The 2020 Review

I usually write something of a reflective piece on this blog but as this year has been rather messed up whatever the pluses (and there's been a few) and the many minus's it will be of necessity different that what I might of expected to have written.

Covid was our wicked enemy preventing planned meets from happening, limiting even regular travel, dominating conversation and virtually every news program from dawn to dusk and between programs public health information.

All necessary for sure but difficult to escape from swamping us to the point many people found coping a struggle because it was pulling them down more than helping them get by in the circumstances.

For me, I just found solace in this adult but little boy world, yes noting anything I needed to do like following rules but otherwise taking my lead from actual boys to which in so many respects I have that much more in common with.

When mentally you are - and it's less of a choice and more of permanent reality - pretty much a boy the only way to cope is by sticking within your own world and so as the weeks passed by I was going full immersion into that world.

I went out as much as we were allowed and in the first months it was just once a day and just explored and even played imaginary games in the countryside as the playground was shut for a big period but I could make my very own playground when I act out the games we played running, crawling across gravel and grass leaving any passing adults to get on with their own thing.

Many person out saw me as that boy, being treated very much as one, being referred to as "Sonny".

I read comics and got subscription's set to ensure that regardless of what was going on with getting to the newsagents and even if they had a delivery, I'd have mine landing through the letter box the way it did when I was ten.

I had at least something to look forward to that was new and different as much as I watched tv shows like Jamie Johnson, Crackerjack that was restored to the schedules and of course Blue Peter that had gained two new presenters  taking the the complement back up to four.

If an animated film was showing on tv, I made a point of watching it.

Not that surprisingly as I became more and more immersed deeply into this world some outward signs changed so from just before this craziness started when I did get away for boys week of activity while I did dress rather more as school boy in the Lake District, hiking, going trainspotting and riding steam trains I started to feel more full on little.

The Forum became busier as many from our MisterPoll group joined it and ASB returned too on an invite only basis both showing the need of many of us to go back in our differing ways to that life.

It was the point in which I had decide that not just moving as I had done more the previous year to more 'classic' jumpers and turn over socks that from now on my shorts were not only what I'd be wearing nearly all the time but were going to be taken way up to where they were when I was that junior boy of ten allowing for growth.

I just feel so much better seeing my reflection as that boy as much as it only adds to the way in which I feel back in the mindset of him going about my everyday life feeling carefree, yes with some responsibilities but only those I could carry-that of boy of that age.

Losing that thinly papered over adult sense whose cracks not only had caused me major problems in the past but got in the way of just being in reality who I am was the biggest gain arising from the pandemic for me.

I was just me and my community looked after me as such.

I don't talk about my family much on this blog, I don't particularly need to but this year every member accepted the adult boy me. They know how I present.

I was with my parents over Christmas dressed in school uniform with those much shorter grey school shorts on, free to be me and I even had an unexpected present that was for once not rooted in adult interest.

They'd bought me some lego. Not a grown up book, a dvd, a gift voucher but an actual boys present presented to my as that - a gift I discovered on my chair when I'm there upon it.

This year has been challenging, as here in North Staffordshire we are in Tier 4 until at least another month or so according to our Public Health person as of yesterday but one where actually dropping right back to pure boyhood fun and interests has not just been good for coping with the same but for feeling so comfortable in my own skin as that eternal boy. 

Looking into the New Year, as we all hope the vaccination programme gets under way with two vaccines now approved while it may be Spring at least until things can get to something more normal so that like many of you I can be with others having fun together, I'm a in better place to cope with whatever we may have to deal with for the foreseeable future.