The End of 2020

Someone once described a year of her life as an "annus horribilis." I think we can all agree that 2020 has been a global "stercore anno" - a total shitshow of a year.

However when I was suffering from depression in years gone by I kept a journal of daily "good things" - a habit I've tried to continue since I recovered whether I'm feeling naturally cheery or having a down day.

It would be very easy to write 2020 off as a Bad Year and dismiss it to the annals of history but that would be to deny any individual moments of joy that found their way in to the midst. Here are some of the highlights.

January

For Team Gibson the year began in Ireland at our family home in Donegal. As it was our first Hogmanay without my grandparents, we'd decided to join my parents for the second week of the festive holidays. New Year's Day was spent on the beach with our dog walking in the cool sunshine out to a little tidal island. This was followed by dinner at a lovely restaurant which the boys thought was very posh indeed.

My birthday is in the middle of January and I'm fortunate that Andrew & I always get babysitters so we can go away for the weekend. This year we went to Edinburgh, drank like fish and ate like royalty. It was perfect.

February

As a family we spent most of February going for walks or having pancakes at our favourite cafe. I was enjoying my jogging but added yoga to help my old bones. Andrew & I headed to Dumfries House for a magical Valentine's Day evening tour followed by a meal in the library - not something we'd normally do but it was my Gran's fifth anniversary and this felt like a fitting way to spend it.

March

This is when it started to go a bit pear-shaped. It started well enough - another family walk, dinner with my Uncle George (who could have known it would be the last time any of us saw him this year?) and a Little Mix tribute gig with M2 and our friends. The first time I really started to feel like something was wrong was at an awards ceremony (my brother was nominated for his youth work, proud sis) and some of the speakers and guests couldn't attend. I met Jane McCarry (Isa from Still Game) in the Ladies' and we made a joke about all singing Happy Birthday while we washed our hands. The atmosphere was a bit odd.

Andrew & I chose not to go to a musical in the Kings Theatre the following weekend as we didn't fancy sitting in a room with a few thousand other people. By the next weekend, the schools had closed and I'd been told I'd be out of a job when my contract ended on 31st March. Looking back it all happened quite quickly but at the time it felt like it lasted a lot longer. From the first case in Scotland to losing my job, it was only a couple of weeks.

The first week of remote learning for the kids went really smoothly - I had planned the days so they wouldn't be on screens the whole time, we had lots of fun joining in with the rainbow drawings, chalking the pavements, clapping the NHS and just generally spent that first week of Lockdown trying to make life as close to school holidays while still doing school work - Andrew was working from home too, so really it wasn't normal at all, but we had fun trying.

April

The second week of Lockdown didn't go quite as smoothly as I developed Covid-like symptoms and had to stay in bed for a while. The Easter holidays gave me time to recover (although we should have been on holiday in Ireland) and we went back to remote learning in earnest. The weather really took a turn for the better at this stage so lots of outdoor learning began. How to make bubble mix, build your own volcano, make a parachute for an egg and lots of time on scooters and the go-kart our neighbours kindly gave the boys. I'd been making "Aladdin says..." videos since the start of Lockdown and his daily wisdom seemed to really strike a chord, but it also helped encourage me to get back out after feeling poorly - I needed to do activities with the kids to add content to the videos! Sadly we were still unable to travel anywhere to find such activities, so we really got to know the pavement of the Kilwinning Road very well indeed. So much so that the boys decided it was far too messy and asked me to purchase litter pickers. We cleaned a kilometre of pavement and grass verge and filled TWO binbags! They're good kids 💙

May

The first thing I did in May was crop everyone's hair - both M&Ms and Andrew - with my new clippers! Baldies all round. Did anyone not have a Lockdown haircut? This was also the month of barbecues and baking. If we weren't outside eating grilled food we were inside eating cake, bread and scones! M2 and his Gran also went a bit jigsaw-daft at this stage, I think they were completing one every day for a while. Lots of long-delayed projects started to get ticked off, including painting the patio furniture, making M2's photo wall, gutting our bedroom of old paperwork and clothes that are too big for me (woohoo!) and emptying the loft. The end of May saw a slight easing of restrictions and we were finally able to visit Andrew's parents - in the garden at a distance of 2 metres. Progress!

June

I began making face masks for our household as we heard rumours that shops and cafes might begin to reopen. The travel restrictions also lifted at this point, which saw our tiny cul-de-sac overwhelmed with visitors to the local walking route. Nothing was quite back to "normal" yet!

We visited our goddaughter for her birthday and had a little picnic in the garden, we spent time in my brother's garden watching the kids play, we took our picnic chairs to the beach and watched the sunset - it did feel like we were able to get out a little more... At least, our picnic chairs were getting used!

Andrew's birthday at the end of June was the most we'd had family together all year, as everyone came over for a distanced garden party. I ordered afternoon tea from Macs (the soft-play in Dalry, highly recommend), the boys decorated the front of the house and we all sat for ages enjoying the sunshine.

