Yuletide rant Number, probably about 20.

So, the tide of red, gold and green twaddle is upon us again. It's been a very busy year here, but even so it only seems a few weeks ago that I was stripping the old baubles from last years tree - now brown, needle denuded and waiting to become kindling. The air of festive desperation appears more marked than ever this year, and, with added Black Friday mania, the whole lead up to that one day of infant-worship feels terrifying and sickening - to me anyway. 

Do not get me inaccurate, I love Christmas, or at least certain aspects of it: making mince pies, hauling out the ancient and much loved decorations, adding green stuff to the home; carols from Liverpool Cathedral, and the opening of presents, et al. It's the shopping mania I hate; the encouragement of supermarkets to buy absolute crap, truckloads of chocolate, force-fed duck products, cheeky Santa underwear, special yuletide bedlinen and china; meaningless, soulless, worthless, junk.

On entering our biggest supermarket a couple of days ago, I observed the towering cathedral of chocolate boxes, BlackFriday/Xmas promoted Barbi's/Harry Potter/Starwars merch and felt overwhelmingly anxious about the state of the planet, especially our wealthy sections of it. After buying a couple of unavailable-elsewhere essential items I slipped out again and went off to Emmaus to buy a few old canvasses to paint on. Afore-mentioned shop has a great department of second hand red, gold and green festive accessories, complete with nativity sets, hand crafted pallet wood Christmas trees and boxes of baubles - fill a bag for 20 cents. My Scroogeness calmed down, and a small warm feeling of Christmas prep stated to roam about in my stubborn mind. We shall be buying second hand from Vinted, making a festive table from charity shop accessories, and spending time making celebratory food near and on the day. 

And I shall visit one or more churches to perhaps light a candle and think about what all this consumerism madness month is really about, whatever I believe or don't. 

 

Past and present

Some folk don't like to look back at the past - done, onward, next thing, but there must be a reason for us to have this incredible ability to store images, thoughts; replay whole tracts of time in slightly 50s Technicolour.
I feel we should consider the past fascinating - good and bad. You learn from things you have done, improve (hopefully) and mature as a person; replay the exhilarating, sometimes difficult, exciting, and just heart-warming times - meeting the significant other, birthdays, pregnancy and birth, Christmases, your child's first bike ride, the success of a project, particular concerts, moving into a new house, observing a garden take shape, and a million other things.
On the subject of new houses and gardens. This is a before and after of the terrace of our new (1975 villa) house back in 2011 - and now on the day I write this post - 15th June, 2019.
What a difference some plants make, as Dinah Washington sang . . .
The first thing we did after roughly moving belongings into place was to find a metal-working person, put up a structure and plant vines. It's all a bit out of control now being somewhat live and let live gardeners but it is a wonderful sight when the roses are out, and the terrace becomes our dining and sitting room during the spring and summer.
Maybe when we have moved to something a little smaller, wherever that will be, I will recall those hot days under the vine leaves; days of salad, chat, accordion, fan whirring and dogs stretched out on the warm concrete.

                     

                                 2011

                 

                         2019

                             

Christmas, train delays and enforced socialising.

Sorry, another (minor) rant, but I am feeling somewhat jaded by a four hour unintentional wait in Alton and Woking due to disruptions on the Waterloo line.
Woking . . . never had the pleasure, or otherwise, to investigate the town centre so am doing so in a slightly dispirited way due to dragging suitcase around and feeling nasty from possible take-away tea poisoning.

                      

                                Rather worrying sculpture in Woking's shopping district

Lots of usual UK high street shops, many, many chain restaurants, small plastic potted christmas trees suspended from shop fronts, the biggest Superdrug I've ever seen containing vast swathes of sparkly landfill and, Poundland. I have just spent five minutes looking vaguely at phone charges as I failed to pack one for my travels but can't imagine that something electronic costing a pound would actually work so have bought one from a bored-looking youth sitting on a stool at one of those shopping-mall 'islands' of more stuff that's not actually in a shop - whatever they are called. An open-air shop? except it's in shopping mall air.


                                                                     ho-ho-ho

                        
 
                                                                 Do I have to . . .

