Twenty-Twenty

Returning home at twenty past midnight on the first day of that year Ellis opened the book he had been saving for 2020. The next day he washed the scarlet tablecloth with the Christmas design and placed it over the horse in the kitchen to dry. He read half a page of Anniversaries and then filled the washing-machine with towels and a plastic bulb half-filled with liquid detergent. The days passed. At 10pm Ellis started watching Sky News but stopped when he discovered that the lead story was about Prince Harry and his wife. Later he went to bed and read three more pages of Anniversaries. On another day Ellis went online and read that the inaugural Hay Festival Abu Dhabi had published its programme for next month. It included Booker-winner Bernardine Evaristo and Baillie Gifford Prize-winner Hallie Rubenhold as well as historian William Dalrymple, and Nigerian Nobel Prize-winner Wole Soyinka. The days passed. Ellis read opinions on social media. He read the Times. Ellis's sense of alienation from the prevailing literary and political culture of his society was acute. Ellis did some weeding. Before the end of January the death toll from the Coronavirus had risen to 26 in China, with 830 infected. And so it went on, that year of the pandemic. Books, movies, tweets. The days passed. On and on, to that last bitterly cold morning, blue sky, sun, everywhere outside white with frost. The last day of 2020. The final entry. 2020. The chronicle of a year.