A Bit of a Retrospective.

This year has been something of a singular one in the life of JJ for reasons which will be obvious to those who sat through all the whingeing and moping I did during the first half of it. And so, it being the evening of 31^st December, I suppose I should write something of a retrospective. That’s what blogs are for, isn’t it? But what can I say that didn’t get said during the running, contemporary commentary?

Nothing much, except to offer a few minor observations and hope to be excused for indulging the trivial:

1. Matters which have interested me vaguely all my life were suddenly thrown into much sharper relief – issues like meaning, motivation and the awareness of mortality. They were elevated to a higher mental chamber where the light is brighter and the shadows behind the furniture all the deeper for it.

2. I got to learn quite a lot about those parts of the body which we don’t usually talk about, and quite a lot more about how the experts seek to find out what’s wrong with them.

3. I further got to learn that the experts aren’t always quite as expert as you’d like them to be. When I was in my fourth hour of quite extreme pain and asked the registrar: ‘… but I’d just drunk a litre of water. Where had it all gone?’ he shook his head, shrugged his shoulders, and said: ‘Dunno.’

4. I also learned just how much I kick and scream mentally at the feeling that my movements are being controlled by somebody holding a rope that’s tied around my neck. It was nothing new, but it became a whole lot clearer. As a result, the thought of tethered or trapped animals became more horrific than ever, and the knowledge that slavery, abuse and armed conflict still happen brought the human condition into even more abject perspective.

5. For eighteen hours I had a young Asian woman less than half my age playing the role of surrogate mother with ease and skill. I decided that nurses are pretty bloody fabulous.

On Politeness, Prejudice and Style.

A man bumped into my shopping trolley in the supermarket today and apologised profusely. It was actually mostly my fault because I had the damn thing sticking out into the aisle, and so I said ‘That’s OK; my fault.’ And then he apologised again. A little while later I was in a woman’s way, and when I moved she didn’t say ‘thank you,’ she said ‘sorry.’

That’s what we Brits are like, you know. We have a compulsion to be polite, and even apologise when there’s no rational reason to do so. Which isn’t to claim that there are no impolite people in Britain. There are. And yet the xenophobes who pollute our culture are still ready to take the slightest perceived lack of politeness on the part of a foreigner or non-white person, and take it as proof that they were right all along and the Channel Tunnel should be filled in with reinforced concrete as a matter of urgency.

That’s sad, isn’t it?

*  *  *

But on the way back to the car I saw something I like to see: a young man running with his dog along the footpath. It struck me that if all young men had a dog and ran with it, the world would probably be a nicer place.

*  *  *

And there’s a middle aged couple I often see in Uttoxeter whose dress sense and general manner would be difficult to describe, so let’s just say that it’s notably different than the norm and arguably somewhat foppish. It isn’t my place to judge them, of course; what they wear is their business and nobody else’s.

But I was tempted to consider a question when they came into the coffee shop today. I think it reasonable to presume that they would call their dress sense ‘stylish,’ whereas I would describe it as ‘flamboyant.’ I’m sure the two concepts are different, but there’s an area of overlap between the two which is clearly grey. And so the question is: where do you draw the line?

Being neither stylish nor flamboyant myself, I’m in no position to offer an opinion.

*  *  *

And I encountered two young women of my acquaintance in Uttoxeter. One held my hand briefly; the other looked at me before walking on without speaking. Ah well, I suppose life’s about nothing if not mixed fortunes.

The Glumness of the Swede.

I just watched a Swedish psychological drama on the TV and now I’m in a bad mood. Swedish dramas have a habit of doing that, don’t they? Think of Ingmar Bergman and you’ll know what I mean. And what about Greta Garbo? She wasn’t exactly the life and soul of the party, was she?

Maybe that’s what it’s all about. Maybe she was searching for her soul, because Swedish dramas always seem to be about soul-searching people spreading glumness and grinding self-reflection in their wake. Or it could be that living in a country which extends north of the Arctic Circle gives you the right to go about depressing everybody who doesn’t. Then again, it could be that the Swedes are a really happy bunch of people who just don’t want anybody else to know it or we might all go there and make pathetic jokes:

‘Are you a Swede?’

Ja.

‘Oh, good. Got room for a few turnips?’

You can’t really blame them, can you?

I only ever knew one Swede personally. His name was Stefan and I never saw the slightest sign that he was searching for his soul. What I most remember about Stefan was that he was friendly, intelligent, polite, personable, a little on the serious side, spoke English so perfectly that you would never have guessed he was a Swede, and that he didn’t have blond hair.