Brexit has forced Christmas even more into the spotlight this year. There's a palpable air of festive desperation in the shops - let's forget the political chaos and forge ahead with total green, red and gold indulgence. Plan your perfect Christmas lunch, tree, TV watching schedule. Do it all NOW. Except the shops appear somewhat deserted - at three o'clock in the afternoon I would have thought they'd be under shopping-siege.

Finally, back on a train.
The youth assured me the charger would work, and indeed so far it does plug into the phone but there's no plug socket on this now-delayed train to try it out with. Ah. Train is moving. Everyone is settling down with tablets, computers and crisps happy in the knowledge that finally we will be reaching our destinations.
Nope. We have arrived in Eastleigh and are now apparently stuck behind a broken down freight train.
An hour later.
The freight train is irreparable. We are all being asked to get out and wait until something else happens. A feeling that I am in some weird purgatory has mantled itself about me. I will be forced to live out this afternoon of Woking-exploration and investigation of Eastleigh station. Forever.
I have joined a queue in Platform two's café where a slight air of rioting over the remaining sausage rolls is noticeable.
No - wait. News of a train that might be going to Bournemouth. Mass surge over to the Cross-Country train (different train company - Please, please, France DO NOT privatise!!!) I squish on with everyone else and we wait in the corridor next to the loo which looks surprisingly like a bad Dr Who set. Eventually the train moves, and, as humans do in times of minor chaos, start interacting.
The woman next to me and her friend have both just taken their girls up to perform in a dance event at the ex-millenial Dome. Another woman has been to stay with her daughter in Islington, and another a shopping trip to London. We chat about trains, the new Queen film, joke about the loo door swishing open as various of us make use of the facilities, and it's . . . nice! I borrow one of their phones as mine has died, blag some water from another, sweets are passed around and eyebrows raised at the young couple engaged in passing the time without talking . . .
If the shared train mess-ups hadn't happened we'd have all been sitting silently prodding away at screens, safe in our own individual spheres.
An hour later at Bournemouth, two of the women and me are going to share a cab. We find one, carry on talking, now about London and the cabbie joins in at my mention of Muswell Hill.
He: "I was born there."
Me: "No . . . so was I!
When the other ladies get out we continue reminiscing over life in Muswell hill, our respective schools, lidos, that sort of early concentrated orange juice, the first Sainsburys on the Broadway, Saturday morning pictures at the Odean, cafés, pet shops, the view over the rest of London at night . . . When he drops me we realise our mothers followed exactly the same life-pattern - leaving London to start a new life in Wimborne, only a couple of roads from each other . . .
We exchange a last few 'wow, weird' comments, he gets my case out and I gratefully enter my cousins house to be welcomed with tea and suggestions of hot bath, soup and electric blanket. Things that might have seemed part of a faraway dream while waiting on Alton station's freezing platform nine hours ago.

What's it all about?

This year, amongst all the wrapping paper, presents, food prep and celebratory glasses of fizz, I felt there had to be a point where we stopped to think about what this once-a-year madness actually represents.

Some years we have gone to a midnight mass or walked down to a morning service, but as we don't actually visit any churches during the passing months apart from out of a desire to admire their construction and artefacts, joining a service didn't seem particularly meaningful.
Going up to the highest point in the area and really having a think about The World and us in it, did, and up at the highest point near us there happens to be a tiny church which (unlike most churches around here) is always open - probably as there is nothing inside worth making off with.

We drove up the twisting road, let the dogs out for a whirlwind canter around the bald fields (750 meters altitude) had a brisk walk (9 degrees rather than the more balmy 13 down in Limoux) and then visited the edifice with our plaster statue of Christ rescued from a bin at our local recycling place . . . 

I don't know what I believe - agnostic? a confused but interested wonderer more likely, anyway, mindful enough to feel that I wished to mark such a hugely fussed-over event in some way other than presents and eating too much.
The church had its usual festive-time decoration of white plastic tree, tinsel, and small nativity scene. I added Christ to the altar with some olive twigs and a candle and we sat for a moment, possibly not doing much more than trying to imagine how the medieval church-builders had fabricated anything so solid and elegant miles up from the nearest settlement without so much as a tile-cutter but it felt oddly moving, more so than standing within a mass of people who, like ourselves for the most part would probably only be there for the one event.
The day has been wonderful, the hours moving slowly as they seem to on the 25th of December as a rule - time spent with your favourite (hopefully) people, in my case, thankfully, yes; many wonderful gifts, food, reading, walking etc, but somehow all the much richer for sitting quietly for a few moments in that small, seldom visited church.



medieval church in the tiny hamlet of St Salvayre near Alet les Bains.

