Blog Post | January Blues

"Lots of people go mad in January." Karen Joy Fowler

As 2020 came to a close, a collective breath was held. We awaited the dawning of this new year with a minuscule glimmer of hope; but mostly trepidation. We peered around the corner, testing the water. Were the first days of 2021 going to bring us the much needed respite from the horrors of the previous year that we all so desperately craved? Would the continuous newsfeeds filled with death and misery suddenly stop? The short, and only answer, is no. Not. At. All.

Six days into the new year and an attempted coup took place in the land of the free. More recently, Poland has outright banned abortion, because god knows what chaos would ensue if women were given agency over their own bodies. The Brexit has so far turned out to be a resounding disaster which nobody saw coming, except that everybody actually did. 

Elon Musk became the world's richest person, overtaking Amazon's bully boss, Jeff Bezos, who only has $184 billion in the bank. Poor Jeff. Let's set up a crowd fund for him. The Coronavirus continues on it's quest to take out as many of us as possible. And who can blame it? Most people are terrible.

The rolling out of the highly anticipated Coronavirus vaccine has all but ground to a halt in Europe. Even the UK, under the leadership of Boris Johnson, a man who literally does not know the difference between his arse and his elbow, have, to date, managed to vaccinate over 5.8 million people. Germany, on the other hand, has struggled to give the jab to 2 million of its 80 million inhabitants. 

This has led the EU to declare the famous cliché "German efficiency" unusable, replacing it with the less positive sounding "German inefficiency caused by too much bureaucracy and too little centralised digital infrastructure." Doesn't quite roll off the tongue so easily, does it?

But there wasn't just bad news in January. Oh wait. Yes there was. The EU and the UK are having a stand-off over Coronavirus vaccine deliveries, the climate is still in crisis, kids are still relying on food banks and it seems that lockdown will never actually end. At least we all have the time to watch Schitt's Creek. A fantastic and aptly named TV Series starring the mum from Home Alone. Fingers crossed that February brings us some much needed peace.