On the Radio 4 weather forecast just now they chanced to mention that Tromso loses the sun today until the middle of January. For the previous hour we had been listening to the effects of being in Tier 3 following the end of Lockdown. It just feels that we are losing everything warm and bright until at least the middle of January, certainly Christmas as we would wish to celebrate it has sunk into the Polar darkness over the horizon. This is about the time I would normally start composing the Christmas Letter. Yes I am one of those culprits who annually assaults the attention of our dearest friends. I was very flattered to hear that one recipient of the Yuletide missive actually has been archiving them, but he is a historian who believes in the importance of primary source material. I usually avoid facts because they’re boring and inventories of grandchildren’s achievements. Anything deep, pious or philosophical is reserved for the last paragraph.
This year I can start with two good months but then what? I remember that there was a lot dreadful about 2019 and I assumed 2020 might somehow be an improvement. Now I can’t even remember what made 2019 dreadful. Today, like the citizens of Tromso, I mourn the loss of the simple things that bring joy, particularly the freedom to act spontaneously. It might be a hug with someone in the street, cuddling up closely with a grandchild on the settee, dropping into the pub and squeezing in on the bench with a group of acquaintances, pushing through festive crowds, welcoming family into the home, having coffee and cake somewhere while out walking and, catastrophically, breakfast out somewhere. Driving south on the A6 today we passed a sign to Youlgreave, except the ‘L’ was missing and it read You Greave. Which we do. We are grieving for lost friends, lost freedoms, lost entertainments, lost celebrations, lost community and we are surrounded by those who are grieving for lost family members, lost income, lost opportunities. If we need to mourn then it’s good that we should admit it.
Tromsoites have strategies for dealing with darkness and snow, like enormous treads on their snow tyres, very cheap electricity and lots of alcohol. They have a wonderful cathedral in which one can attend midnight concerts under the Northern Lights, which presumably Norwegians can afford. We attended one and I calculated each item in the programme cost us £7.
Today I don’t feel I have the strategies for the next dark months. If I sit in our sunroom for morning coffee at 11 am the sun sits just above the top of the windows. By the solstice it will be behind the beam, but then it will start to rise. It’s our own Stonehenge equivalent signalling the descent to the underworld and then the resurrection to Spring. Spring, when we are promised a vaccine and a return to “something approaching normality”. As we enter Advent we pause awaiting the Miracle.
Today we had another attempt at murmurating. On a morning of sunshine and cloud, of stillness and chilliness we walked across Middleton Moor. We ate our egg sandwiches overlooking Black Harry Gate and checked the BBC News website, our day as disturbed by the news as the scenery was by quarrying. By 3.30 we were ensconced upon a bank waiting for the starlings to roost. The cloud lifted like a tired eyelid and the sun glimmered on the tops of the trees. And then they came in in great swirling clouds, joined by more and more in a glorious symphony of movement. There were tens of thousands. Finally they all seemed to queue up and spiralled down to their reed beds like bath water down a plug hole.
It was Nature’s way of saying we can still stage miracles.