How was your Christmas....?

This year, Christmas was different.  Pascoe had come early to avoid crowded trains so was with us before the new restrictions curbed our Christmas plans.  The twins, however, were still in their flat, so we drove to Bermondsey and delivered gifts, food and decorations on the doorstep, but didn’t scoop them up and take them home despite the huge temptation which our parental instincts urged on us.

What can I say?

We admired the twins’ splendid Christmas dinner on Zoom and were impressed that they had dressed for dinner. Turns out Christmas is much more photogenic without us oldies.

It was a privilege to have Pascoe home.  Our own Christmas centred on knee-depth mud as we rambled with him over the Hertfordshire countryside every day.

And on Christmas Day, we had a very special encounter.  The three of us had reached Nomansland Common as the sun sank.  At a time of year when not many birds sing, we could hear a virtuoso performance from a song thrush, reminding me of ‘The Darkling Thrush’, by Thomas Hardy (below).  But although we stared at the tree, the bird remained hidden.  Eventually, I got out my phone and played a recording of a song thrush.  Immediately, our invisible entertainer appeared and flew straight at us, only just stopping short of dive-bombing us.

We laughed with delight. 

It may not have been an ideal Christmas, but once we started to look, there was so much to appreciate.

 

For those of our friends, however, who have been ill over Christmas, there has not been much fun and our thoughts are with you for a speedy recovery.

The Darkling Thrush

by Thomas Hardy

 

I leant upon a coppice gate

      When Frost was spectre-grey,

And Winter's dregs made desolate

      The weakening eye of day.

The tangled bine-stems scored the sky

      Like strings of broken lyres,

And all mankind that haunted nigh

      Had sought their household fires.

 

The land's sharp features seemed to be

      The Century's corpse outleant,

His crypt the cloudy canopy,

      The wind his death-lament.

The ancient pulse of germ and birth

      Was shrunken hard and dry,

And every spirit upon earth

      Seemed fervourless as I.

 

At once a voice arose among

      The bleak twigs overhead

In a full-hearted evensong

      Of joy illimited;

An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,

      In blast-beruffled plume,

Had chosen thus to fling his soul

      Upon the growing gloom.

 

So little cause for carolings

      Of such ecstatic sound

Was written on terrestrial things

      Afar or nigh around,

That I could think there trembled through

      His happy good-night air

Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew

      And I was unaware.