’d never go! ‘ If you look carefully at the cartoon though, you can see a bulge in the curtains and the tip of a long red tie (belonging to Donald Trump) behind the desk. But my fourth example is one of a cartoon which I think is sheer brilliance and displays several jokes at once. The cartoon is as an advertisement for ‘Matt Hancock’s‘ half-hour in which the features of Matt Hancock have been cleverly morphed into those of Tony Hancock, the comedian who made ‘Hancock’s Half Hour‘ famous. Hancock is receiving an injection by a nurse who is saying ‘Just a little prick‘. In the body of the poster, there is a further text explaining ‘From the Blood Donor to the Guinea Pig‘ (Of course, the ‘blood donor’ is Tony Hancock’s most well-known and practically iconic sketch) Finally, across the right-hand corner of the cartoon is a little banner explaining ‘Live on TV’  (as Matt Hancock says he will be shown having the vaccine live on TV) This cartoon, as I have described it, combines at least five jokes into one – sheer brilliance!

In the afternoon, I engaged in that perennial exercise of removing sticky labels from my supply of damson gin bottles. The first fourteen have already been given away so I now need to prepare a second batch. Some labels float off very easily after the usual soaking but sometimes the wine manufacturers of those little 25 cl bottle that I particularly like to deploy reserve their toughest industrial glue for the front label. I find that this takes a combination of fingernails, a stainless steel scrubber, a brillo pad, and for stubborn case a little brass wire tool I have and a bottle of boiling water which, if dribbled on, softens the glue somewhat before being attacked by other implements. I hope to have everything in place to do this tomorrow.

The newspapers have had a preliminary chance to look at the EE-UK trade agreement but the full text is 1,246 pages and has only been published today – in time to be debated in Parliament on Wednesday, where Boris Johnson wants to have the whole thing debated and passed into law in one day. Needless to say, this is not enough time for proper scrutiny but of course, this was the idea all along and rather makes a mockery of the ‘supremacy’ of parliament. Already the fishing industry is crying out that Johnson has sold out and of course services, including the important financial services which are a dominant part of our economy, are not included in the trade agreement in any case.

Well, Christmas Day has arrived at last. I imagine that for many families around the country, Christmas Day in 2020 is to be enjoyed for itself but then got over with as quickly as possible. Bereft of family members, Christmas Day will seem a very strange experience for many families and some couples will be spending time along with their spouses for the first time in years – or ever. For Meg and I this is is not a particularly strange experience as we have spent quite a few Christmasses in each other’s sole company but we can imagine that it is a source of some heartache for many families. Knowing that we had to make a fairly early start this morning to get to church at 8.30 we did not want to oversleep and so so employed an additional alarm to make sure that we did not just turn over at 6.30 and go back to sleep. As the night had been particularly cold and we had several degrees of frost, we decided to line our stomachs with a good bowl of porridge before we set off for church at about 8.00am. The porridge strategy turned out to be a useful one as the church’s heating system has been out of commission for some weeks and this, coupled with an absence of hot bodies to warm it up over the weeks, meant that attending church was a pretty chilling experience. Of course, hymns are not allowed but we did hear Berlioz’s ‘A Shepherds lament’ which is a particular favourite of mine. On the way out of church, I did manage to smuggle a bottle of damson gin ready for the priest’s  ultimate enjoyment – I am going to remind him when we next meet face-to-face that I hope it doesn’t get it mixed up with communion wine (although I think, in an emergency such as a POW camp priest is allowed to used anything of alcoholic content to act as a substitute).  For Christmas dinner, Meg and I know what we like and we generally avoid turkey preferring to have some good topside of beef with a  good bottle of Rioja to wash it down. 

