Fran Whiting: We will kiss and hug and laugh and love again

Yes, it’s tough now - but there is lots to look forward to. Here’s Fran Whiting’s tip on how to keep focused on a happier future.

Well, it’s Week Three of what I am now calling the Coronavirus Diaries, wherein I attempt, in a diabolically clever scheme, to take your mind off the virus by talking about the virus – but in a hopefully positive light.

This week I would specifically like to talk about the virus by talking about Christmas.

That’s right, it may only be April but in my house, it’s already December 25; the sleigh bells are ringing, the reindeer are stamping and the carollers are singing all the festive favourites – but not The Twelve Days of Christmas – at my door.

I hate The Twelve Days of Christmas; it is the Ten Green Bottles of the carol world, isn’t it? It just goes on and on and on, and all the presents in it are stupid. Who wants a blooming partridge in a pear tree? Not anyone I know, and we don’t want a pair of turtle doves either, thank you very much – what’s wrong with a nice, scented bath bomb, that’s what I’d like to know.

Fran Whiting: Why you cannot work from home in your PJs

What you observe about life when you go for a walk

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, Christmas in April, currently on at my place – to explain.

I was at home the other day, because that is where I always am now, when I’m not exercising under the cover of darkness with a miner’s lamp on my head, and I was sorting out the cupboard under the stairs when I came across our Christmas wreath.

Columnist Fran Whiting at home.

I was about to hang it on a hook inside the cupboard, from where it had fallen, when something made me stop.

And that something was a conversation I had earlier that day with my 11-year-old daughter, wherein she asked me, “Mum, will this coronavirus ever end?”

And I understood what she was asking, because it feels like it never will sometimes, doesn’t it? It’s easy to forget, in among the frantic sanitiser searching, home schooling, looking up 101 ways with mince – if you can find any – and talking to our kids about all the things they won’t be doing anymore, that these times, as all times do, will come to an end. What we are experiencing is a temporary break in our usual programming. Things will get better, shelves will be restocked, kisses will be had, children will play and we will forget all about measuring the distance between us.

Columnist Fran Whiting at home.

I didn’t hang the wreath back up inside the cupboard; instead I put it in a basket at the bottom of our stairs, where it now nestles in a shiny circle of red bows and gold baubles.

I know, it might seem a little silly, but you know what? Well, first of all I wanted to hang it on the door, but my husband Ebenezer Scrooge wouldn’t let me, and secondly, every time I climb those stairs, and see a little glint of red and gold, it reminds me that better times are coming.

Not soon, not next week or even next month, or the one after that, but some time.

We will dance and sing again. We will put our arms around each other again. We will kiss and hug and laugh and love, and if you have something you can put out to remind you of the same – be it a Christmas wreath, or a travel ticket, or a photo of someone you long to see – I highly recommend it.

Because as another newspaper columnist once wrote many, many years ago in answer to another little girl’s question: Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.

And yes, my darling daughter, this time will end, because Christmas, as it always does, is coming.