2021 is nearly done and dusted
Annus horribilis or annus mirabilis? Ellie O'Byrne selects her highs and lows of 2021.
A happy Winter Solstice, one and all!
The light is coming back.
How will you be spending Christmas and New Year?
I’m not religious, and I’m not a fan of the consumerist monstrosity Christmas has become. I mostly try to avoid the big shops with the frantic jollity of their exhortations to spend because, frankly, they make me fear for the future of humanity. Sorry if that’s a bit depressing!
I like a low-key Christmas, with very few gifts or tacky decorations, but copious quantities of good food and drink and quality time with loved ones. Now that my kids are older (22 and 16), it’s easier to avoid mountains of plastic crap and just take the time to relax and do a lot of cooking, and for reasons discussed below, I’m planning an epic amount of cooking this year.
There’s something wonderful about the quiet period between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, though: those few calm days punctuated by reflection, replete with Christmas feasting and not yet gearing up for the New Year’s bash, where there will hopefully be a few woodland walks, cycles and some catch-ups with friends. There should be at least one day spent almost entirely in bed, drinking tea, reading, daydreaming and planning for the future. A few days offline is also a must.
I have almost no Christmas traditions, but I do like to take time to reflect on the year that has been, what has worked for me and what I can do better, or ditch entirely, in the year to come.
I have a big resolution coming up for 2022. I’m already excited.
What did you do in 2021?
Am I constantly embarking on unconventional and overambitious projects in a quest to know more about the world? Yes, and 2021 was no different.
I have worked extremely hard on starting and growing Tripe + Drisheen, alongside JJ O’Donoghue. Getting a first print edition out was a massive buzz and a massive learning experience.
Online, we’ve covered some stories I’m really proud of. Every time I hit the “Long Read” tab on the website I can’t believe the range of what we’ve managed so far.
I supervised MA dissertations in media-related topics for Griffith College; unfortunately, I lost a lot of my teaching work because I had been teaching an elective module called International Media Landscapes geared at preparing international students for work in Irish media and Irish students for work in international media. In 2021, this work evaporated alongside international enrolments.
I constructed a polytunnel with a view to increasing my extended family’s self-sufficiency and there have been highs and lows with this: the past two months it’s been seriously neglected, but I’m planning on doing a fair amount over the Christmas break to get it back in order for 2022.
I made a podcast series on Arts & Ageing, which was a fantastic experience.
I also started working on converting two double decker buses, a huge project that my partner Mark and I have embarked on together with other longer term plans in mind.
We’re trying our best to use renewable, reclaimed or fully recyclable materials and are fitting both buses with cosy sleeping quarters, kitchens, showers and living areas to convert them into eco-glamping holiday rentals.
They’re parked up in Co Waterford, where my partner lives (yes, we do live apart, for complex and personal reasons). I’ve been working on them most weekends.
It’s incredibly satisfying and challenging and my woodwork skills are coming on a treat. Maybe it’s replacing a lot of our more ambitious and international adventures for now - we’ve done some epic cycles in the past and plan more in future - but that’s ok.
For the second year in a row, I ate only food grown in Ireland for the month of September.
Cultural highlights
Being, as it was, year two of Covid-19, the shock of losing that part of my life that had been covering the annual festivals has, to an extent, worn off.
I’m not someone who can make do with “online events” and much as I appreciate and feel for the desperate scramble by venues and events organisers to get by with whatever they can muster, I have limited time and patience for the outcome in the form of “reduced capacity” and “socially distant” gigs and find them upsetting more than anything else, so I’ve seen almost nothing live for the second year in a row.
But seeing a day-long line-up including Bitch Falcon and Thumper at a reduced capacity Vantastival in Co Louth in September - especially seeing as, tragically, Bitch Falcon have decided to call it a day since - was a welcome dose of live music. The Dublin rock trio, fronted by powerhouse guitarist Lizzie Fitzpatrick, had a farewell gig planned for early December in a period of what looked like relative certainty, which has now had to be rescheduled for April 2022.
I don’t really watch a lot of films, but the Summer of Soul documentary that came out recently was just stunning, most especially the appearance from Sly and the Family Stone and Nina Simone, as well as the fascinating social and historical context of the event that just never got enough press.