Christmas present opening time is always a source of pleasure and if we do it one present at a time it fills out most of the morning. I acquired four books which I know will keep me occupied for weeks – and was made a present of a fifth which was ‘All New Dad jokes’ which Meg has commandeered for most of the day. But fair exchange is no robbery because I have similarly requisitioned some classical music CD’s which I bought for Meg as a ‘stocking filler’. Actually, when I was in town a couple of weeks I happened to see in one of the charity shops that they were selling 5 classical CD’s for £1.00 (evidently, 20p each!) One of these proved to be absolutely superb. It was the classic recording of the three tenors (Carreras, Domingo and Pavarotti) in that concert recorded live at the Caracalla Baths in Rome in 1990 on the occasion of the World Cup held in Italy of year. This CD has 17 tracks altogether and each rendition is accompanied by the applause of an enthusiastic audience which really added to the sense of occasion. I played the whole CD at quite a loud volume which I would not normally have done if Meg and I had not been alone in the house. As our kitchen is 27′ long and the heritage Sony sound system we keep in the kitchen is hardly ever extended to its real capacities, I really indulged myself whilst I was preparing the Christmas dinner. As I generally do, I had already prepared some parsnips, carrots and sprouts the evening before and had them chilling in the fridge overnight. Then I prepared rather a super onion gravy, supplemented by the meat juices from the slow cooker receptacle in which the beef was cooked. Then came the job of par-boiling the parsnips and carrots before getting them plus roast potatoes plus Yorkshire puddings plus dinner plates into the oven at the right temperature and in the right sequence. I found myself actually working quite heard as I also had to fit in preparing the smoked salmon starters, getting the Rioja wine prepared and ensuring that all of the necessary sauces were on hand. No mishaps occurred, I am pleased to say (because there is quite a lot that could go wrong) so Meg and sat down to our starters at 1.30  precisely. Needless to say, we treated ourselves to another hearing of the ‘Three Tenors’ CD which had given me so much pleasure during the morning.

We had intended to attempt to get into contact with our ‘family’ (i.e. closest friend) in Spain at about 4.00 in the afternoon. After trying FaceTime, WhatsApp, Zoom, their mobile numbers and their landline – all with no reply – we had to give up on our attempt and hope that nothing untoward has happened. I only mention this because Laura’s last email indicated they were going to have a pretty miserable time isolated and cut off from the rest of the family when Christmas time is normally a time when they are all together! No doubt, we will get the whole story in the fullness of time.

We knew from the weather forecasts that today ought to have been cold, bright and clear – and so it turned out to be. In anticipation that some of our friends might not be otherwise occupied this Christmas Eve morning, we loaded up various bags with a supply of mince pies, oloroso sherry and some paper cups, and supplies (presents actually) of damson gin. We dropped a bottle of damson gin at some acquaintances round the corner and then knocked on the door of ‘close friends No. 1’ As it happened, they were both in so we made a present of the damson gin and then we arranged an impromptu party in the garage which was airy and windy whilst we could be socially distanced from each other. Then we really got dug into our mince pies and sherry-in-a-paper cup contemplating what a very strange year it had been and how we had had to make adaptations to our normal routines. Then another couple turned up to visit our mutual friends so we invited them to join the party so there we were at our maximum six. As it turned out, we shall see them in church tomorrow morning when we get there at 8.30 in the morning. Then having taken our leave of ‘close friends No. 1’ we knocked on the door of ‘close friend No. 2’ and fortunately they were in as well. Our friends put a little table in their porch so we had somewhere to place our comestibles so we repeated our little Christmas party experience all over again. Our friends just happened to have some of their own home-made damson gin as well as some that their daughter had donated to them (which was actually about two years old) So we seized the opportunity to taste and compare all three of the gins – and I was relieved to say that ours compared very favourably with the other two. By now, full of gin, sherry and mince pies we thought we had better stagger our way to the newsagents. As they had been the recipients of some of my gin the day before, we were favoured by a Christmas and some chocolate treats which we thought we would preserve until we got home. Then we got home very late but just before our son and daughter-in-law were going off to the hotel (French cuisine, very sophisticated) which they had managed to get booked into a few days ago. Fortunately, I had put a ham on my previous Waitrose order and we had acquired some ready-to-heat red cabbage so we managed to rustle up a meal in two shakes of a lamb’s tail as they say.  In contemplation of the morning’s events, we have to say that this was of the most impromptu but engaging series of encounters we have ever had!

