1) Boris’s proposal for a bridge connecting us to Northern Ireland was ditched. No doubt he’s now in touch with moles to see if doing a tunnel on the cheap is more feasible.
2) The next big thing in fiction – The Omicron Variant – is tipped to become a bestseller, as soon as a Val McDermid can find a spare moment to bash it out.
3) Tweet of the day: birds have never been better fed or housed.
4) Visiting Cornwall or Glamorgan felt like going abroad. As indeed it was. Holidaying here showed that, with ferry, rail and landslide disruption, and the staggering cost of rental cottages, MacStaycations can be as exciting and exorbitant as heading to the Med. One downside: thanks to Brexit, hoteliers had to curtail opening hours because of staff shortages. Where’s Rees-Moggie when you most need him?
5) We expanded our vocabulary yet further: pingdemic, lockdown foot, boosters, headline stress disorder, Delta, Lateral Flow Test, Plague Island…
6) The storming of Capitol Hill showed that there were even scarier things afoot than a pandemic, some of them wearing horns. Do none of these bampots ever look in the mirror?
7) COP26 put Glasgow on the global map, as did an Antarctic glacier in Getz, named in its honour. In the run-up, rubbish piled in the city streets. Recycling some argued; dumping deplored others.
8) Zoom 2: we’ve got used to it at last. I have fond memories of crashing off line shortly before delivering a lecture, leaving an expectant audience of about five racked with disappointment. Now I’m more adept, I realise how much simpler it makes life: one minute having a conversation across the Atlantic, the next stacking the dishwasher.
9) Adele released her first album in six years, prompting one “music critic” to call her a “national institution”. Am I alone in thinking that’s what she sounds like at times?
10) Jason Leitch becomes a strong contender for the next First Minister. Or PM.
11) We shopped locally, small businesses boomed, and we wondered why we’d ever bothered going further afield.
12) Unable to jet off to warmer climes – most of us, anyway – we dug out old holiday photos, and relived sunnier days, thereby getting our money’s worth all over again.
13) From the dead, John Le Carre published a new novel, Silverview. Why didn’t he call it Posthumous?
14) We mastered the art of reading facial expressions between eyebrows and nostrils. Some folk also ‘talked’ with their hands. They’re called Italian.
15) The nation started to dig kitchen gardens, for when Brexit shortages really start to bite. Seven years hence you may harvest asparagus. Rarely has driving lorries seemed such an attractive career option.
16) We spent Christmas Day on our own, and discovered it wasn’t the end of the world.
17) Define ‘party’. Are, for example, the Tories a party, a social gathering or an after-work get together?
18) Dogs. Need I say more?
19) Soaring oil, gas and electricity prices led to discovering the joy of Aran jumpers, which are heavy as lead and, when wet, could anchor a battleship.
20) Some cruel commentators likened the first hours on air of GB News to the launch of the Titanic. I cannot possibly comment. Paisley-bred Andrew Neil, its star presenter, soon departed, leaving a void that many believed would be unfillable. Silly billies had obviously never heard of Nigel Farage.
21) It was revealed that the Beatles’ song almost went, “something in the way she moves/Attracts me like a pomegranate”.
22) Thanks to Crossrail’s strike, we discovered that Christmas is a moveable feast.
23) Was there a sorrier sight than Michael Gove, aka The Govestar, moving and shaking on his own in an Aberdeen nightclub? One thought of John Travolta cavorting with Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction. Then one parked it.
24) Dundee’s image was burnished, or tarnished, by Brian Cox’s portrayal in Succession of media mogul Logan Roy, a tougher nut than even Andrew Carnegie. Never was a four-lettered word starting with F said with such conviction.
25) Ian Rankin completed William McIlvanney’s novel, The Dark Remains. Long overdue, as librarians tend to say.
26) Keir Starmer finally seems to have found his mojo just as Bojo is losing his. Could he be a PM in waiting? Or just an acceptable alternative to Jeremy Corbyn?
27) The secret of how our garden furniture reaches us was revealed: via the Suez Canal.
28) Time was Jeremy Clarkson couldn’t tell a turnip from a Toyota. Now, thanks to his farming series, a warts and all portrait of life on Diddly Squat, his1000-acre plot near Chipping Norton, he has transformed views on farming. Who – as we watched him burn up the planet in big boys’ toys – would have thought they’d ever hear him say “wild flower meadow”?
29) Talking of Chipping Norton, word reaches me of a new board game called Where’s Davie? It was inspired by local resident David Cameron who was once Prime Minister but has of late not been seen in public. Could this possibly have anything to do with the Greensill lobbying scandal?
30) We turned to reading for comfort: children’s book sales rose 15% on 2019, and adult fiction 19%.
31) Not difficult now to guess neighbours’ age. All you need do is drop into the nearest vaccination centre.
32) The Wire was voted by BBC Culture the finest of the top 100 TV shows this century. Sense prevails.
33) Respect for teachers rocketed, as home-schooling highlighted how much we’ve forgotten over the years.
34) It was confirmed that going to bed between 10 and 11pm is the healthiest hour to retire. Where’s the fun in that?
35) What better phrase sums up our beleaguered era than “Jesus, Mary, Joseph and the wee donkey”? A gem from the last series of Line of Duty.
36) The Great Tapestry of Scotland opened in Galashiels attracting visitors from all over the planet, including even Hawick.
37) Against all odds Andy Murray kept coming back. Had he perchance been reading Samuel Beckett? “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”
Alternatively, he could take a tip from Emma Raducanu and revert to being 18.
38) We began to realise all the things we miss about the office, not least the long commute during which terrifying Mr Hyde morphs back into kindly Dr Jekyll.
39) Cafes, restaurants and pubs have never been cleaner. And not just because they don’t have any customers!
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