Meet the New Year, Same As the Old Year

In recent years it has been my custom to write a blog about the gigs and shows I have seen in the preceding twelve months. To write one for 2020 would not take long. Of the nineteen I was supposed to see last year, I saw just two.

 

In January Val and I went to The Barbican to see Joe Stilgoe, who played a selection of songs from the movies, accompanied by the Guildhall Studio Orchestra. It was entertaining, if a little unadventurous. If the name Stilgoe is familiar, older readers may remember Joe’s father, Richard, as the singer/songwriter who appeared on TV’s Nationwide and That’s Life! during the 1970s. He also wrote the lyrics for Andrew Lloyd Webber's Starlight Express and collaborated on The Phantom of the Opera.

 

Joe Stilgoe

In February we saw Alice’s Adventures Underground at The Royal Opera House, an off-the-wall version of the Lewis Carroll classic (which is somewhat off the wall to start with). Frankly it wasn’t up to much, but at least it was short.

 

Shows in 2020 featuring artists as diverse as Genesis, Lonely Robot, Sparks, Level 42, Fischer-Z, Steven Wilson, and Derren Brown were all either rescheduled (some more than once) or cancelled outright. Currently I have eleven shows lined up for 2021, although I’m not particularly optimistic about any of them, especially Genesis at The O2, which is supposed to be at the end of April. Perhaps by the time we get to autumn, from when I have Steven Wilson, Steve Hackett, Marillion, IQ, Cosmograph, Level 42, and IQ to look forward to, we’ll be out of the woods and back to some semblance of normality (vaccine willing) – or perhaps not.

 

I should have seen Steven Wilson (centre, seen here performing with Blackfield) in September; we'll try again in 2021

I have bought tickets for a couple of newly announced gigs in 2021, more from not wanting to miss out if they actually go ahead rather from any great optimism that they will; my innate pessimism will not allow me to believe that there is any guarantee that the new year will be any less of a horror show than 2020 was.

 

One of my great pleasures in recent years has been visiting the BBC to attend radio recordings. I managed a few in early 2020 – Brain of Britain, and Newsjack among them – but none since February, although I was in the virtual, online audience for a recording of Paul Sinha’s General Knowledge via Zoom, which was okay, but not really as rewarding as a recording at the Radio Theatre; I’ve not bothered applying for any other shows since.

 

Naturally, it wasn’t just gig-going that saw a downturn in 2020. In 2019 Val and I were lucky enough to have six holidays or mini-breaks. Cyprus (twice), a Norwegian cruise, Center Parcs, Norwich, and Folkestone. We had planned to do slightly less in 2020, but didn’t imagine that our holidaying together would be limited to a few days in Eastbourne in August, although Val did get away to Tenerife with our younger daughter in January, while I stayed at home because I had football matches to go to. These were inevitably postponed due to the weather! At present I feel disinclined to contemplate an overseas holiday in 2021, although I suspect that Val would jump at the opportunity.

 

A Norwegian cruise was one of our holidays in 2019...

...Cyprus was another...

...Eastbourne is as far as we went in 2020

In 2019 I saw all forty-five football matches that Romford FC played; in 2020 I also saw every game the club played, but there were just twenty of them. The last game that Romford played in the 2019-20 season was against Tilbury on 11^th March. There was a sense at that game that there was something pretty serious brewing, and the Isthmian League’s decision to put the season on hold for a few weeks came as no surprise.

 

Romford (in white) on the attack at Bury Town in October 2020, the last football match I'll see for the foreseeable future.

By the end of March, the decision had been reached to terminate the season at Romford’s level. This decision did not meet with universal approval, although in my view it was justified, if for no other reason than it provided certainty. When the 2020-21 season began in September, non-League clubs in football’s seventh and eighth tiers and below had to get used to a whole raft of new guidelines and protocols, which were gradually tightened until the end of October when new Government restrictions resulted in the season being suspended again. Attempts to restart again have not been successful (apart from a few matches in the Northern Premier League), and with the whole of the Isthmian League’s footprint now in Tier 4, in which non-elite sport is not permitted, the chances of a restart any time soon are slim to non-existent.

 

Those who were critical of the decision to null and void 2019-20 will no doubt be apoplectic if 2020-21 goes the same way. I see little prospect of it being possible to restart football below the National League (which, like the Premier and Football Leagues is considered elite and is continuing behind closed doors thanks to the £10m it received from The National Lottery) until maybe April. Null and voiding 2020-21 seems almost inevitable, and a decisive move needs to be made soon to provide everyone with certainty; the stop-start-stop cycle non-elite football has been in for the last few months does no one any good.

 

There are plenty of people who don’t believe that lockdowns work. My view is that the one that ran from March until the summer was successful but, having locked down too late, it was relaxed to soon. This has resulted in the lockdown>release>lockdown cycle we have become locked into. It’s analogous to a scab over a wound: let it follow its course and the scab will come off and the wound will heal after a month; pick it off after two weeks and it’s back to square one.

 

I understand why lengthy lockdowns are hard for business, and detrimental to people’s mental health, but a relentless lockdown>release>lockdown cycle is no better – worse, in fact as there is greater uncertainty, and for pubs and restaurants, there’s all that wasted stock.  I’m not being wise after the event, but when the initial national lockdown was introduced in March, I was of the opinion that it would last at least twelve months, eighteen months even (with or without a vaccine)

 

At the start of the pandemic, I thought it only a matter of time before I caught covid. As time went by, my concerns eased, but my anxiety has increased with the recent upsurge in cases, especially as I live close to the areas with the highest numbers, and even more so since the previously anonymous cases have recently begun to include people I know.

 

Right now, we are pinning our hopes on the vaccines, and I fervently hope that they are effective and administered quickly and allow us to break the vicious circle we are locked in at present, and which is doing my anxiety no good whatever.

 

In the run up to the New Year, social media was awash with posts bidding good riddance to 2020 and looking forward to 2021 as though the ticking of the clock would, by itself, make things right again: It won’t. Until we see positive effects from the vaccine, and until restrictions can be lifted safely, for some time to come it will be very much a case of meet the new year, same as the old year.