In the afternoon, I realised that we needed to put our little crib in place and a few tinselly things that we scatter around pictures and the like (the tinsel I got into place in 11 minutes flat this year). Over the years, I have come to the view that the fewer bits of decorations we put around the house, the sooner they can put away on twelfth night – or whenever the deadline approaches when the Christmas tree is due for recycling at the local garden centre. But the major focus of this afternoon was catching up on the news of the trade deal that had eventually been struck with the EU.

The whole of this ‘just managing to get a deal done by Christmas Eve’ was actually tremendously stage-managed. I think it was fairly obvious that Boris Johnson was always going to a deal, or be close to a deal, the day before Christmas Eve. This way, all of the newspapers could say ‘A deal is imminent’ but nothing had been published yet which could be criticised. Some of the newspapers even participated in this ‘deception’ one of them obliging (almost at the suggestion of No. 10) with  a cartoon of Boris Johnson dressed up as Santa Claus, pushing ‘goodies’ in the form of a ‘done deal’ down a chimney, making sure that there were lots of union jacks (what else?) Of course, being an ex-journalist, Boris would have known that there would no newspapers published on Christmas Day and by the time any more newspapers did appear (on Boxing Day) people would have lots of other things on their mind (such as Tier 4 classifications) which would distract them from any criticisms of the deal. Although the (subservient) UK press will hail the deal as a ‘triumph’ for Boris Johnson, in the cold light of day it will emerge that the UK has made quite a lot of concessions because we never had a very strong hand to play. Eventually, when it is too late, we will get the full-bloodied analysis of what has been agreed in our name. If we haven’t left the EU, we could have claimed a large share of the 750 billion euro fund that the EU is putting together to cope with the effects of the pandemic. Enough said!

Today, the weather was terrible all day long with wind and squally showers which only intensified as the day progresses. However, paradoxically, we did not mind too much because as we had some Christmas presents to deliver, we had determined that we were going to take the car in any case. Our first port of call was, as usual, our newspaper shop and here I handed over a couple of bottles of our own recently bottled damson gin. I’m not sure if they have any alcoholic prohibitions in whichever faith they were raised but I am sure that there are some members of the family or friends who might appreciate the same. As it was raining heavily at the time, we rather had to dash in and not linger over Christmas pleasantries but this was the first of our missions successfully accomplished. The next venture was into our local Waitrose – we geared that we were going to be faced with a car-park full to overflowing and with a long queue to even get into the store. But fortune smiled favourably upon us because we found a parking space almost immediately and the store was not over-crowded. As I was the second customer along when the store opened two and a half years ago (on my birthday, as it happened) we have always had a special relationship with the staff of Waitrose who have often given little gifts of soon-to-be abandoned flowers or food. We have a tradition which goes back for two years now of buying the biggest box(es) of chocolates we can find and then donating them to the Waitrose staff restroom. We have a miniature easel upon which we place a favourite photo of Meg and myself (so that people know who is making them the present)  and a few words of appreciation updated year by year. This worked like a dream this year because the minute we entered the store, we encountered one of our favourite members of staff who had helped us in this venture before. She helped us choose the chocolates, took payment for them at the till and then whisked them off to the staff restroom. I think that in the past, they have assembled a few staff in front of this little display and then posted it to their own online staff bulletin so I hope that the same applies this year. We were also the happy recipients of the news that the Waitrose store coffee bar may be reopening in January/February. As this was such an important social hub for ourselves and for many others, naturally we hope that this will come to pass as they say. When we got home, we treated ourselves to the coffee we would have had in the park if we had ventured that far today and treated ourselves to  a (probably) calorie-bursting mince pie.

The weather forecast for tomorrow, Christmas Eve, is scheduled to be cold but dry, bright and sunny. If this proves to be the case when we wake up tomorrow, then we are going to fill our rucksack with some mince pies, a bottle of sherry and some paper cups and knock on the doors of some of our friends down the road. Then we may be able to have a series of impromptu but socially distanced Christmas ‘get-togethers’ which can take the place of that which we had intended to provide in our own house if COVID-19 had not intervened.

