Janus

As transitions go, I'm more interested in the solstice than in this arbitrary date ten days later but since it matters culturally I'll join everyone else in hoping that the 365 days we label '2021' are much kinder than those labelled '2020' have been.

We end 2020 with a vaccine which, a year ago, we had no idea we needed and for us in Britain we end our transition as associates of the EU. 'Britain' rather than 'the UK' because Northern Ireland retains some of the benefits of the EU and if they play their cards right they'll get more. I expect Scotland to join them just as soon as it can. Here in England we'll probably get the comeuppance we deserve for being the colonial shits we were for so long. How long d'you reckon our penance in the wastelands should last? Two hundred years? Three hundred?

The way I feel about it would be schadenfreude if I had the passport I should have pursued decades ago. I first went to live in mainland Europe six months after the UK joined the then European Economic Community but as there was not yet free movement of people I had to apply for a Carte de Séjour  giving me the right to stay. It was time-consuming and bureaucratic. Why, 47 years on, we should choose to go back to 'time-consuming and bureaucratic' is beyond me.

My extra, of the white cliffs of Dover eleven months ago, is unashamedly not a picture I took. Had I been there I'd have been too distressed to take it and looking at it now still makes me as upset as it did when it appeared.

For all sorts of reasons we can't shake hands any more but listen: I'm singing Alle Menschen werden Brüder at the top of my voice. There are millions of us but don't worry - we're two metres apart and we're singing across the sea.