Favourite interview of the year
Most interviews are fantastic experiences, but the one that I enjoyed the most in 2021 was with UK artist Stevexoh. Sometimes things just resonate with you and stay with you and Steve’s musings on creativity and the inner critic are wonderful.
Highs
Too many to list, really. But doing two markets with a pop-up Tripe + Drisheen stall was seriously lovely: a stream of well-wishers and readers and even a couple of great tip-offs that have led or will lead to articles!
The first crops out of the tunnel and the sense of achievement in installing it.
A return to live interviewing after the endless online interviews of 2020 was great too. You just can’t make the same connection through a screen and context is everything: a visit to the National Space Centre in Midleton recently to interview an artist is a case in point. The interview, and the human connection, just wouldn’t have been the same without the setting.
Lows
The mounting awareness that the Covid crisis is not going to end for the foreseeable future. The terrible and unnecessary divisiveness that has emerged and that seems based more on political polarisation than the realities of the situation.
The tomato crop in the tunnel being stricken with blight.
The continued erosion of public accountability and transparency.
Articles I’m most proud of
My report on infant formula in the Irish Examiner.
My two-part report on the proposed East Cork Celtic Interconnector
My report on Aramark’s connection to the English Market
And my reports on the OPW’s flood defences in Co Cork, which have taken considerable work.
Some personal stuff
Closing out the year by moving into our secure home as a small family has been phenomenal and emotional and weird.
Since my kids and I got turfed out of our long-term rented home in 2017, I haven’t had my own bedroom. For the first two years, we lived in an unsuitably small two-bedroom house where I had to sleep in the kitchen/living area in order to afford two then-teens the privacy they needed.
For the past two and a half years, we’ve been living in my parents’ sitting room and box room: I shared the sitting room with my daughter, who has been an absolute hero throughout. Both of them have. It’s been tough in ways it’s impossible to describe, especially throughout 2020.
Last year, when I met those many people who professed to have “actually really enjoyed lockdown,” I was proud that I never once screamed at them to please examine their own living arrangements and that’s still to my credit. Let me tell you, working and living in one room with access to a shared kitchen and bathroom was beyond difficult. To record podcast voiceovers, I had to sneak out of the bedroom at 5am and sit in the shared living room with a duvet over my head to muffle the sound. Everything I wrote came out of that bedroom, with endless interruptions.
We were the lucky ones: we have a loving relationship with supportive extended family and we had access to the big garden that was the salvation of my mental health. Society’s increasing inability to display empathy for the position of others has been one of the worst and most - to me - damaging phenomena of the whole Covid-19 crisis. No, we most certainly are not in it together.
The move…
Now, again for complex, personal/family reasons that I’m not going into here, on December 1, we moved into a three-bedroom, two-bathroom house that even has a tiny office. The rent is very affordable even on my freelance income and, let’s say, getting evicted is extremely unlikely.
I can’t believe it.
I keep waking in the night and wandering from room to room: I have a KITCHEN. I have a BEDROOM with a space to get changed in privacy and, if you can imagine such a thing in me, relative dignity. If I need to turn the light on in the night, no-one says, “Muuuuuum! Go back to sleeeeep!” There’s even this little room that’s just for taking your coats off and hanging them up, can you believe that?!
Possessions that have been in storage for over four years - my crockery and cutlery and pots and pans, treasured books, notebooks and diaries and family albums, clothes I’d be ill advised to ever wear again - are being unpacked and this is sometimes quite a painful and emotional experience. There’s a lot more being unpacked here than just mouldy homewares.
Secure housing is the best Christmas present I’ve ever received.
For the first time in five years, we even have our own Christmas tree.
So this is where I’ll be for the next couple of weeks: settling in, restoring order, celebrating having a kitchen by cooking immoderate amounts of festive food, consolidating, and preparing for the bell to ring on 2022. Raise a glass with me.
Wishing you all a Christmas 2021 full of love and peace, and a New Year full of the potential for change, with empathy and human connection.
Glad you got sorted with accommodation, Ellie and happy Christmas to you and family. Also good wishes to you JJ.