Christmas 2012

I really wasn't this blurry - hardly drank at all honest!

I really must get a better camera or take more time with the photos I go for. This was a disappointing crop.

Well, that’s another one ticked off. Quite successfully too. The fourteen disparate personalities gelled happily on Christmas day and the cooking team (chiefly me and granddad) worked like house elves to provide the feast all hot and at the right moment. Bad cracker jokes, silly hats, nice wines for each course and (though I say it myself) an excellent pudding. Spillage on carpet, a few tears from over-tired sprogs, much good will amongst adults and parting kisses from me which unfortunately spread the cold I didn’t       know I had coming on. 

 So that’s the main traditions observed. I felt a bit sorry for B who is used to going to church in the morning, singing along with carols from Kings College whilst cooking the lunch, then watching the Queen’s speech in the afternoon. None of which we have done for longer than I can remember. 

The weather was so brilliant Boxing Day some of us had a walk around the bay in the sunshine, saying hello to scores of smiley strangers also happy to be taking the air in the knowledge that the shops where closed. (I suppose there were sales somewhere but we don’t talk about that.) The snow-capped peaks of mountains in the background reminded us that the son and biggest grandson were ski-ing in the Cairngorms where the conditions were excellent (which doesn’t happen so often in Scotland; the day after that there were gales  and the runs were closed.) Sanders was able to try his new ski boots, one of which was really comfortable and the other would have been if he had realised what was hurting and removed the headphones from the toe. He’s good at driving through the pain barrier that lad.

The smaller boys got Furbies from their aunt and me. These creatures are just as amusing for adults as children. On Christmas Eve when the parents woke them into life I began to wonder if their sons would get given them at all. These beasties learn English gradually, which is a pity as I suspect some of their vocabulary is going to be a bit rude. They also talk to each other; this made bedtime for their new owners quite difficult. It was a happy change to hear the 6 year old and the 4 year old human child complaining because their pets were talking and keeping them awake. That’s karma boys.

The Cornish wreckers left yesterday and got back safely 12 hours later, leaving me to my own bed (hooray) and a house that looks superficially back to normal. Interesting anomalies that have turned up so far: an apple in the airing cupboard (partially eaten,) a light sabre in a potted plant; lego in the fridge; chocolate Santas down the back of chairs; some really juicy smears on the French windows and the mirrored cupboard doors in the bedrooms; a few undergarments that might be missed.

So, not quite back to normal. I just took a long and refreshing bath, followed by a shower to get every possible centimetre of me wet, only to reach for a towel and remember they were all  being washed. It isn't the same drying on a cotton nightie.

Well, that's it! My last day behind the counter. I waited in vain for the engraved watch and bottle of bubbly and my retirement speech wasn't needed but it still felt like an Occasion. I've sat in that small space for many MANY hours over the last 8 years.

Perhaps in six months time I shall miss the craich but for the moment  I'm relishing my freedom. The next couple of weeks are going to be full of activity so I'll be eased gently into empty days that I have to fill with my own ingenuity/ creativity. There are so many nice things one can do around here but my aim is to use the time to write, not fill it up with writer's groups, art lessons and Toastmasters (although it's tempting because they are a jolly bunch.... I went to their Christmas Dinner where we played 'Call My Bluff'  and my mate J, somewhat in her cups, gave us a rendering of 'Right Said Fred' in a thick Lancashire accent.)

 We shall see.

I thought I liked the poetry of Yeats but when I looked through my grand Folio Society ‘complete works of’ I couldn’t find anything that sparked for me today. Probably tomorrow things will be different. What I did read, in his ‘General Introduction,’ was the following:

“A poet writes always of his personal life, in his finest work out of its tragedy, whatever it be, remorse, lost love or mere loneliness; he never speaks directly as to someone at the breakfast table, there is always a phantasmagoria. Even when the poet seems most himself he has been reborn as an idea, something intended, complete.” 

 later: “.....we adore him because nature has grown intelligible, and by doing so a part of our creative power.”  

Also: “We know everything because we are everything.”

It’s thoughts like these that make me adore Yeats!

I’ve also been re-reading Lessing’s ‘The Four-Gated City’ looking for something different to the last read-through, the generated thoughts rather than the story-line. There’s a moment when Martha Quest, watching the young teenage son of her employer, realises he is in that brief flash of beauty that boys pass through somewhere in adolescence, the moment before they become solid, crystalised, set into their moulds. The moment when choir boys look like angels and rather take ones breath away.Young girls see Francis simply as a handsome boy; ‘To see the rest one had to be a conspirant with time. That’s what age brings, new insights, new perspectives.’

A few not-very-clear photos of photos of Nicholas Roerich's paintings. Not clear enough and not intense enough but I wanted to show Gillian. I would love to see the originals. Along with Chagall and Franz Marc he is a favourite of mine. I do like colour, especially blue, and they all use it so well.

