As 2022 dawns, turn to an icily seasonal story to lift the spirits and transport the imagination
And so here we are: among the dark, blustery, not so cold days of between-Christmas-and-new-year. A time to say goodbye to 2021, the year everyone hoped would be better than 2020, and that wasn’t, really. The year many hoped would mean the end of the pandemic, though the one certainty of early 2022 is the Omicron variant.
This moment of the calendar – curiously inert for those whose work pauses at this time of the year – offers for many a precious kind of deep inactivity. This year, the British are not entering a prolonged and complete lockdown as we did when 2020 slipped into 2021, but still, in Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland, there are many restrictions on the extent to which people may gather together, and in England, those alert to the dangers are broadly following suit voluntarily. The time, in short, is one of retreat; for some, loneliness.