insufficiently cutthroat

I've been collecting feedback and reviewing Christmas with a view to improving my festive performance for next year.

 There were many strong points but also some areas for improvement. 

I cleverly arranged for none of the family to have flu or Covid over the Christmas. I booked great weather, so our habitual muddy walks were bathed in sunlight. I managed to display just the right degree of fatigue so that everybody helped with the cooking and produced feasts which were not only low in carbon footprint but also delicious. 

On the other hand, I failed to be sufficiently cutthroat. I dopily omitted to secure a supermarket shopping delivery, meaning that Nigel had to trudge to Morrisons.

I left it too late to buy the Christmas Radio Times, forcing family members to scour a variety of newsagents.

Perhaps at least my failing has a use. It will supply my New Year's resolution. 'Be more cutthroat!' This seems a fitting end to the festive season.

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.

The Navy Lark

Once again, Christmas got scuppered by Covid but we did have a memorable outing just before disaster struck. The whole family visited the amazingly preserved wreck of the Mary Rose at Portsmouth Docks. The Mary Rose blew our socks off with detailed information on Tudor life and warfare. It was impressive that certain skeletons (such as the chief bowman or master surgeon) had been identified by their physical traits and scraps of clothing and matched to the wooden chests which contained their belongings. Afterwards, Pascoe was keen to see the submarines. We took a water taxi across the harbour, watched from above by a peregrine falcon. It was the 1946 A Class submarine which really captured our imagination. About twelve of us tourists squeezed into the stranded sub and a guide gave us a tour. When in service, it would be hundreds of feet beneath the surface, and contain 65 men. Just the thought broke me out in a claustrophobic sweat (although even as I write this, I’m now wondering whether it was the virus). Also guaranteed to induce panic was our guide’s repeated reference to the escape procedure, which I really couldn’t believe would ever work. It turned out our softly spoken guide had served 18 years in submarines, thereafter running emergency escape training in a nearby 100 ft tower of water. He was very informative, but I also had a feeling there was a lot he wasn’t telling us. ‘Did it create tension – so many of you in such a cramped space?’ ‘Well…mostly, we got along.’ We caught the last water taxi of the day and returned, with sunset blazing behind the historic ships. Despite the disappointment of getting Covid, that day at the Mary Rose still means Christmas 2024 will be one to remember.

The Christmas scenes they deleted from Love Actually

In pursuit of the spirit of Christmas, Nigel and I met up with Carenza for outdoor carols at Columbia Road in Bethnal Green.  The vicar of St Peter’s church here is famed for wheeling a piano out onto the street and standing on it to conduct carols while a colleague bashes out the tunes below. 

It turned out to be far from a well-kept secret as every single twenty-something in London was already there.  Every one of them was taller than me, but I just about managed to keep my feet on the ground in the good-natured jostle, just hoping that none of the high notes started a stampede.  Nigel didn’t mind at all, as several of the young lovelies complimented him on his ‘beautiful voice’.  Pah!

On the way back from carols we got caught by train cancellations. We spent an hour at Farringdon with nothing to sustain us except a massive chocolate advent calendar Nigel was given at work.  We managed to call a halt at day six.

When we finally got on the train it was packed and a previous passenger had vomited. Then another drunk bloke skidded in it and fell over. Twice.

Explaining to a horrified onlooker, his mates said that it wasn't him who had been sick. 'It's legacy vomit'.

Nigel and I agreed that these might very well be scenes from a typical British Christmas.  So why on earth had they been left out of the final cut of Love Actually?  There’s simply no explanation.

Thanks to Carenza for the pics

Blowing away the cobwebs

 

My post-Christmas blog last year was rather melancholy – reluctantly waving goodbyes to my children and hauling down the decs the moment they were gone.  I expected to feel the same this year and had been strategising some midwinter cheer for myself.  However, this year I don’t feel so wistful and gloomy.

After three disrupted Christmases I was expecting Covid, flu, snow or strikes to scupper our modest domestic plans once more, but somehow they didn’t. The fact is, Pascoe, Perran and Carenza all arrived and at last we spent Christmas Day together and even several days either side of the festival itself.  Decorating the tree, roast dinner (veggie of course!), muddy walks and parlour games all happened.

I know myself to have been thoroughly Christmased, and the result is that I feel more buoyant, even despite the annual festival of sheet washing after the offspring have gone.  And best of all, the two none-work days after New Year have allowed Nigel and I to get out and blow away the cobwebs.