The Sandman and I enjoyed ‘Skyfall.’  Who wouldn’t! ( Probably my ex, who would have found the volume reprehensibly high. I love it when the seats vibrate!) The motorbike chase at the outset, across the rooftops of the Grand Bazaar somewhere in Turkey (Istanbul?) was excellent, although my old-wifey personality deplored the waste of good fruit as stalls crumbled and melons rolled. Sandy says I jumped noticeably several times in the course of the film; I probably did. The mark of a good movie IMO is  if it gets my gut reacting.

The funny bits, nicely timed, were the best of course, and there were plenty, though distressingly often mixed up with killing moments, of which there were far too many.  Bond may not have shown (as much) callousness over his female conquests, but he does take corpses in his stride. (except one, but to name that would be a spoiler). Best moment, if I have to pick one,  was Judi Dench’s cultured voice ordering, with lady-like asperity , an operative to  ‘Take the bloody shot.’  

JD is my favourite ever actress. (Spell-check is very proper and doesn’t like that. I should have put ‘actor. ‘ Get stuffed Sp-ch.) I talent-spotted her in the early 70’s when she was in a TV production ( forgotten the name of it of course.)* It was a family drama, each episode being the same event through the eyes of one of the main characters. She shone then, and has shone ever since. 

I also enjoyed the new Q,  a boffin-geek, barely out of teenage acne, who cheerfully shows Bond up for being outdated and possibly obsolete.

Location shots were highly enjoyable too, especially as they came up the A9 to the Highlands - almost home!

S and I played air-hockey in the cinema foyer whilst we waited for the pop-corn to be mucked out from the last showing.  Now there’s a game I could get enthusiastic about. Does it count as a sport? I almost broke a sweat.  

* Thanks to Google: It was 'Talking to a Stranger' by John Hopkins and was in 4 episodes!

Four Quartets.

With nothing much to read (except Stephen King’s ‘11.22.63’ which is so far rather good) I felt in a mood for some poetry. ‘The Four Quartets’ is always my first choice when I get into that mood and I always find some salient wisdom.

From:    Burnt Norton:

Footfalls echo in the memory

Down the passage which we did not take

Towards the door we never opened

Into the rose-garden. My words echo

Thus in your mind.

                             But to what purpose

Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves

I do not know.

.......

Go, go, go said the bird: human kind

Cannot bear very much reality.

...........

Time past and time future

What might have been and what has been

Point to one end, which is always present.

From:   East Coker

Home is where one starts from. As we grow older

The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated

Of dead and living. Not the intense moment

Isolated, with no before and after.

--------

Trying to use words, and every attempt

Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure.

Because one has only learned to get the better of words.

from:  Little Gidding.

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started. 

-------

And all shall be well and

All manner of things shall be well

by the purification of the motive

In the ground of our beseechings.

(these first two lines, quoted from Julien of Norwich, always make me tearful.)

10 days into the South Beach Diet (similar to Atkins but fat-free-ish with less steak and bacon) I have developed a radical, nausea-driven, dislike of eggs that will follow me through the rest of my life, so breakfast has had to include carbs in the form of these devilish crispbreads that have virtually nothing of anything in them but fibre. They taste like heaven. The spread is Benecol. the cheese is reduced fat. 

Last week I felt extremely ill, getting lots of those moments when the world goes white. I checked with the new medication and read: ‘Should not be taken by those on a diet of less than 1000 calories a day.”  I wasn’t eating anywhere near that amount. Anyway, it’s settled down now and with a bit of adaptation (no more fecking eggs for breakfast) I should be able to keep it up for a while. It has been a problem because I’m lazy about cooking for myself and when I get home from the shop at 2.30 I want something instant which has usually meant fish (quick dry-fried) or organic tinned tomato soup which has, distressingly, got sugar in it!  The fish is OK (there has been some wonderful Dover sole on sale ) but there’s only so much fish I can eat in a week. The diet encourages steak (the man’s an American after all) which I don’t normally eat but by the end of last week all the customers were beginning to look like steaks so I bought a couple of slices of sirloins, then had beef at the  carvery  with Sanders on Sunday. The customers are safe.

A couple of inches have gone from where my waist should be and where the ‘Cushon Syndrome’ from the prednisilone has settled. I still won’t be asked onto the catwalk but I suppose it’s a result. No idea if I’ve lost weight - it’ll just be water so far anyway. My BMI was fine before but 12 yr olds have to tell you to do something in order to feel they have the power. Huff!

I can’t help feeling proud of myself as I baked the required 4 Christmas cakes and three pudding whilst in the early days of starvation without stealing so much as a single current.That’s will-power for you - or the need to outwit the 12yr old who wanted to double the dose of medication without even a second blood test. 

I’m too much of a coward to ditch the doctors altogether as two of my friends with high prostate scores for cancer have done. Both seem to have found alternative ways of dealing with the disease, one including marijuana. Now, hearing about the other, the second is off to Amsterdam tomorrow to go that happy route.