It’s my birthday today, and I am happy to be able to raise a glass to Joe Biden

With the White House finally free of Trump, Holly Baxter is excited to toast another year of existence and a much brighter future

At long last: the incoming president is the person this divided country needs (Getty)

This week marks two world-changing events happening the US: Joe Biden’s inauguration as 46th president of the United States, and my birthday. In both cases, people will gather at a social distance and toast the end of a terrible year. In Biden’s case, there might be a little more security.

It’s strange having a birthday in lockdown, of course, and strange reporting on American politics when your birthday falls on every election cycle on the first day of the new presidency. In January 2017, The Donald’s triumphant ascendance to power put a bit of a dampener on my own celebrations. This year, his unceremonious ejection from the White House will make the cocktails taste a little bit sweeter, even if those cocktails can only be enjoyed on a Brooklyn sidewalk in -5C while wearing many, many layers.

Trump’s unceremonious ejection will make the cocktails taste a little bit sweeter, even if they can only be enjoyed on a sidewalk in -5C weather

When Trump won the presidency, I was still working in the London office. I got the call at 5am from an editor to come in and help deal with the news reports suggesting a reality TV star had bucked expectations and won out. Outside my Shoreditch apartment window, it was pitch-black and pouring with rain. I put on my sturdiest mac and headed toward Liverpool Street station in order to catch the first train.

The office had an odd atmosphere that day. Everyone was incredibly busy but also incredibly shocked. I deleted my pre-written celebratory feature about Hillary Clinton’s victory and got to work on deconstructing what Trump’s shock win meant for all of us on the other side of the Atlantic. A couple of years later, I moved over to the States during the longest US government shutdown in history, presided over by an obstinate Trump who was determined to get his own way. My partner and I approached the TSA agents at the border with our newly minted visas and trepidation in our hearts. They didn’t have a reputation for friendliness at the best of times, and these ones hadn’t been paid for five weeks. When we finally cleared border checks and were stood at a freezing taxi rank with our passports and our suitcases, we breathed massive sighs of relief.

Living for two years under the Trump presidency has been strange. New York City is a little liberal enclave in a much more complicated country; as my fiancé likes to say, “it’s not America”. I have stopped doing a double-take when we drive a few miles outside the five boroughs and see TRUMP 2024 bumper stickers and flags, but I still find it unnerving. I’ve also come to realize that you can never quite predict the politics of where you are: in a well-heeled beach town in Connecticut, where many of the people are New Yorkers visiting second homes, the Trump flags and MAGA hats were everywhere, whereas in the rural outbacks of Vermont, where each house is spaced a half-mile apart, everyone’s a Biden fan.  Even Alabama has a healthy amount of Democrats, though because of gerrymandering they have little representation, which means outsiders think of them as much more conservative than they really are.

On the day Biden won – which feels like months ago, but was of course only a month before Christmas – I wrote in this column how I joined fellow Brooklynites dancing on the streets. The inauguration will be much more subdued. Security has been stepped up in DC after what happened at the Capitol after the so-called Save America rally, and armed police are also lining the streets of New York City, fearful that anywhere Democrats gather could become a target. I have no doubt that people will be joyful, but I can’t imagine gatherings will be as well-attended.

Not that that will stop me raising a birthday hot toddy to Biden, though, in recognition of the freezing weather and his Irish roots. His first year will undoubtedly come with its challenges, being as it is a prolonged hangover from a Trumpist period of excess – but I have faith in this weird, big country to turn things around, even from my seat in “not America” at the Fake News Media.