In the low, slanting sunlight I can already sense the days lengthening once more…

Advent - a blessing

 

In the past, Advent was a time of fasting and contemplation, allowing people to prepare themselves spiritually for the Christmas celebration to follow, rather as Lent is a time to prepare for Easter.

Now, lights and baubles surround us even before Advent starts and many Christmas parties are over by the second week in December. 

In CS Lewis' much loved children's book, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Narnia was under a curse whereby it was always winter and never Christmas.

Nowadays we seem to be under a spell where it is always Christmas and never Advent.

No wonder that when Christmas Day arrives, we are often frazzled - instead of a sense of wonder, I have a sense of disappointment - somehow I have cheated myself of the 'true meaning of Christmas'.

This year, I'm going to try to take the bustle and preparations with a pinch of salt.  Whatever I manage to do, it will have to be good enough.  And actually, because my friends and family are kind and forgiving people, it WILL be good enough.

So in 2022, I am making a pre-New Year's resolution to find some space and stillness in Advent.

Photo shows Nigel & our friend Carolyn with a giant robin at Gibside.

Getting on with it

Christmastide has always had the quality of being a magical island, rising above the drab grey seas of midwinter, twinkling with fairy lights and warmed by mulled wine.  Even more so since the children grew up and left home - now it is a time when they return and we re-form the nuclear family we once were.  We do the Christmas baking, read the Night Before Christmas together, watch old films, play daft games and go for endless muddy walks guided home by the glow of early sunsets.

Nowadays, as soon as the last child has left, without waiting for the 5^th or 6^th of January, I take the decorations down.  I guess it draws a clear boundary between the fresh start of the New Year and the precious island of Christmastide, a country which has sunken below the horizon for now. 

But next December, we shall set sail again, navigating towards Christmas, guided by its winking lights and the hope that our children will journey to be there with us once more.

Covid Does it Again

This Christmas is a real cup-half-full/cup-half-empty moment for me.

Christmas 2019:- Nigel, me, Pascoe, Carenza and Perran had assembled at our house, the tree was decked, the food prepped, the gifts wrapped.  But on Christmas Eve, I was felled with a mystery virus, like flu but much worse.  I was out of it until well after Christmas.

Christmas 2020:- Nigel, Pascoe and I had assembled at our house, the tree was decked, etc, then the sudden lockdown eliminated Perran and Carenza from Christmas at home.

Christmas 2021:- seeing the way Omicron was spreading, Pascoe arrived early at our house, then Carenza, although somewhat delayed, waiting for the outcome of one PCR after another (both negative).  We hadn’t even done anything about the tree and food at that point.   

We were within just a few days of having the complete family Christmas when a PCR result meant Perran wasn’t coming home after all.

Cup half empty – it won’t be a proper Christmas without him.

Cup half full – he’s not too ill.

Cup half full - we should be able to catch up immediately after Christmas.

Maybe, 2022…

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.

 

 

 

A Peregrine in a Pear Tree

A couple of Saturdays ago Christmas preparations were boiling up to frantic. Every year I feel a strong pull to make my way into town and shoulder my way into the scrum. Like a salmon swimming upstream.

Could I resist?

Birdwatchers had been tweeting. A rare hen harrier had been sighted in a rushy river valley close to St Albans. 

So instead of going into town, we walked along the River Ver until we spotted a cluster of folk in bobble hats clutching binoculars and the odd outsize ‘scope.

The little flock of bird watchers was friendly and communicative.
The hen harrier had been through earlier but was nowhere to be seen now.

Nigel and I stood for a while and saw red kite, heron, egret and all manner of titmice.

And then, flying over, a large falcon. Everybody whooped. (Quietly - they are bird watchers after all.) They trained their scopes on the sky. It was a peregrine. Nowhere near as rare as a hen harrier but still worth a restrained cheer.

Even better, a hapless buzzard flew into view and the peregrine began to attack, stooping from a height, swooping like a bullet, until it drove the larger bird away.

We never did see the hen harrier but neither did we get caught up in the Christmas consumer madness. And I won’t ever forget that peregrine.

Saved by the School Bell

Three years ago, Christmas finished but Carenza was still living with us and not in proper work yet.

Two years ago, Christmas finished and both Perran and Carenza were living with us.

One year ago, Pascoe was home.  “We could have an adventure, Mum,” he said, and we did – a short trip to meltingly beautiful Lisbon.

This year, however, after what was for me an unsatisfactory Christmas (flu) all the children left to go back to their own flats and working lives.  Nigel returned to work too.

