Beautiful Virgin Islands

Monday, Oct 06, 2025

2020: the year relaxation became impossible

2020: the year relaxation became impossible

Since March I’ve felt like a tensed cat ready to pounce. It’s a side-effect of Covid - and this government
My dreams have become quite frantic lately. Normally I don’t remember my dreams, so I assume that if I have them they are incredibly ordinary. But I have been waking with the vivid glow of them in the front of my brain for the past few weeks, and they are all vibrantly strange.

There was the one where I had to very politely go to Jamie’s Italian with my exe’s parents and they, bereft of anything to say to me, just repeatedly asked me how work was going (“Fine,” Dream Me said, a lie). There was one where I somehow landed a lucky punch to knock out Tyson Fury in the first round and, in the aftermath, every single pundit on the planet lined up on Sky News to say mean things about me, about how useless I was, not just as a boxer but as a person.

There’s one where I sprinted through woods to escape the licking tendrils of flames, and then have failed tense job interviews with sweat beading on my forehead. I wake up exhausted at the horror my dormant mind has invented for no reason but to torture me. I wake up, frankly, afraid of the things I have created to be afraid of. I do not wake up relaxed.

When was the last time you were, properly though, relaxed? This isn’t a trick question – I am not a sign-up sheet at a GP surgery, asking you how many units of alcohol you consume each week, gently ushering you towards a worried consultant if you say the wrong thing. When was the last time you were actually relaxed? I’ve been thinking about this lately (while sat on the sofa in supposed repose but actually, when I focus on it, every single muscle in my body tensed as I think distantly about bills): I think the last time I relaxed, you know, was 2019. That feels: bad.

This is a side effect of coronavirus, although if you want to be more specific I suppose you could say it’s a symptom of “having this government”, because it is their fault. Not coronavirus in the first place – or, really, the chaotic mismanagement of it, though I’ll give them a half credit for that – but the constant push-pull, on-off, eat-out-help-out, tier 1-tier 4 thing, each day another crapshoot: what thing you did very legally today will be fully illegal tomorrow? Which behaviour that you’ve been encouraged to spend the summer doing will you now personally be blamed for for deaths because of it in winter? You know that time you went out for pizza in August? Did you really think that through?

Our block of flats has a fire alarm that keeps wailing even when there’s no fire – once or twice a week, normally, but sometimes it will blare erratically three or four times a day, often when I’m on semi-serious work calls, sometimes late at night. I have learned to cope with this, to turn the sound of the alarm into an ambient background peril: nobody in the flats makes moves to evacuate the building any more, after one confused night we all stood outside at teatime eating pasta out of saucepans, staring back at a patently un-ablaze building.

This is roughly how I feel about Boris Johnson scheduling press conferences: he will make the noise designed to make me alarmed, and I will absorb it with a detached feeling of “I’ve heard this honk before”, and then I’ll go back to sitting on the sofa, neither relaxed nor alert, my fight or flight response locked in a horrible limbo.

It’s strange that in a year where I have spent a previously statistically impossible amount of time sitting down, lying down and idly watching television (forming the shape of relaxation without the content of it) I feel less refreshed than ever. It feels like a particularly cruel and unusual punishment at this time of year, too: Christmas is normally a period I set aside for catching up on the relaxation of the year that just happened, all of January’s ills and February’s enemies and those weekends missed in March all snowballing up, then the April–June stress chicane that cedes into holiday season (nice but getting on a plane undoes any restorative effects, so you return actually more stressed than before you left, and that’s even before you look at your work inbox), and then autumn comes and the nights grow short and finally you sit down at Christmas with a Bond film on and a Quality Street pile and drink Baileys until your shoulders ease down.

That’s what happens in a normal year, but this year isn’t normal: watching the Queen’s Christmas address on Friday I still felt, somehow, that the prime minister would burst in halfway through and firmly put Her Majesty in tier 10. You know how cats sometimes freeze and stand still and hold there, primed, staring at the front door or something, constantly ready to sprint at lord knows what? That’s roughly how I’ve felt since March.

