I have never been a huge fan of Christmas. I don’t like the expectations of joy and community harmony that it puts upon us all and it seems even sillier in this year of the virus.

Despite my general festive grumpiness, I have always like Christmas Eve and being able to go out to a pub on the night before Christmas. It’s been nearly a year since I last visited a pub, but I miss the community, the company of friends and the opportunity to see, hear or experience something different. Some of my best fiction ideas have been sparked by an overhead pub conversation or social calamity fuelled by too much drink. The pub visit won’t be happing this year, of course, and that makes me a little sad. It’s another personal tradition that has slipped away in 2020, another little navigation beacon of a “normal” year that I have missed.