This afternoon, we treated ourself to watching the classic black and white film of Casablanca -although Meg and I had seen it several times before, I was still surprised by the twists and turns in the plot. Shot in black and white certainly added to the intensity of the drama and the emotions and forgetting exactly how it ended only added to our enjoyment.

The fairly dramatic news this afternoon was the announcement that yet another strain of COVID-19 had surfaced, with its probable origins in South Africa. Only two cases had so far appeared in the UK but the infectivity of this latest strain even exceeds that of the first variant. So the government has acted with a certain degree of speed and added several more areas to Tier 4, hoping to squash the latest variant. The government has said that emergence of a second variant of the virus is ‘highly concerning’ and, for this reason, millions more have been added to the existing Tier 4 in London and the South East. The new areas include Sussex, Oxfordshire, Suffolk, Hampshire, Cambridgeshire and Norfolk. Soon when most of the country is classified as Tier 4 then the whole concept of Tiers will break down and we might as well have one national lockdown. I think it is a fairly certain bet that we will be going into a full lockdown quite early on in the New Year in any case.

Finally, some sort of good news. It does appear that the EU and UK are edging towards a trade deal, perhaps to be settled sometime tomorrow. We are not quite there yet, but the indications coming from both sides is that many differences have been narrowed and negotiated and only a few more sticking points have got to be negotiated before a formal announcement tomorrow.

We knew there was quite a lot to get done today and we were particularly pleased to see our domestic help come and give us one quick ‘burst’ just before Christmas. Before we undertook our journey, we were having a conversation in the kitchen about the possibilities of Yogic Flying. I promised to do some investigation and saw some instances of Yogic Flying on the net. As illustrated in the ‘YouTube’ videos which I viewed, Yogic Flying consists of sitting cross-legged and then basically launching along the ground in a series of bunny hop type moves. I am sure it is excellent for your pelvic floor muscles which is how I think the conversation arose in the first place. Meg and I collected our papers and bumped into one of our friends who informed us that he and his wife had just tested negative for COVID-19 – because we were in a bit of hurry we didn’t get the full story why they needed to have a test in the first place. The park was teeming today (no children in school, quite a fine day, dogs to be exercised) but we managed to locate one empty park bench that was fortunately dry. We knew that time was pressing but even so on the way back home we saw an ambulance draw up next to the neighbour of one our friends. We knew that the gentleman involved had had a stroke a few months previously and had just spent another spell in hospital so we just hoped for the best, also chatting with other of our friends about what may have been happening to his neighbour. 

When I got home, I had a fly around to get ready for my Pilates class. Today I was going to play Santa Claus (a tradition going back for a few years now) but this was having to be organised in a completely different way owing to the COVID-19 crisis. I resolved to organise the logistics like this. Firstly, I pulled my red Santa Claus trousers underneath my normal ‘tracksuit bottom’. Similarly I donned a ‘Santa Claus’ red shirt and then wore my normal shirt over it. Then I had to transport by Santa Claus outer jacket + hat, five bottles damson gin and all of the accompanying Christmas cards which had to be rapidly written. I took down my Santa Claus ‘Ho, Ho, Ho‘ sack together with my Pilates gear within it by car when I parked on the Waitrose carpark and then walked along to my class. Cards were distributed each to another inside the class by people throwing them in their neighbour’s vicinity. Then we had our ‘normal’ Pilates class, a highlight of which is the 3-5 minutes at the end of our session where our tutor encourages some deep relaxation. Whilst my fellow classmates were deep into their relaxation (and presumably had their eyes shut) I busied myself in my corner off the room divesting myself of my track-suit bottom and shirt to reveal my Santa Claus gear underneath. All I now needed to do now was to pull on my Santa Claus outer robe, don my hat (and mask) and lie down for the remaining few seconds of the relaxation session. When they came round they observed ‘Santa Claus. in the far corner of the room, who then pranced round, distributing to each (and to the reception staff) their bottles of damson gin. The only problem on this occasion was that Santa only had to remember three words of which the first was ‘Ho’ but unfortunately, he kept forgetting the second and third words of his greeting. There was an almost universal feeling in the class that a full lockdown or something very similar was on the cards and therefore we might not be in a ‘live’ class together until Easter (although the ‘Zoom’ option is open for all of us)

