The words we learned in 2020: Wet pubs, Tiger King and WFH

Virus

Once upon a time, we mainly associated this word with technology. Computer systems had viruses. Since early this year, virus has come to mean something else for everyone. The Covid-19 coronavirus has gone around the globe in a pandemic, creating international economic, social and political pandemonium. The biggest communal health crisis of a century has disrupted lives on every continent and is still far from over.

New Normal

The new normal was anything but normal. We were “locked down” in our homes. Shuttered businesses, closed offices, queues outside supermarkets, children away from their school buildings and friends for months, wearing masks, obsessively washing our hands, no live culture or sports, not moving further than five kilometres from home, no social activities, no festivals, no spontaneity, no overseas holidays, no parties, no church services, no visiting nursing home residents, no hugging, heartbreakingly tiny funerals, and so many postponed weddings. There isn’t a person in the country whose lives have not been deeply affected in some way by the pandemic. We all just want our former lives back again; those precious old normal lives.

Chickpeas

Own up. You bought some, didn’t you? At the beginning of all this, when everyone went out to stock up, along with the loo rolls and pasta, umpteen tins of chickpeas were fired into the trolley. They were meant to save us in some way, in case the supermarkets ran out of everything fresh and edible – which never happened, and for which they should receive much credit. We can blame the much-shared New York Times chickpea recipe that “broke the internet” by apparently transforming these humble pulses into a gourmet dinner. People who actually tried it out weren’t convinced.

Wet Pubs

The nastiest ever expression for the pubs so many of us love, and one that really does not make sense. What’s the obvious opposite of a wet pub? A dry one? One with no booze at all? Nope. It’s a pub – or “gastropub” as it now seems to be called – that serves food along with pints of beer and glasses of wine. All over the country, “wet” pubs that committed the crime of offering no more sustenance than a packet of Taytos remained closed for much of the pandemic. In Dublin, they never opened after the first lockdown. We still don’t know how many, when they are finally allowed to open, will survive.

Would Jesus approve of Christmas?

---

Poem of the week: Make-believe by Gerald Dawe

---

Britain goes crackers: The best lockdown jokes this Christmas

---

Substantial Meal

Two hotly debated words. What is the definition of a “substantial meal”? It mattered, because the only pubs that were permitted to open were those serving food. And customers could only go there if they ordered a substantial meal worth at least €9 to go with their alcoholic drinks. For a time, there was even a ridiculous, existentialist spat about what would happen if people ordered, but did not actually eat, their substantial meals. For the record, a toasted sandwich does not qualify as a substantial meal.

Home Delivery

With all retail closed, and many older or health-compromised people choosing not to shop in person at supermarkets, home delivery was ubiquitous. Early on, it was extremely difficult to get a supermarket slot, so overwhelming was the demand. It wasn’t just groceries that were being delivered to our homes, though. As the weeks and months of lockdown went on, all manner of goods were bought online and, up and down the country, vans were delivering parcels as if it was Christmas time. Which, unfortunately, it was definitely not.

Dogs

The only creatures who have had an excellent pandemic. They had company all day long, they had their paws walked off them: these very, very good boys and girls were only thrilled with their humans being home all day. Everyone who had a dog was delighted with their good fortune, and many people who didn’t have a dog wanted one. Shelters were inundated with potential new owners, and breeders had waiting lists for litters. There were also stories of dog-stealing gangs, some of which were apocryphal, but there was no doubt dogs became a coveted pandemic commodity.

Social Distance

An oxymoron. There is nothing remotely social about having to stay away from people, and remain at a distance of at least two metres.

Zoom

Prior to March of this year, how many of us had ever heard of Zoom? Not me. Since then, we have all been Zooming for work, and for catch-ups with friends and family, and for quizzes, which appear universally loathed. For those who turn the video facility on, there’s an opportunity to entertain yourself by examining your colleagues’ taste in interior design. And don’t do what Jeffrey Toobin did. The star New Yorker writer “accidentally” exposed himself while on a Zoom call with New Yorker colleagues. He was fired immediately.

Frontline Workers

The people who had to work in hospitals and nursing homes and provide care to people in their homes under extremely stressful and challenging conditions. They kept turning up for work. They got pictures of rainbows and regular rounds of applause from a deeply grateful public, but most of them would probably prefer to receive better pay from their employers instead.

Sourdough

The whole country was at it. Nurturing and feeding their sourdough starters like baby lambs. Posting pictures of the resulting loaves to social media. Breadmaking became a national pastime for a while. Not to be confused with banana bread, though. That was a very different culinary fad.

Pivot

A very annoying word. It’s the new buzzword for businesses that are changing how they do business. Thus, restaurants were “pivoting” to providing take-out click-and-collect restaurant meals instead of being able to welcome customers through their doors. Gin distilleries pivoted to making hand sanitiser. Small producers who supplied restaurants with fruit and vegetables pivoted to home delivery boxes for the public instead. Marts pivoted to online auctions. Property pivoted to helping sell houses via virtual tours, 3-D mapping, and use of drones. Some may pivot back again when the pandemic ends, but probably not all.

Fatigue

How can you get so tired when you go nowhere, see no one, and have nothing in your diary? But people got tired, fatigued, worn out. There was so much worry all through 2020: worry about the health of people we love, about income, about maintaining our mental health, about doing the right thing, about trying to do your job as best you could, about the absolute sheer endlessness of it all.

Tiger King

Netflix was one of the few companies actually making money during the pandemic. Subscriptions soared, with half the world stuck at home. The breakout Netflix hit early into the new normal was the very bonkers story of Tiger King man Joe Exotic. Tiger King featured a slew of characters so colourful that any one of them could have had their own show. Netflix’s series about the underworld of big-cat breeding has since been watched by 64 million households.

WFH

The acronym we now know as Working From Home. With offices all over the world closed, employees still lucky enough to have jobs were working from home. Kitchen tables were commandeered, any spare room or space was requisitioned as a temporary working space, which turned into a long-term working space. The daily commute changed to a number of steps instead of kilometres. Shoes were optional. So too were the more formal clothes people wear in offices. Mainly, WFH during the pandemic proved without doubt that employees can indeed be trusted to still be productive, even when far from their bricks and mortar offices. Once the pandemic ends, where people routinely work in future is bound to be a huge topic of discussion with many organisations.

Vaccine

For months, magical and elusive as a unicorn, it was all anyone wanted to know about. Will there be a vaccine? How soon? Now we have at least three on the horizon, thanks to the tireless work of brilliant scientists. Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna and Oxford/AstraZeneca have all announced vaccine trials of varying success. We have hope now. This will end some day, and hopefully, hopefully, sooner than we think.

Kindness

That’s what has saved us. During this dreadful time, kindnesses big and small have flourished in all sorts of places in our society. The people who volunteered to cook and deliver meals to those older people “cocooning” at home. The neighbours who offered to do shopping for those were self-isolating. The regular checking-in by friends with the 400,000 people living alone in this country, to make sure they are still okay. The many, many acts of kindness that helped keep us all going. It’s kindness that motivated people to donate more than €6 million to the Late Late Toy Show appeal for children’s charities this year. It’s kindness that has kept us going, through this unprecedented and massively challenging year that will soon, finally and thankfully, end.