Like a generic Christmas movie where the plot is staler than a shop-bought panettone, Pandemic Christmas 2: Numb Noel rolls around in less than six weeks. As I write, Germany has recorded 50,000 new Covid cases, the UK has recorded 42,000 cases, planned Christmas markets in Leeds and Glasgow have been cancelled and experts in the Netherlands are recommending a lockdown.
Actually, maybe obsessively watching Christmas movies isn’t a bad survival tactic for the Yule bunker. The repetition is cosily familiar and yet, unlike a pandemic, the resolution is swift and satisfying. All the actors wear green and red chunky jumpers and striped scarves with adorable wool hats, labour under the hard lighting of a cheap daytime soap opera and carry a strong whiff of many years in the soft porn industry, regardless of the wholesome narrative they’re performing.
Like the current No 1 Netflix Christmas movie Love Hard, they’re always about a city gal who visits a charming town and has to choose between two equally attractive men. Even if food shortages mean there’s no turkey on the table come the big day, as every tale from A Christmas Carol on reminds us, love is all you need. Except that in A Christmas Carol they did have a turkey.
Losing my touch
It’s not just the Christmas spirit that’s been warped over the last two years, it’s also our libidos. Formerly fruity souls have adjusted to enforced celibacy, once abstemious singletons yearn for a human touch, seemingly solid couples are splitting up after witnessing each other’s revolting lockdown habits, people bought pets because they wanted something sentient to cuddle and some flatmates have been doing a lot more than bubbling together.
I’ve developed a series of inappropriate lockdown crushes, born from living entirely through YouTube/Netflix/Google for a fifth of a decade. I’m now like one of those feral children who was raised by wolves and hasn’t learned human norms. Sliding into a celebrity’s DMs with a cheesy excuse? Showing up at a crush’s Zoom panel about diversity in the arts and asking a question? I did it. To assess how delusional your lockdown crush is, imagine meeting them at a dinner party. Imagine twinkling in their direction, with a frank lady-look. Would they be horrified? Would their blood run cold?
My latest target is the Chinese model-actor-singer Xu Weizhou, or Timmy Xu to the international market. The fact that I know that is risible. He’s 20 years younger than me. He’s so slim I could snap him like a chicken wing. I left a comment on his last Instagram post. It’s pathetic, it’s disgusting. I justified my behaviour to myself in various ways until, last week, a stranger did the same thing to me. I freaked out and then forwarded their message to all my friends and friendly colleagues. Let your pandemic desires roam free, within your own head, but don’t act on them and create interference for other people; reality and fantasy cannot coexist.
Malala’s happy news
For the last few years, the news has presented us with a bottomless brunch of terrible violence, abuse, injustice and inequality. Thanks to Cop26, it’s all being topped off with a garnish of actual apocalypse. So it was good to find out that Malala Yousafzai, Nobel laureate, peace activist, global resistance icon and ultimate good girl, has married her partner, Asser Malik, with the blessings of their families. Amid the horror of the Taliban retaking Afghanistan, this is a bit of lovely news. I don’t know if love always wins out, but it definitely brightens dark times.
• Bidisha is a broadcaster, critic and journalist for BBC, Channel 4 and Sky News
