The upside of my 13 years under the burden of the local vicious sadism is that the pandemic has had almost no effect on my psyche or my socialising. I am finding that I don’t even know what to say back to people who talk about wanting the pandemic to be over and effects on Christmas and so on. I experience the pandemic totally differently. My life was over the moment I moved to Portsmouth. (If I’d known that I would never have done that of course. I had no idea that they still burn witches here, so to speak. Never mind; it’s not as simple as that, actually. Of course not.)