2 minute read
GOLDEN HOUR
Change is gonna come. By Billie Gold
My mum always had this insane superstition that if she bought a diary or a calendar for the year ahead things would go terribly wrong. She thought that if she noted dates down anywhere rather than simply remembering them something would happen to change the course of the future, the superstitious butterfly effect if you will.
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So when the world went crazy last year, I got a call from my mum. “See I told you I shouldn’t have bought that diary, now look what’s happened.” What my mum effectively had done, was blame the entire pandemic on herself and a £1.99 notebook from WH Smith. A notion born out of paranoia and the unending need to take responsibility for problems beyond her control? Why yes of course, but I’ll be damned if I didn’t see a cute 2021 diary in a shop the other day and only dared side eye it...
When asked to write about what the future holds I quite honestly drew a blank, and then got terrified by the thought that the next year may be as uncertain as the last, but while drinking a gin and tonic and musing over the void that I saw before me I had some thoughts.
I doubt anyone is the same any more. We’ve lost people and careers all over the space of six months. There are countless indie films that’ll try to change your life by telling us that life has become an endless monotonous rat race, we scare ourselves by watching zombie films about virus outbreaks and baulk at the thought that everything we once knew has gone. But it’s actually happened. Perhaps not quite so extreme, but last year brought up deeper issues about how our lives are run as a whole than if we were able to go to the pub or not. This may actually be the first time that we’ve had to reassess literally everything. I mean for goodness sake I’ve heard of at least 10 couples that have broken up during the lockdowns simply because the person they send five hours a day with was a completely different person when they had to spend 24 hours a day with them.
I don’t like change as a rule but we’ve had no choice. I’ve reconnected with people who I swore were my enemy, I’ve done more for people even though my own problems were many over the past year than I ever thought I could, simply because I felt like a jerk for not being the friend or family that I could have been the whole time.
If I’ve learnt anything it’s that nothing is certain, but I hope that this year it doesn’t a take a pandemic for positive change to happen. Personally I’d rather have an important epiphany about my life sat in a pub over too many shots of tequila, than sitting in front of Netflix at home. I won’t buy a diary, just in case.
