OYSTERHOOD is reclusiveness or solitude, or an overwhelming desire to stay at home.

— @HaggardHawks

2021. The finality of Brexit. One of its casualties is Erasmus – the international exchange programme that brought me to Wales for a year twenty years ago, one of the most formative experiences of my life. I can’t believe that other students will no longer have this opportunity. What a loss, on top everything else.

My year began with a monster monstrual headache and a bout of insomnia, but because of the latter I could tune in to my favourite Austrian radio station and listen to the traditional St. Stephen’s Cathedral bells ringing live at midnight in Vienna and to the first song of 2021: ‘Jerusalema’. I used it as an opportunity to finally catch-up with the original and the challenge – I am probably the last person with an internet connection on the planet who did not know what all of it was really about … I am a dinosaur in many respects. The last song they played before midnight was the top requested song of 2020 and my favourite of the year: The Weekeend’s ‘Blinding Lights’.

At our midnight here in Cape Town, I lighted a candle in memory of all the people who died due to Covid-19. We still haven’t reached the peak of the second wave and the numbers are shocking already. I keep thinking of all the people left behind, mourning their loved ones – millions of people worldwide. So much loss.

I slept eventually and woke up early to no water in the house. My love was supposed to spend the day with me, but after this news, I drove over to his house and we welcomed the new year with being lazy together, reading, listening to music, napping, eating leftovers. I returned home in the late afternoon and continued with the laziness on my own on the couch in front of the TV. I might have eaten potato chips for dinner.

I am tired of being tired, but my tiredness is irrelevant in comparison to frontline healthcare workers’. I don’t know how they are coping. So let’s keep one another as safe as we can this year, so that they and everyone else can get a rest. We all need it.

Be kind. Wear a mask. Support local.

“Physical distancing remains one of the key strategies to curb this pandemic.”

— NICD