Approximately 4,000 lorries are still waiting to get through the ports to get to Continental Europe. The French have suggested a solution which is to offer immediate transit for any lorry driver with a negative COVID-19 test – but the difficulty here is that the ‘gold standard’ test takes about 2-3 days for the results to be processed whereas the ‘lateral-flow’ test  will give a result in 15-20 minutes  but is regarded as less reliable. How this is to be resolved is not clear at this stage – there are some black rumours that the French are trying to indicate to the British what will happen with a ‘no deal’ Brexit. In the meanwhile, there are signs that a deal might be possible, although fisheries remains a great problem for both sides. There are suggestions that the talks might extend beyond the 1st January but No. 10 has firmly rebuffed any suggestions that this in the cards.

The latest COVID-19 figures are really frightful with 36,800 new infections in a day and nearly 700 deaths. Thee figures are as bad the country has yet experienced and there is a feeling that the worst is yet to come. It seems to be a racing certainty that more severe restrictions will be applied once we have Christmas out of the way. The Home Secretary (Priti Patel) was hinting that the country should get used to more severe lockdown conditions from  the New Year onwards – but other commentators are indicating that once we get Boxing Day out of the way then the government may act immediately. What seems particularly worrying is the more infectious variant of COVID-19 seems to have ‘escaped’ London and the South East and is now represented in all parts of the country.

Today is a day to which I have been looking forward for a long time! That is because it is the longest night/shortest day and after today, I can tell myself that it is getting lighter by about a minute a day during January. This might not seem much but I must say that as the years roll by, I do appreciate the fact that the days are lengthening, even if ever so slightly and we have the spring to which to look forward. Today was going to be of a ‘special day’ for reasons that I shall explain later so we decided to take the car into town and were fortunate indeed to get a car parking space. The combination of a wet Monday, Christmas only a few days away and the fact that the local authority has suspended normal car-parking charges (in an attempt to stimulate trade?) meant that that the car park was under severe pressure and we were fortunate to get a space.  Having collected our newspapers, we made our way along the High Street because it was one of those (rare) occasions when we needed to access an ATM to get some money out. Then the main purpose of our journey which was to visit the stationers to get a supply of the stick-on labels I particularly like in order to label my bottles of damson gin. As it happened they had a supply of the labels I like in stock and so I bought five packets of the same which ought to keep me going for this year and next. These labels carry the appellation  ‘Chateau Le Cerf‘ and then Bromsgrove, 2020.

Then it was time to start preparing the communal Christmas meal we were going to share with our son and daughter-in-law. The younger generation had generously supplied a magnificent leg of beef whilst my role was to prepare the vegetables. As I have the reputation of providing myself too many vegetables for the Christmas meal, I confined myself to roast potatoes, roast parsnips, carrots, peas, and broccoli. We treated ourselves as a pre-dinner drink to a Waitrose special gin which we might have bought for ourselves last year and somehow never got round to consuming. This was then followed by a rather nice Rioja so all in all we had a magnificent meal. Afterwards, we were treated to some absolutely stupendous ice-cream. Our daughter-in-law had been loaned an ice-cream maker because the whole contraption seemed a little difficult to put together. Nonetheless, we succeeded in getting it working and the overall results were a marvellous way to end the Christmas meal.

