When the Slovenian government declared an epidemic on 12 March
2020, I was simultaneously worried and enthusiastic. Would my income be
affected? Without a car and living five kilometres from the nearest (frankly
dire) supermarket, how would we manage to buy groceries? Public transport was
withdrawn and we were stranded in our little outpost in north-eastern Slovenia.
On the other hand, we had the luxury of space – our garden, the nearby woods,
and miles and miles of quiet lanes where we could step out for fresh air
without coming close to another person.
Without the distractions of going into the city, sitting in the
pub, and shopping trips to Austria, there’d be time to pick up abandoned
hobbies, to improve my German, to reduce the ever-growing pile of Nordic noir,
and to try some of the mouth-watering recipes in my vast collection of
cookbooks.
I needn’t have been concerned about struggling for work. Six
months earlier I’d decided to give up teaching and focus only on proofreading
and editing. It was a good decision: in late spring, when things began to open
up again, I passed on news of a teaching vacancy to an old colleague who told
me that he had struggled for work when all classes had been suspended and some
students didn’t want to participate in online learning.
If anything, I was being offered more work than ever. My plans
to read, cook, walk and correctly decline German pronouns finally fell by the
wayside. And now, on the brink of 2021, desperate for a brighter 2021 with a
relaxation of the restrictive measures to tackle the coronavirus, I look back
and wonder how 2020 can seem both tediously drawn out and frustratingly
fleeting.
At the end of March 2020 we were due to travel first to the UK
for a few days, and then to Sweden and Denmark for a month. We were hugely
disappointed when we had to cancel the trip. It wasn’t all bad news on the
travel front. We managed a couple of nights in Ljubljana in June, and when the
borders opened again, we enjoyed a fantastic long weekend in Sopron, Hungary.
In September, we had a “proper” holiday. Our trip started with a couple of
hectic days in Verona before spending a relaxing four nights on Lake Garda. We
rounded the holiday off with three nights in one of our favourite Italian
cities, Treviso, and a night in Trieste, where we explored a part of the city
that was previously unknown to us. I can’t say that 2020 didn’t have its
moments.
But what does 2021 have in store? What if there aren’t day trips
to Graz to eat dosa and buy fresh coriander and okra? What if, six months from
now, the pubs are still closed? No concerts? No Olympic Games?
Then every day will have to become a special occasion, marked in
a different way. Did you know that every 3 January (since 1996 admittedly) the
good people of Manitou Springs, Colorado fling a fruitcake as far as they can?
Well they do, and in the States they call it National Fruitcake Toss Day. And
I’m willing to wager that you had no idea that the second Wednesday of August
is World Calligraphy Day. There’s no shame in not knowing; I didn’t know that
either. Nobody told me. April 6? That’s Tartan Day. And 26 April is
International Intellectual Property Day.
The whole calendar is packed with reasons to rejoice. There’s
absolutely no reason for any day to be ordinary. And with that in mind, I will
live 2021 to the full by delving into awareness days and celebration days. I
will eat, read, and learn as the calendar directs me. I hope you’ll follow me,
dear reader, as I embark on my adventure. And if you know of any special days
that I should mark in my calendar, please leave a comment.
Happy new year!
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