Annie woke from a doze as the front door slammed shut. -Ah, here she is. Fi bounced into the room with her usual restless energy. She wore ripped jeans, biker boots and a faded grey Slipknot tee shirt, a nose ring, five earrings in one ear, four in another. -And wearing enough eyeliner to keep the sodding makers in business for a year. She was such a pretty little girl. Ah well, maybe this is how girls do pretty nowadays.’ Fi put a copy of the Racing Post on the table beside Annie’s chair. ‘That all you got me?” ‘No, but don’t let mum find it, she’d fucking kill me.’ Fi rummaged in her rucksack and brought out a small bottle of vodka. ‘That’s my girl. Fetch us a glass from the sideboard, darlin’, and one for yourself unless you want to pretend you don’t drink. There’s something I’ve got to tell you.’ She’d woken up at four o'clock this morning, knowing what she wanted and that Fi and Susan, her daughter and Fi’s mum...
When I went into the village for a few things this morning the Salvation Army band was playing. They are part of the Christmas landscape in England, as much as tinsel, Santa and the annoying Christmas songs playing on repeat in every shop. And, like all expected things, they usually occupy only a small space in my consciousness. But this year I heard the music, saw winter sun glinting off silver instruments, the uniforms and the collection buckets with joyful awareness. Here was precious familiarity at the close of a year in which so much of the familiar is necessarily buried under Covid rules. The “normality” many people long to return to will not be coming back. This has been a traumatic year and trauma lays a demarcation line through your life, a distinct before and after. As we celebrated Christmas ...