Happy Christmas

                                   


                                  

time and distance

I often stand still when somewhere completely quiet and try to imagine the mayhem of, say, Oxford Street on a day leading up to Christmas. Or inversely stand still on Oxford Street - causing ardent shoppers to push past with a brief look back: mad, obviously - and try to imagine a placid and empty hill in, say, the foothills of the Pyrenees.
It seems almost impossible that these places exist when you're not actually there. Then I start thinking about members of my family and friends - what are they doing at this precise moment when I am standing gawping at a blossom-loaded tree? sorting out the cupboard under the stairs? eating a cheese sandwich? sitting with a cup of coffee and wondering what their family and friends might be doing?
Then I might start thinking about The Big Question, or one of the big questions, - what is Space exactly; what is beyond our solar system and where does it end? But it can't end; what is holding it all in place and is space a series of giant boxes or spheres; a vast set of Russian dolls - probably not best to think about it at all.
Anyway . . . I happened to notice a number of planes passing over our patch of The Earth this morning; more than usual in fact. I stood for quite a long time considering the fact that unlike the Oxford St/Pyrenees thing I could see the plane at such a huge distance, and, people on board, eating peanuts, drinking tea or trying to ignore the child kicking the seat behind them, could look out and see, not me, probably, but certainly our house.
I always spend any flight with nose pressed to the oval window looking out on the passing millions of dwellings wondering if people are looking up and thinking about who might be on board and what they might be reading/eating/ drinking. Air to land psychogeography? or just nosiness on a grand scale. Anyway, again, time to put the kettle on and stop avoiding jobs to be done.

And no religion too . . .

Religion as defined by the on-line dictionary - with no mention of storming into newspaper offices with loaded weaponry.

A set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, especially when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs.


I don't know what I follow: never have done, possibly paganism if anything - gawper at the stars, general believer in humans being insignificant specks on this space-sphere and mostly fucking it up for all other life forms.
I recall going to a Bar Mitzvah in Tottenham when I was about six with Mum and her sighing as she said: "I really do wish I could believe in a religion."
We did regularly to go to church - for jumble sales, and despite not observing anything much more than BIG events, such as Christmas, I've always shared her fascination for religion, and the slight envy at people being able to believe in there being someone/something overseeing all this mayhem.
Today, it seems even more unlikely (see last post) and I feel happier just being a wonderer; the slight envy? Gone.

Christmas will be gold, crinkly and knobbly

As decreed by Ferrero SpA: massive corp that is apparently responsible for churning out the most boring (according to our households' tastebuds) chocolate . . . the Ferrero Rocher (rock in french). They own Nutella, so, not surprisingly each 'spherical chocolate sweet' - (wikipedia) contains a good dollop of the brown stuff along with an unsuspecting entombed hazelnut making up a total calorific value of 73 calories.
Actually, I've just noticed SpA is also the name of France's chain of dogs' homes . . . wonder what else is in them.
The reason I'm rambling about this is the result of my annual shock on seeing the ever-increasing chocolate displays in the local supermarkets as Christmas approaches with all the red/gold/fois gras/gallons of fizz/last desperate purchasing mania that we have somehow created.
On my last trip to Leclerc recently, I listened to some poor woman as I stood waiting for the promised offcut-dogmeat to be wheeled in. Her job was to trap people into buying more chocolate than they might have envisaged buying.
"Mesdames, c'est moi le chocolat, " - "Madames, it is me the chocolate!" (odd phrase) she called with the nagging repetition of a small child at a sweets-infested checkout.
I looked at her smallish black-clad form standing between two towering displays of Ferrero Rocher and suddenly felt very worried. It was like being in Terry Gilliam's 'Brazil' where it has become eternally Christmas and everyone is giving and receiving the same present - F. R in this case.
Mark has come home each day this week from the Conservatoire holding various presents from pupil's parents. Nearly all of them feel like a plastic round-edged box that give out a certain muffled rattle - that of spherical chocolates containing a hazelnut.

