Happy, Brexity New Year?

 

          This year’s Christmas celebrations may have been covid-constrained for most households but, for ours, it was almost as normal: we don’t celebrate it, preferring instead to take refuge in some city, preferably Mediterranean, where our anonymity precludes participation or having to justify our “Bah, humbug!” proclivity. The difference this year was that we holed up at our new home in Plymouth, where we know nobody other than a few ancient relatives of mine, who are too vulnerable to consort with under the circumstances. But whether you embrace the traditions or not, the festive period is a time when ‘business-as-usual’ is on hold, leaving the field open for the pursuit of leisure activities or, if you are so inclined, plain old lassitude. For me, because we are still settling in to the new flat, ‘tis the season of DIY projects. Now, I like to keep a healthy balance of activities, manual and intellectual, but I feel the former are currently dominant and, worse, hanging about the place in various stages of incompletion. As I write, it is New Year’s Eve, so perhaps the time is ripe for a resolution, along the lines of “Finish the Work In Progress”?

          But, Janus-like, the spirit of New Year’s Eve contemplates both past and future which, to my mind is not just 2020 versus 2021 but my whole lifespan – and, considering I have not much of it left, any forward resolutions are easily side-lined by bouts of nostalgia, more especially now that I have ended up in the city where much of my youth was squandered. Yesterday, we drove the 22 miles to Looe and went for a wintry hike, but all the while I thought of the time when, at the age of fifteen or so, my friend and I borrowed a couple of bikes and cycled there – just to escape for a while from our boarding school. It was a long day, considering the hilly terrain, our lack of cycling prowess and the fact that one of the pedals snapped off my bike on the return journey. Of Looe itself, I remember nothing. Other places, however, are seared into memory one way or another. In the days before Christmas, my partner and I volunteered to help distribute food packages to needy households. We loaded the van and were randomly assigned a delivery route that took us on a tour of streets where various members of my father’s family had lived, one house in particular being aunt Beryl’s former residence, where my cousin and I bonded as children. The family all moved on eventually, but the houses and streets still resonate in my being.

          Back to the future, however, and this time the “Happy New Year” greeting really does hold some specific promise of joy for everyone, the prospect of vaccination against corona virus. But today is also the eve of Brexit and, while I have plenty to look forward to personally, it does pall in the light of our leaving the EU at midnight. Call me a remoaner if you will, but the narrowly won referendum was the worst possible way of determining the future of Britain. The Leave campaign played its hand of jingoistic nonsense about ‘sovereignty’ and ‘taking back control of our borders’ to masterly effect, but this will turn out to be a disastrous act of national self-harm. The world’s future will be determined by the two bullying superpowers, the USA and China. Britain, at best, will have a diminishing presence as a middle-ranking nation, obliged to align itself with one or other of the bullies, having shunned the sensible option of teaming-up with a massive European economy that stands a chance, at least, of asserting liberal values in the face of populist autocracy. My hope is that, within a decade, Britain will be begging to be let back in. After all, human undertakings are never concluded; their natural and permanent status is ‘work in progress’ – in the light of which those unfinished DIY jobs begin to weigh less upon my mind.