Still feeling rather sorry for myself, I found myself with several days before teaching started and a to-do list which, though long, contained no task that I found in any way tempting.

Instead I sat around wondering what my whole life had been about, whether the good times were all over.  Whether all that was left was decline and inevitable decay.

Luckily, work started again this week.

I now know what life is about – it is about printing out registers, marking stray exercise books, making sure the info on my PowerPoints is correct and that everything is uploaded to my USB stick.

I feel much more myself again.

So that’s alright then.

Phantom Christmas

I have heard of the concept of a phantom pregnancy, where, perhaps because she longs for a baby, a woman develops the symptoms of pregnancy, yet there is no baby to be born.

This year, I had a phantom Christmas.  I made all the preparations – cards, gifts, food, sleeping arrangements.  Even though I try not to over-complicate, there’s still more than enough to do.

Pascoe, Perran and Carenza had all arrived home, much to our delight.

Then on the morning of Christmas Eve, I woke to find I could not get out of bed – I was gripped by a fever and aches and pains. Even my eyes hurt too much to read my novel.

On Christmas morning itself,  I got up for just long enough to see Pascoe, Perran and Carenza open their gifts.  I tried to be glad for everybody else’s sake that the sun was shining for the annual Christmas walk.  I got the makings of dinner out of the fridge and, led by Carenza, the rest of the family cooked and ate them.

By Boxing Day Nigel had the flu too. 

Gradually, over the next couple of days, we began to feel more ourselves again and had some good moments with our lovely children.  However, by Sunday lunch time, they were all gone, back to work, or celebrations with friends. 

Now there is bedding to wash and leftovers to use up, evidence that the festival took place, but I kind of have this weird feeling that I’m short by one Christmas.

Perhaps I’m due two next year!

Life after Christmas

I am now more than a week into 2019 and only finally today admitting that Christmas is over.

It is understandable – Christmas paraphernalia is lingering:

Drying in the porch, there are still the baubles we hung on the tree outside.

The last slab of Christmas cake is still crouching in the larder with an air of permanence.

So why is it today that Christmas is over?

It is because until yesterday, there was still one child at home, Pascoe.

And I realise too that I am timing the start of Christmas from Wednesday 19^th December when Pascoe arrived just in time for carols at the Swains.  Carenza and Perran followed soon after.

For me then, Christmas is defined by family – a chance to recreate both that first Holy Family, and also our own family, us and our three children.

We went for country walks, played charades, cooked together and even did a jigsaw. We watched telly in a row on the sofa. We drove in the overcrowded car to visit Grandma in Northumberland.

But now be we will be back to Skyping Pascoe in Edinburgh and the odd snatched meal with the twins in London.  And unlike the nativity scene that I have packed away in its box, our family will keep changing.

It may well be that, as partners and other families become interlinked with ours, we can no longer rely on Christmas for our annual family reunion.

But I’m thankful for the time we have just had. And grateful that I have children who, just by being there, were able to make it feel like Christmas, even when it wasn’t any more.

The Holly and the Ivy and the Echinacea

It’s dark and cold and we middle-aged women are run ragged by gift-buying, gift-wrapping, card-sending, and the purchase and preparation of food – while feeling guilty that we are not enjoying Christmas more.

Opportunist viruses patrol, eager to invade. 

As a teacher I can take my pick of virulent illnesses.  They are handed to me on exercise books, they await me on doorhandles.  Sometimes, they are sneezed right in my face.

So my favourite seasonal plant is not the holly, not the ivy, not the Christmas rose nor poinsettia.  It is a plant which blooms not in December, but in summer - echinacea.

It is extract of echinacea which boosts my immune system and wards off the seasonal colds.

Pascoe informs me this is stuff and nonsense.

But I am clinging to my beliefs.

Especially as Christmas is here and I don’t have a cold yet this year.

Obviously it meant that at Evensong at the Cathedral, I was unable to participate fully in “the annual festival of coughing”.

It also means that the impressive stocks of lemsip and cough sweets that I laid down are redundant.

Worst of all, it means I have to find a new excuse for the shortcomings of Christmas dinner.

But, otherwise, it’s a great improvement. 

So next year I shall be sending Christmas cards with an echinacea motif, weaving an echinacea door wreath and decking an echinacea Christmas tree.

Happy Christmas.

Advent – awe and wonder

This is the season of “spend! spend! spend!”, of ear-worm Christmas songs, of glitter and parties.  How can it also be Advent, a time of spiritual preparation, of meditation and fasting?

