An old pal and I met up for a Christmas walk. Plodding westward along the beach through the damp sand at dusk, our steps taking us closer to a spectacular orange sunset, we mulled over the decidedly unfestive subject of seasonal isolation.
“I’d always imagined,” my friend said, “that as we got older, relationships would deepen and life become somehow more vivid. On the contrary, however: as a single, self-employed person tripping into a seventh decade, it’s easy to feel increasingly alone.”
I observed that those feelings are readily exacerbated at this time of year.
“I’m turning into one of those people who phone the council about rubbish at the end of my street,” my friend added as we stopped by the shoreline to watch the winter light flare and then wane.
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Was it a feature of post-Covid life, we speculated, that we’d all gotten into the habit of staying put, of doing less? Had our ability to be spontaneous shrivelled up behind our face masks?
We walked on to the end of the beach, joined the pavement, skidded around on black ice for a vaguely perilous moment and then found our way to a bar. Inside, we clinked our gins, the icy glass numbing our barely thawed fingers.
“I’m spending my Saturday nights talking to the cat and putting my feet up to watch Strictly,” my pal said, glancing around at the unfamiliar surroundings. “Who’d have thought it, eh?”
As I listened, I remembered the two of us leaving a nightclub together in the 1980s, my bright red tights ripping under my feet because I’d lost my shoes.
It can be an isolating experience at this time of year to feel that you’ve failed to come up to the mark, failed to pass the ho-ho-ho test
Around us in the suburban bar, family groups were genially slumped at long tables, empty plates of carvery lunches at their elbows. Restless children in glittery clothes and shiny, uncomfortable-looking shoes were niggling and gnawing at parents who wanted to finish their pints and conversations.
“It’s a tough time of year to feel alone,” I reiterated.
“It’s always a tough time of year to feel alone,” came the reply.
A child in party clothes was sitting back in her chair, arms crossed over her angry little chest, kicking the underside of a table with her fancy Christmas footwear.
“Stop it, Jasmine!” her mother hissed.
“You stop it!” Jasmine retorted, with a fair whack of Yuletide brio.
“Families,” I said. “Every time I turn on the box, I see advertisements featuring rollickingly happy clans reunited for Christmas. It’s always the same cast of dewy-eyed mothers, gimlet-eyed grandfathers, benignly bearded emigre offspring and wise-looking collie dogs, sitting around a farmyard table eating bacon and sausages, the snow glistening beyond their frosted window panes.
“I’ve never had a Christmas like that,” I continued. “I’m usually banging my head off the press looking for the roasting pan and wishing the dead would show up for a slice of turkey.”
We left the bar, skated back to my house for dinner on the now truly treacherous pavements, to be greeted at the hall door by a smell of burning. I’d forgotten to take the roasted carrots and parsnips out of the oven. I’d even helpfully thrown some maple syrup over them, the sugary sauce intensifying the charring. We ate the least destroyed of the crop standing by the kitchen sink, and threw the rest into the bin, the burnt embers hitting the plastic with a thwack.
“I’m not looking for a solution,” my friend said, cutting up tomatoes to make bruschetta, because by now we were ready to eat the table legs. “I just want to acknowledge it, to say that loneliness exists.”
I know it’s a walking cliche, but you don’t always have to be alone to feel lonely. It can be an isolating experience at this time of year to feel that you’ve failed to come up to the mark, failed to pass the ho-ho-ho test. Christmas, with its narrative of familial joy, of togetherness, of luminous couples drifting through the tundra in their glad rags, can twist the newly sharpened carving knife.
We sat down to eat, raised a glass to enduring friendship, even while knowing that it might be months before we next saw each other.
This Christmas, I’m going to do nothing more than what I’ve been doing for the past number of years. I’m going to put on my warmest old clothes, walk the beach, then come home to light the stove; to cook slowly and eat late. And, somewhere along the way, I’ll raise a glass to absent friends.