Happy Christmas from a non-smirking blonde

(We've had quite enough of smirking blondes)

Whoosh. That’s what seems to have happened to this year. Where the hell has it gone?

It’s now three months since Liz Truss and I both hit the ground running. She had said she would if Tory party members voted her in, and they did, and she did. She put a rocket up the bottom of the country, blew up the economy, burnt £30 billion and danced off with an annual allowance of £115,000. After 45 days in office.

I, on the other hand, had not planned to hit anything. But when I went for a run, three days after that teeny weeny “mini budget”, I tripped on a paving stone, broke one knee, damaged the ligaments in the other knee and injured the scaphoid in my left hand. On my cab rides to the hospital, I would gaze out of the window at the people striding along and think: how do you do that? That thing when you put one foot in front of the other as if what you were doing was as easy as breathing?

I have noticed, or been reminded, that the world looks different when you are in pain. When a trip to the bathroom seems like scaling the Khumbu Icefall on Everest, even when you have access to free healthcare and crutches and (eventually) physiotherapy, it’s almost unbearable to hear about people with terrible injuries lying on floors in hospitals with no power. It should make you feel grateful, and it sort of does, but it also makes you want to howl at the sadness of it all.

I have spent quite a lot of this autumn wanting to howl at the sadness of it all. Perhaps that’s why I haven’t been writing this newsletter. When I watched one smirking blonde grin as he left Downing Street and another smirking blonde grin as she arrived there, and also when she left, I didn’t laugh. I just felt sad that the last two people to have held the UK’s greatest office of state seem to have thought it was a game.

The first was happy to remove our right to live and work in 27 countries so he could be “world king”. The second was happy to treat us all as lab rats in her “bold” experiment in libertarian economics. “At least”, she apparently said to an aide when she left, “I got to be prime minister”. Well, that’s alright then. And a huge comfort, no doubt, to all those who lost their homes.

“You don’t,” sang Joni Mitchell in “Big Yellow Taxi”, “know what you’ve got/ Till it’s gone”. Too right. On 23rd February, there was no war in Europe. On 24th February, the day of my book launch (and the happiest day of my year) that changed. In the past 10 months, according to estimates by the US government, more than 200,000 soldiers have been wounded or killed in Ukraine. About 17,000 civilians have been murdered. And that’s without the transcripts of phone calls from Russian girlfriends telling their soldier boyfriends to go ahead and rape and torture as many Ukrainian women as they like.

It’s true that these things happen all over the world, all the time. It’s true that we probably care more this time because these are people in Europe and because many of us have met people who have fled the war and know people who have taken them in.

It’s also true that we probably follow it all less closely than we did 10 months ago. I have read so many pieces by men telling me why Ukraine will win this war. I’ve read quite a few by men telling me it will lose it. I don’t know where they find their confidence. We do know that Putin is happy to throw every young man in Russia into his giant meat grinder to save his face.  We know that people throughout Europe are having to choose between eating and heating. As for anything else, your guess is as good as mine.

When I see Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s pale face as he speaks of his country’s fight for survival, I see the pain in his eyes. I also think: how amazing that a human can be like this. That a human can see other humans at their brutal worst, but stay calm and steadfast and utterly determined to ensure that evil does not win.

I cannot begin to imagine the strength and discipline that takes.  

This has been a tough year for so many. We are not in a country at war, but it has sometimes felt as if our politicians are trying to stoke some kind of war. It has felt fractious and bad-tempered and small. Little England Tories thrusting their fantasies upon a nation that seems set for decline. That, by the way, seems to be our big new talent. We’re really, really good at decline.

But we are not our leaders. More than 150,000 Brits signed up to host Ukrainian refugees. I’m inspired by them. I’m inspired by Zelenskiy. I’m inspired by some of the wonderful books I’ve read this year, some of the people I’ve met and some of the plays I’ve seen. I spent the whole of June on a solo road trip round Sweden. I saw so much beauty and met so much kindness. And it remains a treat to go anywhere, or meet anyone at all!

I finally tested positive for Covid two weeks ago, just in time to cancel my first birthday dinner for three years. My partner caught it at Aldi in Daventry last year on Christmas Eve. We are clearly establishing a bit of a routine.  We both got off extremely lightly, though I did have to swap Kettle Chips for Chilli Heatwave Doritos in order to taste anything at all.

There are, in other words, still plenty of reasons to be cheerful. There is wine. There are crisps. There is some kind of bird, or non-meat substitute for a bird, to be thrust in an oven with golden potatoes glistening with oil. For me, that’s the point of a roast: the crunch of potatoes that are crispy on the outside and then, suddenly, meltingly soft. Mmmm.

I’m not exactly saying that Christmas is all about potatoes, though I would certainly feel that life was poorer without potato-based snacks. I suppose what I’m saying is: let’s enjoy what there is. I no longer have Covid. Tick! My injuries have pretty much healed. Tick! Boris Johnson is no longer on my TV screen every time I switch it on. Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick!

Next year is a blank slate and we can tackle it with energy and zest. I hope you have a very crispy Christmas and if you do decide to hit the ground running, just make sure you’re on grass or mud.

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Christmas gift!

Lots of people are snapping up a book called Out of the Blue. They are clearly getting confused. They obviously meant to get a book called Outside, the Sky is Blue, which is available in all good bookshops and here.

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Christmas listening

I’ve recently completed the second season of my podcast The Art of Work, which follows two seasons of Work Interrupted. There are now 50 podcast episodes to listen to. My most recent guests include classicist Mary Beard, entrepreneur and Lord-Lieutenant of Greater London Sir Ken Olisa, judge and crime writer Nicola Williams, dance consultant Theresa Beattie, T S Eliot prize-winning poet Joelle Taylor, internationally renowned cellist Steven Isserlis, bestselling writer Kathryn Mannix, entrepreneur and politician Josh Babarinde, winner of the Global Teacher Prize Andria Zafirakou and former Twitter VP Bruce Daisley. If you’re looking for inspiration to kick off the new year, you’re sure to find some here.

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Coaching

New year, new start, new you. If you’d like help in clarifying your work or life goals, and would like to find out how coaching might help, do drop me an email at me@christinapatterson.co.uk . You can find out more about my coaching here.