In the late afternoon, we ‘Zoomed‘ one of our Hampshire friends who actually lives in Oxfordshire but the postcode might just be Reading. Anyway, we were amazed to discover that our friend had suddenly found herself catapulted from Tier 2 to Tier 4 and this had made all kinds of re-arrangements necessary to make sure that the Christmas meal fell within the correct ‘boundaries’. As it happened we had both picked our damsons at approximately the same time (first week in September) and I had a prodigious quantity of fully ripe damsons this year (9.5 kilos which was approximately ten times as much as last year). So I finished up making about 16 litres of damson gin altogether this year. Now came the time for bottling and I bottled just sufficient for my Pilates class members and one or two friends down the road. This evening, I labelled up the bottles I had prepared and wrapped them in Christmas paper – a particularly fiddly job I have to say. But now all I have to do is to write a few Christmas cards and hunt out my Santa Claus outfit for my class tomorrow. However, everything has to be done in a ‘socially distanced’ way and I shall have to think hard about the logistics of tomorrow. Of course, Santa won’t get his customary Christmas kiss and hug which is one of the perks of the role at this time of year. (Incidentally, one of my ex-colleagues often wondered why the Santa Clauses whose knee he sat upon every year as a child had nicotine-stained fingers and habitually smelt of gin) One of the sights that I remember from the 1970s was the occasion when all of the Santa Clauses in the department stores along Oxford Street came out on strike and paraded in a long line, complete with placards, the length of Oxford Street.

The new strain of COVID-19 which appears highly infectious has caused countries all across Europe to close their borders to the UK. The resultant queues outside Dover are a foretaste of what may well happen when a Brexit ‘no deal’  occurs – there are already predictions of shortages of salad crops within days. In addition, Government scientific advisers have argued that a new national lockdown is urgently needed and have warned that inaction could cost tens of thousands of lives and risk an ‘economic, human and social disaster‘, with the new strain spreading across the UK and overseas. But on the brighter side, there are hints that a deal on fishing might now be on the cards…

We rather overslept this morning – or rather woke up at the normal time and then promptly went back to sleep again. Consequently, I had to rather race to throw my clothes on after a cat-lick wash in order to get the newspapers before our weekly dose of the Andrew Marr show. Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary was interviewed about the latest lockdown measures and he appeared to be showing the strain of the last few months, weeks and days. He did announce that he got up at 5.00am this morning and was defending the government line that they were only informed about the transmittability of the new variant COVID-19 on Friday afternoon. But in a question of ‘Who knew what? When?’ there is a certain degree of dissimulation going on. It was pretty evident to many observers that London and the South East were experiencing rates of virus increase before the data about the transmutability of the COVID-19 was drawn to their attention, so as we have to come to expect by now it does look as the government was again ‘behind’ the curve rather than ‘ahead’ of it.  

In the late morning, I started to prepare some of the bottles into which I am going to decant the damson gin which is ripe for bottling now, having been made over three months ago. Most of the bottles had already been cleaned up i.e. removed of labels but some had still be processed. I always remove all of the old labels and especially the glue that is often left behind. Some labels remove easily after a soaking in hot water whereas others are more problematic. The worst cases have to have my special treatment which is a dribble of boiling water to soften the glue, a bit of cream cleaner and some wire wool and then a lot of scrubbing – repeated several times. Then the bottles have to be sterilised – fortunately, this is quite easy using Boots sterilising fluid (used for babies bottles) and the bottle has to be filled with this diluted fluid for at least half an hour. Some of these preparations done, I then carried on to get our Sunday lunch (rather a light one this week as the family are having their Christmas meal tomorrow). Then I had a bit of a doze and a swift purview of the Sunday newspapers.

After lunch, the damson gin bottling started in earnest – although I do this every year, I still have to remind myself of the techniques I use. This year, everything worked quite smoothly. I used to some brand new dishcloths folded into about four to provide a good filtration medium. Then the liquor content of each Kilner jar has to be strained through the cloth into a wide-necked pyrex jar (this is the tricky part because you have to hold the straining jar on the one hand whilst pouring the Kilner jar with the other) One Kilner jar fills about 4-5 little 250cc bottles. The final real trick is to add the minutest quantity of concentrated almond oil essence into the top of each bottle but you only have to insert one or two drops no more into each bottle. Then the labels have to be prepared and I always have a few leftover from the year before but never quite enough so that is a quick trip into W H Smiths in the morning (I have a design I like to keep from one year to the next) I need about 4 bottles for friends down the road and five bottles for the Pilates class on Tuesday. The last-minute job tomorrow morning is to give them a quick wrap in Christmas paper ready for distribution – of leaving on the doorstep for those who are out.

