It is early January 2023. The beginning of a new year after an awful one. I’m hoping to slough it off with fresh snowfall, or a promising work project, maybe a surprise Taylor Swift drop; something wholesome to kickstart the year.
It’s a close friend’s birthday, a date that secured its place in history back when members of Maga Facebook groups rushed the seat of US democracy in a frothing rage at everything and nothing.
Before that, it was a date significant to me as the start of Julian-calendar Christmas traditions in Russia, where I once lived. Minus 20C, breaking into the ice: bobbing one, two, three times. A towel thrown around my shoulders. I felt both more alive and never more convinced that I was going to die.
But now this day is to celebrate my friend. On our birthdays we give arrays of gifts, from the silly to the sumptuous; the lighthearted to the luxurious. But this year I cannot. This year, because of the awful year preceding, and indeed the one before that, I have no means.
I spent a long time in a dark bedroom with only the blue light of a phone and apps that had been developed solely so I would throw money at them, and so I did. Even with the introduction of more pills with multiple end-of-the-alphabet consonants, I could not stop. Now I sit in cold churches on wooden chairs and hold polystyrene cups of tea and talk about it.
So this year: no piles of gifts. This year, something – someone – else. My friend’s obsession, unlike mine, is harmless. You see, she loves falabellas. Fala-what? Falabellas. Miniature horses.
I find a falabella-pony cross located a short train journey away. She is called Purdie. Purdie has my blond hair. She could be a direct descendant. I sponsor her per month on behalf of my friend and go to Snappy Snaps (wondering, perennially, how it stays in business) and print off a photo of Purdie, posing, her club foot pointed out like a go-go dancer. My friend is thrilled.
On the train on the way to visit, we bring bananas, because the people at the farm tell us Purdie loves banana skins. Imagine being so easily pleased, I think. And then I realise that I am that easily pleased, because I get to eat the bananas.
We arrive in the town, famous for its Bonfire Night, and visit its 15th-century bookshop, which has a ceiling so low I feel at least two vertebrae compress in real time. The weather is cold. When I was a kid I owned bright red gloves from the Liverpool Football Club shop and my hands are the same colour now because I am stupid enough for them to be bare. My breath in the air is like the steam coming up from a New York grate.
Purdie is, obviously, a delight. I pat her proudly. I ask many questions, possibly too many questions. Her mane falls on the left, which is apparently unusual. She is about to enter her thirties, a few years younger than I am. I want to bend down and whisper to Purdie: “Do you feel it too, the ennui?” Or maybe: “Did you also lose thousands of pounds to online gambling?” Or perhaps: “You are a symbol of my love.”
I feed her the banana skins. In the farm gift shop, a woman almost trips over the lead of her excitable dog: “Margot, please,” she says, swivelling to look at an unrepentant yorkie.
At dinner, neither my friend nor I can decide on skinny fries or fat chips, so we order both. We spontaneously see a film before drinks. But the last train is due, so I feign casualness and leave accompanied by a couple of centimetres of cognac still in its glass. The ice cubes jangle like stolen jewels.
It’s the kind of day trip I don’t really take any more. Or haven’t since the globe left us dizzy in its new strangeness and coughing became a borderline criminal offence. Since it started – the dark room and the blue light. And then everything else got worse, too: the skin-picking and the hoarding, until the DSM verged on a choose your own adventure.
This year will be an improvement, I decide, although things are never quite that simple when it comes to a brain made of snakes. But try really hard for Purdie, I think, which is actually also a way of saying: try really hard because there are kind people in the world who look after abandoned animals. And because your beautiful and smart friend exists, and all of your other beautiful and smart friends. And 15th-century bookshops exist, and the joys of spontaneous film-watching and Courvoisier and crisp air combined with blue skies.
And when, 12 months later, my editor asks me to write about a moment of hope, I can recall a few things, rather than none. And then I think, specifically: Purdie. Whose mane falls on the left and who loves banana skins.
• Hannah Jane Parkinson is the author of The Joy of Small Things (Guardian Faber, £8.99). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
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