It's December so it must be . . .

Christmas . . . unless someone discovers very quickly that Jesus was in fact born in Woverhampton on the seventh of July.
Yes, we are shuddering inexorably towards that crucial date for which a hanger's worth of festive twaddle must be bought, obscene amounts of food stocked and permanent smiles fixed as much-loved relatives such as warty and irritable Aunty Joan are welcomed to the hearth and table.
Each year my keening for a lonely beach and a small fuggy café where we can sit eating egg on toast quietly reflecting on the year, increases. But fun must be had, Mary Poppins watched, paper hats worn and terrible cracker jokes read.
I love it really.
No, I do, it's just all the overfed lead up to it - like some glittery nightmare turkey increasing in size each day, stuffed with internet purchases and credit card limits. What is it all really about?
Jesus. A baby who was presented with three gifts: an iphone, a play station and Grand Theft Auto.
I think we have lost the plot, or it was lost for us by desperate manufacturers.
Anyway. This post was meant to be about the yearly visit of the postmen, bin men and firemen and the delight of receiving their calendar for the coming year. Not.

Why don't they make something different? I don't want three dreadful calendars that are so covered with ads that you can't write take dog to vet on them. Or at least it could be a cheeky one with firemen sliding down greasy poles wi nowt on . . . but then thinking about some of our local firefighters . . . maybe not. Just a promise to turn up if one's house catches fire would be fine. I'm happy to donate, but we don't need a calendar - thanks.
The firemen calendar is informative on the whole: pictures of people dressed in dark clothing directing water onto flames and the like. The postmen and bin men ones are usually a selection of choc box images: flowers, kittens, palm trees on white beaches, simpering kids; well I suppose a snap of a couple of overflowing bins or the local tip might not be considered . . . nice.
One of my favourite images in our 1970's photo-plastered loo is a 1974 calendar pic of three bin men in Collioure (highly picturesque seaside town) The choc box idea went a little askew that year . . .

Oh no . . . it's time to be happy.

But . . . it's too early, I want to be miserable for at least another month.
It's sad, but France seems to be catching up with America and the UK - Christmas shite in full stockage at Leclerc yesterday. I only went in to get some dog food and a packet of yeast but had to get through an assault course of chocolate and bauble nonsense to get to the sensible areas of of the shop.
I'm still in shock that people were there picking up plastic Santa Clause effigies and tins of nasty looking fois gras as if there was about to be a war and thus a shortage of these essential items.
What would Christmas be without matching gold-starred plates and glasses, and without a box of Ferrero Rocher as big as a sofa. By the way, who eats these things? They appear to be made of recycled loo roll inners and Nutella. Mark's just told me that FR own Nutella, so no surprise there. In fact it's worth reading a story in the Guardian yesterday about Nutella and palm oil (which makes up 20% of it's bulk). Apparently 235,000 tons of the stuff are consumed each year. The fact that 100 million pots are consumed annually in France alone has alerted the government to consider a 'fat tax' - the wonderfully named, 'Nutella amendment'.
FR is a marketing hype success story beyond all others, remember the adverts . . . how to sell something utterly . . . dull, very very well. Environmental packaging nightmare too. RANT over now . . . where was I? Oh yes, Christmas. I noticed our town have started putting the decorations up a little earlier each year, but so far nothing is illuminated until December itself; I hope this is going to be the case this year. Any sniff of a suspended jolly lightbulb before that and I shall be writing to the council. Huh!
Actually, I love Christmas - well, the day itself, possibly the day before and even the day after. A small isolated patch of time where the phone doesn't ring much and going out for a nice brisk walk all wrapped up seems even better than usual. Lovely food, fire, slippers, carols, and joy to all men, even that git who drives a Ferrari up our tiny road at 120 kms an hour. Apart from that it should all stay in a box in the attic until next year.
May all your Christmas's be white and not vaguely grey and drizzly.