2021 Review

 A day to go before New Year and I guess it is time to take a bit of look around the crazy world of this year we are actually leaving.

Year started two steps back from where we had left it because of  rises in Covid which resulted in restrictions almost as severe as last year coming in to new year, heck we couldn't officially celebrate new year even at a Public House or with friends in your own cos we weren't meant to have other households indoors.

For much of the first few months of the year of necessity I had to stay local exploring, getting "playtimes" in where I could rather like last year although the vaccination program started in the last days of twenty twenty one got rapidly going with me having my first one in February, a year after contracting it getting second and booster jabs across the year.

If last year had seen a sharp drop in terms of any attempt to fake being "adult" the combination of stress, lack of any real adult engagement and struggling with pre-existing conditions pulled me right back.

A person looking very much as if they'd come from prep school in school uniform and short trousers was vaccinated with Daddy with him and increasingly any notion of being functionally grown up evapourated on the street as people saw a tall schoolboy instead.  

Things started to get better as we got into the Summer to the point we couldn't just travel further but stay with people outside of households so i went exploring in the Lake District four four days neatly all in full school uniform.

Things that kept me just about sane included comics which I had got organized the previous year such as my Beano, Phoenix, Commando and AdventureBoxMax but a new magazine that was in with the Beano when I got back from going away by and connected to Animal Planet tv channel as a sample.

I took out a subscription to that which meant most weeks I had things to look forward to reading and finding out stuff about which keep the worse of the relentless Covid facts and figures everyday, week after week on the news making me feel any more downbeat as many of us found ourselves feeling off.

I mentioned how I became more still just a little schoolboy but one thing did happen was a well know classic uniform shop was able to place a special order for short trousers in more adult sizes with the white lining we had grown up with rather than the now regular black. 

I had two pairs both adjusted and believe me the view of a "boy" with short trousers with an inside leg of just three inches like I had when I was ten left a clear message I had for all intents and purposes left the adult world and was just happy to be a boy subject to them again.

I had never felt strongly "grown up" and just dropping any pretence to anything other than a tall schoolboy of young years felt just brilliant as I could be more mature as him rather than attempting and failing to function as a grown man.

I'm just an adult little boy today.