Personally, I have always suspected the early Christian fathers (NB Fathers, not Mothers) of making a planning error.

In midwinter we desperately need a festival of family and feasting.  In the short, dark days, we crave sparkle.

But the Christian forefathers scheduled our celebration of the birth of Christ in the same time slot as the ancient Roman mid-winter knees-up of Saturnalia, inheriting a tradition of excess.

Perhaps the holy day to contemplate the incarnation of the living God would have been better on a separate occasion.  After all, the few indications we have are that the birth of Christ did not take place in mid-winter – the shepherds would not have been out in the fields with their flocks then.

Each year I strive to provide ideal gifts and a delicious Christmas meal and to reassert our network of kinship and friendship by sending cards.  Each year it knocks my spiritual life sideways, just when it should be peaking.

However, this is the year when I had foot surgery and could not get out and about as I longed to.  So instead, I prepared a little Christmas gift for myself.  In the summer, secretively so as not to seem deranged, I began to make cards and accumulate gifts.

And now, just for once, I can see the stillness of Advent gleaming in the midst of the Christmas glitter storm.

Chestnuts not Pumpkins

I haven’t been able to take country walks for a few months now, owing to my faulty foot. 

It has made me feel disorientated. 

Every year I monitor the seasons closely, marking the time of year by what is coming into bloom, what going to seed.

I am delighted when a sunny weekend summons a cloud of butterflies from their pupae, or when a wistful breeze in late summer has the swallows congregating on the telegraph lines. 

I’m even happy when oncoming Autumn means all the blades of grass are hung with spiders’ silk hammocks.

But this year, deprived of the usual signs of the turning seasons, I feel stranded back in the early summer.

“Wait, it can’t be Autumn yet – I haven’t had my summer.”

Thanks to the buses, I have been better at getting to the town centre than to the country.

But in the shops, the seasons are weirdly distorted.

In the shops, seasons start and end long before the weather and daylength mark the actual season.

In the shops, a season only exists AT ALL if it presents a merchandising opportunity.

Now, for several weeks, it has been orange pumpkins and tinsel - Halloween with Christmas trimmings. No mention of Autumn.

I was desperate to find some reality and begged Nigel, Carenza and Will to take me gathering chestnuts in the woods, something I do most years. 

We had missed most of the sleek brown nuts in their prickly cases, but gathered just enough to put by for the chestnut stuffing to serve with Christmas dinner in a couple of months’ time.

More than that, it was a relief to see sun shining through the yellow and bronze leaves of the wood and to encounter Autumn in her considerable beauty.

This Cornish hairdresser was celebrating Halloween,
but I'm not sure it would make me want to get my hair cut there.

God With Us

At Christmas, we have only two firm family traditions.

On Christmas Eve we attend the beautiful sung evensong at St Albans Abbey – or The Annual Festival of Coughing, as we call it.

On Christmas morning we go to our own church, St Luke’s.

At quiet moments in the services I pray for people I know who are sad, ill or bereaved.  Then I move on to considering the year ahead and praying that God be with us.

And this year, I have already received a blessing.

Let me tell you the story:

This morning we attended our church.  SO MANY people we knew were there for Christmas.  And so were their children, grandchildren, aunts and uncles. 

We circulated around the church to exchange the handshake of peace with everybody. 

We processed up in front of everybody to receive communion.

Then back again.  

In front of everybody.

But it was not until I got home that the pants which had been caught up my trousers in the wash fell out onto the floor.

As I say – a blessing.

Just Stop

A few years ago when I trained as a teacher, I had a placement in rural North Hertfordshire.  Showing me round,  the pupils focused on the most important thing of all – the procedure for snow days.  

It was only September, but they already had an eye on a day off.  And I quite liked the prospect too.

From that day to this, however, there has been no snow day in Hertfordshire.  Until today.

Even today there is not really a snow day off school as it is Sunday. 

However, there is the same delightful feeling that whatever we were going to do today, it will not be done. 

And it is not our fault.

It’s a very busy time of year, preparing cards, gifts, food and social life for Christmas.  But today it’s as if God just shook his finger at us and said “Shush now – doesn’t really matter.  Settle down.”

We put on our boots and did the things that counted - got to church, called on an elderly neighbour, filled the bird feeders.

But then everything slowed down – home made bread, the wood-burner lit, an old film on the telly.

And a nourishing day’s rest in Advent.