In this year of strange, one of the most strange things has been the lack of ceremony. Normally we’re cartwheeled from New Year to Christmas via back to schools, end of terms, birthdays, annual thises and celebratory thats plus a host of other unavoidable calendar signposts.
Without proper Halloween or the planning, packing, sunburn peeling routine of holidays, there have just been a lot of different days each remarkably like the one before.
How can it possibly be the season of moaning about premature tinselling when we haven’t had the season of chucking out rotten pumpkin or the season of booking the work festive bash before the good places are booked up yet? I’m just not calibrated for this.
In the interests of making Bonfire Night 2020 look a little less like the November 4th or November 6th, Boy Three and I headed up the nearest hill. We found the weather was just as confused and had turned out still and balmy giving us a front row view of all of the town’s fireworks and the rolls of gunpowder smoke lingering in the valley.
Of course, it goes without saying that I know some people’s days have been far from forgettable – marked by the grief, illness or other misery that I’ve been lucky enough to avoid.