We've tried to have some semblance of normality when it comes to Christmas. We won't be getting any presents this year - the fact that I am still alive, and some of the people I love are, is present enough. We felled a tree in early December; I am sitting beside it now as the clock, slowly ticking away, says three minutes past midnight. It is now the twenty-fifth day of December, and the full moon is high in the sky, shining down on England.

I think back to December 25th, 2014. That day I received some video games, a few books, a camera, a few CDs and a lot of chocolate. I had eaten it all by February; how I regret that decision now. I'd also received a calendar: "This is gonna be a totally epic year!"; "25 / CHRISTMAS DAY / FRI". Life was good back in 2014, but of course I didn't know then that we only had four months left.

We all know what happened on April 30th: the lights went out, planes fell out of the sky, the world was turned upside down. Riots broke out in the next few days, and everyone forgot about the general election of May 7th.

In that horrifying summer, the summer of two thousand and fifteen, we wandered around the country, looking for a place to live. It wasn't safe in our city any more, and the food and water ran out back there on May 15th.

Now every day is a struggle to survive: I only barely lived to see 19, and my sister didn't live to see the age of nine. Now we have one meal per day, if we're lucky; the harvest is over, and the long, cold winter has begun.

It's snowing right now - the outside thermometer says minus four degrees Celsius at four minutes past midnight - that's just our luck. It hadn't snowed at all in the winter of 2013/14 or 2014/15, but now the lights have gone out and hundreds of thousands of people are dying of hypothermia it starts snowing in the middle of November - on Friday the thirteenth, in fact.

Here's to 2016! It can't be any worse than 2015, can it?