The implications of the COVID-19 variant are still being assessed. and in some cases acted upon. The Health Secretary has admitted that the virus is ‘out of control’ in London and Southeast England. Many other European nations are rapidly putting bans of flight to and from the UK. Our screens showed some terrible scenes of train terminals jam-packed with people late on Saturday night as they ignored government advice and tried desperately to get out of the capital before the lockdown started at 12.00 midnight. As on commentator on the Andrew Marr show commented, these crowds of people, some of whom are probably incubating the virus, will be doing their bit to spread the virus right across the country. Another really worrying statistic is that some of the modelling suggests that the ‘R’ factor of the new strain might be 0.9 ‘extra’ to the underlying rate. As London had an R of about 1.1 then another 0.9 on top indicates why the government had to act, Christmas notwithstanding, to save the nation from a complete disaster.

Today seemed full of promise and we woke up to a bright blue sky and a modicum of pale sunshine.We walked down into town and as we went, we hand-delivered our Christmas cards to immediate friends and neighbours (about a dozen in total). We then picked up our newspapers (helpfully, kept in reserve for us behind the counter, which helpful when there are a lot of supplements). On the way down, we bumped into one of our ‘park’ friends for whom I had been looking out as I had been carrying round a Christmas card for her for days. Anyway we coincided and she gave us news of an impending eye operation that she was to have in the New Year – we hope that it doesn’t impede her on her mobility scooter upon which she whizzes around at great speed leaving us in the shade.

One of our most pleasant surprises was a Christmas card from our ex near-neighbours in Hampshire. We remember their children particularly well for when they were aged about eight and five they came round to introduce themselves to us. As their own grandparents lived some way away (in Devon) we became sort of ‘local’ grandparents to them and they used to pop in most days for a chat about this and that. Anyway, they are both now well grown up and have both acquired First Class Honours in their respective universities. As they were both working from home (and living at home) we wondered if we might organise a kind of video chat between the six of us so we can catch up on each other’s news (we have been in Bromsgrove for thirteen years now and a lot of water has flowed under the bridge)

Late on this afternoon, we were treated to the sight of Boris making a special announcement at 4pm. This was heavily trailed and as it turned out, we had the most sombre looking prime Minister announcing a new Tier (Tier 4) that was going to apply to London and much of the South East, as well as Portsmouth, much of Essex and Peterborough. Moreover,Christmas has been effectively cancelled as the previously announced ‘Christmas bubble‘ which had been scheduled for about five days had now been reduced on one i.e. Christmas Day itself. What has spooked the government particularly is that a variant of the COVID-19 virus is spreading much more rapidly than the original virus and according to some estimates could be up to 70% more transmissible than the original strain of the disease. So all of London and much of the South East is now subject to, in effect, an almost complete lockdown. Every one is encouraged to work from home where possible. It means people in a swathe of the south-east and east England and London will not be able to mix with other households at all over Christmas. A stay-at-home message will be enshrined in law, and non-essential shops, as well as indoor leisure and entertainment venues, will close. Across the rest of the country, plans for five-day Christmas bubbles of up to three households have been dramatically scaled back. The rules will now only cover Christmas day in England, with Johnson urging all gatherings to be kept short and small.