I think we’ve all started cultivating a sort of bucket list of things we want to do when the world goes back to whatever we’re going to end up calling “normal”: holidays, trips to see and hug family, a meal in a restaurant where you can walk to the toilet without being personally escorted there by a member of staff. Mine is unextravagant but important: I just want to sit on a sofa, put my head on a cushion, and – actually, for once – relax. It feels more and more ambitious by the day.
Newsletter

Related Articles

Beautiful Virgin Islands
0:00
0:00
Close
Munich Airport Reopens After Second Drone Shutdown
France Names New Government Amid Political Crisis
Trump Stands Firm in Shutdown Showdown and Declares War on Drug Cartels — Turning Crisis into Opportunity
Surge of U.S. Billionaires Transforms London’s Peninsula Apartments into Ultra-Luxury Stronghold
Pro Europe and Anti-War Babiš Poised to Return to Power After Czech Parliamentary Vote
Jeff Bezos Calls AI Surge a ‘Good’ Bubble, Urges Focus on Lasting Innovation
Japan’s Ruling Party Chooses Sanae Takaichi, Clearing Path to First Female Prime Minister
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Sentenced to Fifty Months in Prison Following Prostitution Conviction
Taylor Swift’s ‘Showgirl’ Launch Extends Billion-Dollar Empire
Trump Administration Launches “TrumpRx” Plan to Enable Direct Drug Sales at Deep Discounts
Trump Announces Intention to Impose 100 Percent Tariff on Foreign-Made Films
Altman Says GPT-5 Already Outpaces Him, Warns AI Could Automate 40% of Work
Singapore and Hong Kong Vie to Dominate Asia’s Rising Gold Trade
Trump Organization Teams with Saudi Developer on $1 Billion Trump Plaza in Jeddah
Manhattan Sees Surge in Office-to-Housing Conversions, Highest Since 2008
Switzerland and U.S. Issue Joint Assurance Against Currency Manipulation
Electronic Arts to Be Taken Private in Historic $55 Billion Buyout
Thomas Jacob Sanford Named as Suspect in Deadly Michigan Church Shooting and Arson
Russian Research Vessel 'Yantar' Tracked Mapping Europe’s Subsea Cables, Raising Security Alarms
New York Man Arrested After On-Air Confession to 2017 Parents’ Murders
U.S. Defense Chief Orders Sudden Summit of Hundreds of Generals and Admirals
Global Cruise Industry Posts Dramatic Comeback with 34.6 Million Passengers in 2024
Trump Claims FBI Planted 274 Agents at Capitol Riot, Citing Unverified Reports
India: Internet Suspended in Bareilly Amid Communal Clashes Between Muslims and Hindus
Supreme Court Extends Freeze on Nearly $5 Billion in U.S. Foreign Aid at Trump’s Request
Archaeologists Recover Statues and Temples from 2,000-Year-Old Sunken City off Alexandria
China Deploys 2,000 Workers to Spain to Build Major EV Battery Factory, Raising European Dependence
Speed Takes Over: How Drive-Through Coffee Chains Are Rewriting U.S. Coffee Culture
U.S. Demands Brussels Scrutinize Digital Rules to Prevent Bias Against American Tech
Ringo Starr Champions Enduring Beatles Legacy While Debuting Las Vegas Art Show
Private Equity’s Fundraising Surge Triggers Concern of European Market Shake-Out
Colombian President Petro Vows to Mobilize Volunteers for Gaza and Joins List of Fighters
FBI Removes Agents Who Kneeled at 2020 Protest, Citing Breach of Professional Conduct
Trump Alleges ‘Triple Sabotage’ at United Nations After Escalator and Teleprompter Failures
Shock in France: 5 Years in Prison for Former President Nicolas Sarkozy
Tokyo’s Jimbōchō Named World’s Coolest Neighbourhood for 2025
European Officials Fear Trump May Shift Blame for Ukraine War onto EU
BNP Paribas Abandons Ban on 'Controversial Weapons' Financing Amid Europe’s Defence Push
Typhoon Ragasa Leaves Trail of Destruction Across East Asia Before Making Landfall in China
The Personality Rights Challenge in India’s AI Era
Big Banks Rebuild in Hong Kong as Deal Volume Surges
Italy Considers Freezing Retirement Age at 67 to Avert Scheduled Hike
Italian City to Impose Tax on Visiting Dogs Starting in 2026
Arnault Denounces Proposed Wealth Tax as Threat to French Economy
Study Finds No Safe Level of Alcohol for Dementia Risk
Denmark Investigates Drone Incursion, Does Not Rule Out Russian Involvement
Lilly CEO Warns UK Is ‘Worst Country in Europe’ for Drug Prices, Pulls Back Investment
Nigel Farage Emerges as Central Force in British Politics with Reform UK Surge
Disney Reinstates ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ after Six-Day Suspension over Charlie Kirk Comments
U.S. Prosecutors Move to Break Up Google’s Advertising Monopoly
×