Twitteretter

The Christmas and New Year festivities are awash with traditions. For me, this includes a combination of Spanish and British ones, plus some family specials. For example, watching the Vienna New Year’s concert with a cup of espresso, followed by the ski jumping at Garmisch Panterkirchen. As I was growing up, I stuck to those even through some pretty terrible hangovers in the late eighties and nineties. After all, what good are traditions if one iconoclastically bails out just because one overdid the drink the night before? Some others have been abandoned through lack of practicality, a result of emigrating to the UK. And so a new combination of traditions is developed by me, to pass on, partly common with those of my parents, partly my own, partly Sandra’s contributions. This, I guess, is so much a part of our social environment as the political system or the economy, but this part we can protect and cherish, and their survival is entirely down to us. What are your traditions? Length: ...

Yesterday’s post generated a few reactions outside Twitteretter. One, from my mother, made an interesting point. It is to do with education within the family during lockdown. I am not referring to parents educating children while schools are closed, which is another interesting subject. Rather, to the lockdown providing an opportunity, for those who used to leave the house to go to work every day and are now homeworking, to understand better what it takes to make a household run smoothly, the challenges, complexities and monotonies of good housekeeping. This was my mum’s viewpoint, even though she also worked all her life outside the house. But the reverse is also true. Husbands, wives, sons and daughters will have had, over a number of weeks, a partial glimpse of the day to day reality of the work of their wives, husbands and parents. These mutual revelations have the potential to improve understanding in households, to shine a light on the challenges of others, fostering empathy L...

There is at least one thing that must be said about this lockdown, as a positive. Most parents know that, once their children become teenagers, most of them will disappear into their own world, limiting contact with their family as much as possible. The thought of being seen walking with their parents is, to teenagers, tantamount to social scorn and exclusion. But coronavirus has changed this. What really catches the eye when out at the moment is seeing 16 year olds walking in the countryside with their parents, with a smile on their faces. And parents smiling too! Both sides communicating, actually talking to each other, whilst exercising together. I never thought I would see the day, and I would not have expected a global pandemic to be that powerful. Will some of this remain, once normality is resumed? That would be a huge positive change, both groups understanding that there is more to intergenerational communication than homework and house chores, that it can be enriching and fun...