My first Christmas in Swanvale Halt was a maelstrom in which I felt I had no idea what was happening, when of course I did. The low point came two-thirds of the way into the Churches Together Christmas Lunch when I had to shut myself in a toilet for ten minutes to regain the composure to carry on talking to people. Over subsequent years I got control of the whole process and paced events so that if anything did go wrong there was at least the space to put it right.
The trouble with Christmas 2020 is that, in that respect if no other, it felt like lurching back to 2009. Many things are not happening, but they are largely things like concerts and carol services which I must attend but which don't actually require that much input; the things which are happening are largely down to me. I was once again surrounded by a whirlpool of events whose outcome was completely uncertain.
For instance: our biggest service of the year, the Crib Service, can't happen so I thought we would have three mini-Crib Services instead, all very low-key and quiet. Low-key they may have been but the visuals were all run off my antique laptop and through an even older projector, and the music came out of my iPod (and iPod! imagine that), wired into the sound system. Normally the Crib Service is devised by a planning group and I and Marion usually come on to lead, or preach, or both; this year it was all down to me, the tech, and a lot of candles. Meanwhile two audio services had to be put together and the paper versions delivered to those who have no internet access, and communion taken to housebound parishioners who felt confident enough to receive it. There was just enough time to get it all done, provided nothing went wrong, and nothing, praise God, did.
Another element was that everyone had to book in for the services, lists had to be compiled, and seating plans worked out. In the end I needn't have bothered, as every service apart from the 8am on Christmas Day had gaps where people had signed up but not turned up. I was a bit furious at first after putting in so much effort and anxiety assembling the services, but as well as people simply forgetting to come which applied in a couple of cases, other absences arose from positive COVID tests, tests being awaited, nerves hitting in, and virus rampant in a child's year at school. It became clear as Christmas Eve wore on how the pandemic is cutting a swathe through our outlying clientele at the moment: ironically, I think elderly people living on their own are possibly less affected than anyone else, or so it seems as any rate.
How glorious it will be for this all to be past! The whole area is now in Tier Four so I had to zoom (but not Zoom) down to Dorset to see my family on Christmas Day afternoon, and hand over my niece's goldfish (at arm's length, obviously), which I nervously transported ninety-odd miles in a bag of water in a bucket. I photographed the sunset behind the towers of Wimborne Minster, the last view I will have of Dorset for quite some time to come.
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