Wisps of tinsel

Each year, the happy bustle of putting up Christmas decorations with our adult children foretells a more melancholy ritual, scheduled to take place in only a couple of weeks. After guests have decamped and visitors passed through, Nigel and I pack the baubles and tinsels carefully away.  

Increasingly the Ghost of Putting Away has started to haunt the afternoon in Advent when we hang up the tinsel and fairy lights.  Before Christmas has even happened, I begin to anticipate my nostalgia at its passing.

The reason lies in what Christmas means to us.  It has a significance beyond the religious one. It is a time when we reenact an earlier stage in our family’s life cycle, living happily together as a nuclear family of five.  Truthfully family life probably never was as perfect as it is at Christmas, but that is beside the point. 

But the outcome is that when, after Christmas, the children all return to their homes, it reenacts the moment when they became adults and flew the nest - the paradoxical moment at which a parent both congratulates themselves, but also feels quite sad.

However, as we get older, time is passing even faster and weirdly there is a comfort in that. Not only does the end of Christmas seem immanent right from the middle of December.  But now the start of next Christmas seems close, even though it is only January. I can foresee myself getting the decorations out again in only a few months, so I repair some little wooden ornaments, knowing I will need them quite soon.  

It hardly seems worth Nigel carting the great cardboard Christmas boxes into the loft. Christmas will be back again before we know it. 

 

Very merry earwax

I'd planned to visit my parents in Cornwall earlier in December, but a cold meant I had to cancel. 

It felt wrong not to see them at Christmas.  They must be longing to see me.

But how could I leave my own home with Christmas approaching like an express train?  (Express sleigh?)  My teaching has continued late this year, and I'm a little behind.

But then, however much time and effort I put in, would I ever be ready for Christmas?  I never do get the house as smart as I would like. And there's always one last card that didn't get delivered, one last elusive gift that would have made somebody's Christmas perfect. 

So I bought a ticket for a flying visit to Truro anyway.  Then I picked up the phone - I could just imagine my parents' smiling faces.

'I'm coming! Arriving tomorrow afternoon!'

Long pause.

'Well, we already have a couple of engagements tomorrow afternoon - Mum's having a visit from the optician and I'm getting my ears de-waxed.  See you then, I suppose. Goodbye. '

As I said, it will be good to bring my parents joy at Christmas, even if not as much joy as the optician or the wax-removal lady.

I don't have any Christmas photos yet this year so thanks to Mary Bee for the above.

Dead Bodies

Sometimes I wake in the wee small hours and fret.  It is as if I have woken up completely, except for my sense of proportion which is still firmly dormant.  It was a relief to find there was an old English word for these ‘worries before dawn’ – uhtceare.  I am not alone – the existence of an Anglo Saxon term shows others have shared this experience for at least a millennium, and probably much longer.

When the worry is something simple, like something I must remember to do, I have an effective remedy – I jot it down on a pad on my bedside table and return to sleep. 

On Tuesday morning I woke to my alarm, and although I couldn’t remember writing anything in the night, out of habit I glanced at the pad.  What I saw there shocked me.

‘Tell parents about dead bodies.’

This shocking memo meant nothing to me.  I checked the handwriting.  It was unmistakably mine. Had I been sleep-writing in a nightmare?  Was I going crazy?  I was so disturbed that I didn’t even mention it to Nigel.

It was only hours later, when I sat down to prepare a lesson that it finally clicked.  I was planning a museum trip for my school pupils, and there were human skeletons in one of the galleries.  Nowadays, one flags this up in case it might upset somebody.  With a grunt of relief, I added a sentence about human remains to the letter due to be sent out to parents.

At least now I could cross out ‘dead bodies’ from my list of uhtceare.

 

 

Adding a little time travel to our trip

If I can get my act together, I accompany a trip abroad with a novel that's set in the place. Often it doesn't work out, but this time, on our trip to Paris, it did.
I read Edmund de Waal's 'The hare with amber eyes', the story of the rise and fall of the author's wealthy Jewish forbears, told via the vehicle of their collection of netsuke (tiny Japanese carvings). Charles Ephrussi was a connoisseur and art collector in the second half of the nineteenth century. The book includes a painting by Caillebotte which captured the atmosphere of the place where Charles lived, so when I spotted a Caillebotte exhibition at the Musee D'Orsay I was eager to go.
The lifestyle it portrayed was of wealthy men who had taken the decision to remain bachelors, not because they were gay (although some may have been), but out of a wish to remain unencumbered by domestic concerns and to pursue love affairs while avoiding responsibilities. The time allowed by such a lifestyle was spent by Caillebotte in painting and by Ephrussi in studying art.
They lived in the same neighbourhood - De Waal wrote about it and Caillebotte painted it.
The result was that for one glorious morning in the Musee d'Orsay I felt I could almost reach out and touch late 19th century Paris.

Two Europeans in Paris

When the Channel Tunnel and Eurostar first came into being, there was a certain spring in the step of people who lived in the south of England. Paris was suddenly gloriously within reach for a short break, and trouble free thanks to our European passports and health insurance cards. It was enticing to save up and grab a weekend in Paris, and we did several times, with the kids.

Last time we went, around ten years ago, the children had become adults, soon to leave for their own adventures. There was a feeling we had 'done' Paris (how dare we!), and we resorted to rarer pleasures such as visiting Pere Lachaise cemetery, eating chrysanthemums in a Chinese hotpot restaurant and walking the highly alternative the Petite Ceinture walkway.

Since then Brexit has made our relationship with Paris more troubled but for months I've had a yen to return. Finally, with autumn leaves falling, Nigel and I managed it. The sun shone for our promenade along the Rive Gauche, and made the newly restored Notre Dame gleam. 

The museums with which we had once been familiar opened up again like new treasures.

But our favourite moment occurred in the Musee d'Orsay. We were wandering amongst the Scandinavian Art Nouveau when an American couple marched past. 

'Remember,' said the man, 'We have to leave time for that other museum you wanted to visit. What was it called again?'

'The Louvre.'

Nigel nudged me. Even twenty-four hours spent in the immensity of the Louvre would merely scratch the surface. They had less than half a day before them.

'It's okay,' said the woman. 'We can spend another hour here before the Louvre.'

In finding this funny, we were maybe just being snobby - laughing at tourists less clued up than ourselves. But a more charitable interpretation would be that the Americans' ignorance gave us the welcome chance to feel like Europeans again, even after Brexit. 

Half Term Gift

When I started teaching, I used to hit the end of each half term like a below-par marathon runner, stretching out cramping finger tips to get across the finish line. 

This Autumn, after ten years in teaching I approached the break with my work (mostly) in hand and the feeling I could have gone on for another two or three weeks.  

Time will tell whether I succumb to the well-known teacher phenomenon of being felled by a holiday cold, even though I have resisted armies of virus being exhaled by dozens of students all term. But so far, so good. 

It just shows me how far I've come. One of the pleasures in teaching is that it is a skill which continues to grow over time as there are so many aspects, especially communication and really listening so one can identify exactly at what point a student misunderstood something. 

Having said that, I'm part time, so I have a lighter workload than many. However, I run myself as a peripatetic Latin teaching business and I work for five different schools/education providers, which brings its own burden of admin and communication. 

It's taken me a long time to feel on top of things, and it probably won't last, but I'm certainly going to bask in the moment and enjoy this half term.