As one might expect, these new restrictions have produced a massive backlash from the right wing of the Conservative party. They were already deeply unhappy about the size of the areas to be placed in Tier 3 and now these are in Tier 4. One argument being heard is that as Parliament originally approved all the Christmas arrangements in a parliamentary vote, only Parliament can approve the new arrangements in a new vote. However, the restrictions come into force at midnight tonight and a recall of Parliament might take several days, so this is probably a forlorn hope. But Parliament probably needs to be recalled if there is going to be legislation to push through a new (but as yet, not forthcoming) new trade agreement with the EU. It does look as Boris Johnson’s claim to fame night be ‘The Prime Minister who cancelled Christmas‘ To my mind, three interesting questions arise from today’s statement. Firstly, I have to say that the government has acted correctly and there was probably no alternative given the extremely rapid transmission of the new variant of COVID-19. A second question, though, is how many people will obey and how many will openly flout the government (incidentally not just putting themselves at risk but potentially the rest of the country) And finally, will the mood of the Tory MP’s be such that they actually want to ditch Boris? Incidentally, I think that this plays into the hands of Boris Johnson walking away without a deal with the EU as it might just save his skin with the rest off the Tory party. What a mess the country will be in within a fortnight if we have a no-deal Brexit, a massive economic crisis and a raging out-of-control pandemic!

When we set off for our walk today, the weather seemed somewhat blustery and with a little bit of rain threatening, but nothing we thought to trouble us unduly. So we picked up our newspapers and headed for the park and that is when the heavens opened.We decided that discretion was the better part of valour and thought we would head towards the bandstand. It was at this point, we discovered to our dismay that we had left our (exceedingly precious) little portable folding stool somewhere. When we got to the newsagents, fortunately a public-spirited gentleman had found our stool leaning against the window and had handed it to the shopkeeper who promptly returned it to us. The rain shower was really intensifying at this point so we trudged back to the park, drank our coffee and made our weary route home, squelching with every step. Needless to say, we had to rip off several layers of our clothing the minute we got inside the house to get ourselves dried out.

I have been feeling pretty tired this morning but with the remainder of the Christmas cards to be processed, when I woke up in the middle of the night I decided to attack the remaining pile.To cut a long story short, I stayed up for several hours to get the rest of the cards done (about 45 in total, leaving aside about a dozen for our immediate neighbours and friends which will get hand delivered) The bulk of the cards I took to the post office (now housed in W H Smiths!) to ensure they got posted – somehow I dod not trust the traditional red letter boxes which are often full to overflowing at this time of the year. So having got home and dried out, I set about preparing the risotto which I typically cook on a Friday. This was absolutely thrown together in a hurry  but was still enjoyed by Meg and myself (as well as our domestic help who is quite partial to a bit of my risotto and has even copied the recipe herself).

The COVID news tonight does not bring any good news – quite the reverse. The ‘R’ rate now stands at about 1.1-1.2 and the rate seems to be on the increase in the South of England. About two-thirds of the population are now living under Tier 3 conditions and there is quite a lot of concern about what may happen over the festive period. Whilst some parts of the population will evidently try and maintain the spirit of the existing semi-lockdown conditions, others will no doubt go a bit wild after months of restrictions. The Americans found that they had quite a spike after their Thanksgiving celebrations and some medical scientists fear that after the festivities, we will see a similar spike in just about a month’s time, coinciding with the period when the winter pressures on the NHS are at their worst. Some hospitals are already near to their capacity already and we have to remind ourselves that we are ‘only’ in mid-December and not mid-January or February.

We have one week left before the Christmas festivities start in earnest. We are going to have a family ‘Christmas meal’ next Monday, no doubt being a little socially distanced from each other. Some of the official advice seems to indicate that one should make every effort to allow any potential virus to disperse e.g. by having good ventilation and all of the doors and windows open. How far we go down this road remains to be seen -for example if two people not in the same ‘bubble’ are travelling in a car then the passenger should be on the opposite side of the car to the driver on the back seat with the windows open.

I sort of look forward to Christmas but only in the sense that once one gets past December 21st, then the shortest day has passed and we can expect it to be getting lighter by about 1 minute or so a day. Christmas occasionally has some good films on offer – for example last night we saw Hardy’s ‘Far from the Madding Crowd‘ which Meg studied for ‘A’-level. It was a version we had seen before but well worth watching again with superb cinematography. Meg and I look forward to an opera being broadcast but there is generally only about one in the whole of the Christmas period and sometimes not even that. On the other hand, Radio 4 often broadcasts some excellent archive material which is well worth a listen.