July

We should have been in Florida. Phase Two began and we started to believe we were heading back to normality. I ventured into shops with my new face masks, I even took the train up to Glasgow to give blood. We took a walk round the Blair Estate with my brother's family and kids were now allowed to hug people - M2 breathed a sigh of relief! The first hug with Andrew's parents was a very emotional day. We started to venture further afield in our search for walking spots and although nothing quite beat the local beach we did enjoy trips to Helensburgh, Loch Lomond and even had a camping holiday in Perthshire. We made it home in time for my niece's birthday which was held in accordance with whatever the guidelines were at the time - who knows!

August

To compensate for months of remote learning, it was announced that schools would be returning early, so a trip to Blair Drummond Safari with my brother's family and a date night out for dinner were squeezed in before the kids and Andrew went back to school. Waiting for new jobs to be advertised, I set about making more masks, tidying our bedroom some more, eating healthy and getting fitter (I'll never know whether I had Covid in April or not, but whatever I had left me breathless for months!) We wrung out the last of the summer weather with some more barbecues and outdoor meals and I relished some time babysitting my niece while everyone else was at school or work. We were incredibly lucky that my parents' Ruby wedding fell into this window of near-normal and we got out to celebrate as a family before the end of August.

September

The Glasgow Kiltwalk was postponed from April to September and also went virtual (as so many things did this year.) Although I'd signed up to complete the 10K "in person" the virtual walk was extended over a three-day weekend to give participants flexibility, so I chose to do 20K instead. Most of September saw me preparing for this by walking Aladdin in multiple places - the park, the beach, the route I'd be using for the walk. Needless to say there were no complaints from the dog, although he did have a tendency to disrupt my yoga practice on the floor! We were also very lucky to celebrate my nephew's birthday before the new restrictions began and this gave us a great laugh attempting the VR headset in their front room. Bake Off was back and M2's dance class returned in September too - one more step towards normal, or so we thought! Who knew how much we'd need that winter TV schedule in the coming months.

October

Andrew and I managed to sneak away for a couple of nights on Arran at the start of this month. Coming back from that, I decided the kids needed something to look forward to as it became obvious there would be more tightening of restrictions in the weeks ahead. So we went a bit mad decorating for Halloween!

We teamed up with my brother's family again for a trip to the safari park, this time for pumpkin picking. We took the boys to Dumfries House for a lovely autumnal walk then tootled down to Alloway which was looking very picturesque with lovely yellow leaves everywhere.

October also saw our goddaughter's dad being baptised into the church - very fortunate to be able to celebrate with them albeit a more subdued affair than they had planned.

The end of October was also when I was offered a new contract, although it would take a few weeks for all the paperwork to go through.

November

Usually a very busy month with lots of birthdays, this November felt somewhat quiet. As I waited to start my new job, I took Aladdin on lots of walks (again, no complaints from him) and prepared for the first proper Lockdown birthdays - no visitors allowed for the M&Ms parties, so we used video calls to best effect. I baked a Ms Pacman cake for Matthew and a jelly cake for Michael (normal sponge, but jelly topping instead of icing.) We whisked the boys away to Arran for a couple of days - as we would normally have spent a fortune on parties we spent the weekend in the hot tub, making s'mores, swimming and playing games. While we were away, the US presidential election was (finally) called for Joe Biden, so M1 took great delight in singing "goodbye to Trump" that evening! November brought more celebrations in the form of Scotland qualifying for a football competition for the first time in 22 years. A few tears were shed, both during and after the game - we never make it easy! M2 and I spent most of November watching TV - Little Mix The Search and Strictly Come Dancing - while dressed to the nines with makeup and hair done (both of us) because why not? That winter TV really saw us through a long month. Thank goodness for Bake Off, The Mandalorian and Strictly. This was also the first November ever in which we put up our Christmas tree - it's never happened before and hopefully it'll never happen again, but this was definitely a year for exceptions.

December

It's really been a strange one. I've done everything I could to make this a very festive end to the oddest year of our lives. But I also started back at work in the most unusual possible circumstances. As many countries around the world went back into some form of Lockdown we spent Christmas without all of our usual people. All schools have tried to create festive activities that can be held without visitors in school and fair play to them, but now who knows what we'll face when the staff return to schools next week.

The M&Ms and Aladdin have had a good Christmas.

Overall, this blog/diary entry shows that there were a lot of good times for us in 2020. As we sit in the "Crimbo Limbo" I've done a lot of thinking and I honestly don't know what to expect from 2021. I hope the vaccine prevents the spread and allows the most vulnerable to be protected while life returns to a version of normal. I hope we'll be able to go to Florida for our rescheduled holiday. I hope Andrew & I get our trip to Italy for our 10th wedding anniversary in April. I hope one of us gets back to Ireland to check on the house which was left in March with the expectation that we'd be there for our trip at Easter that didn't happen.

I have a tattoo on my right foot which reads "Hope over fear" - I got it to remind me that I've always beaten my depression or low moods by letting my choices be guided by my hopes rather than my fears. Therefore I choose to go into 2021 hoping for all of the above but fully grateful that even in the hardest parts of this year we found joy. I know we will find plenty to be grateful for no matter what 2021 brings.

Happy Hogmanay to you all and a very Happy New Year when it comes.

FG xx