I’m teaching the famous Tennessee Williams play A Streetcar Named Desire to my lower sixth Literature class at the moment. We have varying views of Blanche Dubois; I’m poised between occasional empathy and frequent exasperation, and we all find her interesting in terms of her mental health. Above all, though, in 2020, the Year of Covid-19, we all loved her line: ‘I don’t want realism. I want magic!’
That line rings true for me just now, as the November rain pummels our north-facing windows and the ultimate realism of Sunday night sets in. I’ve watched the true Sunday night reality: the Strictly Come Dancing Results Show. Someone’s been sent home, the rhythm of the series continues inexorably towards the end of the season, and it’s time to think about work again.
I’m not sure if anyone’s made it clear enough how much things like Strictly Come Dancing are helping those of us who are quietly keeping going, despite finding life challenging at the moment. The magic, the sequins, the sparkle, the music, the choreography: the couple of hours of complete escapism at the weekend is something I anticipate and enjoy so much. I feel perhaps the series may have peaked for me with Bill and Oti’s street dance, but I remain optimistic for what’s to come. I take delight in the narrative of the dancers’ progress, I enjoy the routines, I feel I’ve got to know the professional dancers by following their progress on Instagram or Twitter, I love the pantomime of the judges’ comments, and most of all I am brought to life by the music. Let me give you the full picture: I mostly watch Strictly very late on Saturday night, hours after I’ve seen tweets from celebrities and texts from friends about how good it is, after an exhausting day of ‘being an only daughter’, many miles from home. It’s my sanity. By Sunday evening, simultaneously looking forward to and dreading the working week, I get around to watching the Results Show some time after it’s been broadcast. It reminds me of a story my Mum used to tell me about my very much younger self. As a very small child, I loved watching Andy Pandy… (yes, I’m old…) and my Mum loved embarrassing the teenage me with the story that, every night, when the programme ended with ‘Andy Pandy’s going away…’ I used to cry. This is just how I feel on Sunday nights, when Strictly ends and someone is unceremoniously eliminated. I mostly agree with the decision, but one couple fewer means one week closer to the end of the series, and one week’s less sequins and magic in the year. I don’t actually cry, I mean, I’m not three years old any more, but I often feel like it…
Driving around suburban Belfast and, much later, Portrush, on Saturday evening, I noticed a few early Christmas trees proudly displayed in windows. I’ve read in several papers and websites that many people feel that ‘early Christmas’ will be ‘a thing’ this year. That people are so fed up, so near despair with Covid-19 and repeating lockdowns, that there’s something reaching close to a general consensus that we should all put our Christmas decorations up early this year. Whereas I feel that 15th November is definitely just a little bit too soon, I’m beginning to come around to the idea that perhaps the Christmas lights in our house might make an appearance a little earlier than usual, this year. I’m a sucker for fairylights. I love seeing them in other people’s houses; we have a couple of fairylight fixtures throughout the year, and I’ve been heard to say that the lights and decorations are my favourite thing about Christmas.
I usually get grumpy when I see Christmas items in the shops, much too early, and initially, this year, I felt the same. I ridiculed the first mince pies which shuffled, slightly shamefaced, onto the shelves, not long after the Autumn Term began. I photographed and laughed at the Christmas window display I saw in late September, sending it to a friend with an ironic caption. But now… now that it’s dark almost as soon as afternoon lessons end in school, now that it’s bone-chillingly cold and seems to rain at some point every day, now that there seems to be very little to look forward to, and we still don’t know if family Christmases and work Christmas parties would be advisable even if they turn out to be allowed, I say: bring it on. Bring on the fairylights. Put up the tree. String the lit-up garland across the mantelpiece or along the banisters. Let’s not worry about the presents, in a year when so many people have lost their jobs or found their income less secure. Let’s not worry about the parties. There will be opportunities to cut loose some other year. Don’t even worry if there isn’t enough turkey: have something else instead. Let’s just have the lights: shining against a rain-streaked window, casting hope out into the darkness, reminding us that there could be something to look forward to amid the landscape of test-and-trace, face masks, sanitiser, social distancing and suspicion.
I’m not a great wearer of sequins. Maybe a discreet bit of sparkle on a top, maybe a slight shimmer on my eye-shadow. I’ll never be the person in the limelight, and I’m fine with that. At a time when the realism of what’s going on in our world is as bleak as the neon blankness of an empty shopping mall when almost everybody has gone home, we need our fix of sequins and of fairylights. So bring on the lights. Long live Strictly. Let’s hold on to the fantasy world which lifts us from this bleak midwinter.
That way, we might just survive the reality we see in 2020.
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