Actually, that’s not entirely true. What I most remember about Stefan was that he screwed up my blossoming relationship with an attractive young theatre designer and I didn’t speak to him for several weeks. I relented eventually because he’d never intended to trip me up, poor chap, and I’d made an error of judgement anyway. And it’s an odd coincidence that the attractive young theatre designer did have blonde hair.

But there you go, you see? Meet a Swede and you end up depressed. Where on earth do I go from here?

On Belgian Chocs and Being Un-American.

I was given a box of Belgian chocolates this Christmas and they’re quite small by the standards normally expected of that excellent breed of confectionary comestibles. A whole one fits easily into an average mouth without risk of imitating a Texas redneck eating two whole burgers at once so as to stop the right side of his mouth being jealous of the left. Let’s face it, nothing in the whole world does gross and uncouth better than the good ol’ boy from the South.

(Hey, it’s Christmas so let’s have a go at Americans. Yeah, why not? If they can put a brain dead albino warthog into the White House, they can hardly complain. Although I will admit that Lisa Edelstein does have remarkably sexy eyes, and New England accents, at least when employed by young women, are pretty damn cute. But on the other hand, they did invent Walt Disney…)

But to continue my point about small Belgian chocolates:

What’s interesting is that, despite being only about five average chews big, a single chocolate has the remarkable capacity to demolish my appetite for several hours afterwards. And that makes me wonder whether Belgian chocolates should be recommended to those undertaking calorie-controlled diets.

(If my last trip to New Orleans was anything to go by, I’m guessing that Americans never submit to calorie-controlled diets. I assume they’re deemed unpatriotic and banned under some sort of Un-American Activities legislation.)

This is an example of British humour. And it is Christmas, so nothing harder than snowballs please, you Yankees. And I wanted to make fifty posts for the month in case I die tonight. (I was going to mention those middle aged American women with blue hair who spend the day comfortably ensconced on a florid couch, surrounded by lapdogs and sugary things and watching endless re-runs of TV-shows-from-the-basement, but decided against it. Besides, they’re not exactly unheard of in my country.)

On the Significance of the Mince Pie.

We start with a simple quiz:

‘What are the two great culinary icons of Christmas in the British Isles?’

Turkey and mince pies.

‘Correct. But suppose you’re vegetarian?’

Then the humble mince pie stands alone and proudly aloof as the only culinary marker of the festive season.

Correct again, and that’s why one of my very few nods to the Christmas tradition is to buy and eat a box of mince pies. And I pay due homage to the yuletide connection by never eating the first pie until Christmas Eve, and making sure that I leave the last one until New Year’s Eve.

Excuse me.

‘What?’

You have a bottle of port as well.

‘I know, but you don’t eat port; you drink it.’

Does that make a difference?

‘Yes.’

Oh.

My mother used to make her own mince pies, of course, and so did a neighbour of mine called Dorothy who was the closest I ever encountered to a Christian in the nicest sense of the word. But Dorothy belonged to a previous incarnation in another Shire many leagues from here and many moons in my past. And my mother is well settled in the undiscovered country, so these days I buy them in a box from the supermarket.

And so the tradition is now firmly established. Some time shortly after nightfall on Christmas Eve I open my box of mince pies, remove one carefully so as to spill no crumbs, and then declaim: ‘Greetings, oh humble icon, and compliments of the season to you. I am about to devour you so as to prove to myself and any others who take an interest in my spiritual wellbeing that I have no truck with prisons or workhouses, nor any desire to see the surplus population reduced. Your humble life is, therefore, and though short, of great significance, and you stand rightly esteemed before the heavenly host.’ And then I eat the mince pie (hoping all the time that I've just been talking to something entirely lacking in sentience because it would bother me a lot to see it shiver.)

My hero

And mince pies are not always humble, you know. All you have to do is add a little more butter to the flour, make the pastry thicker, stir something alcoholic and posh like brandy into the filling, and you have a confection fit to take pride of place among those smug, self-satisfied suburbanites smiling their sickly smiles on TV cookery shows. Or so I'm told.

But mine are humble. They come packed in a box of six for £1 from Tesco. Seems more fitting, somehow.

When Eyes Deceive.

There was a particularly striking young woman in the coffee shop today, and I’m sure my motive will escape misconstruction when I say that it is ever my need to discover what factor or factors are the cause of making a striking young woman look particularly so. And that’s why I studied her face for a few seconds and soon realised that the primary agent was her eye make-up. It was heavy.

So then I perused the fact over my Americano and quite expensive Belgian something-or-other fancy bun, and soon came to an interesting conclusion. The appearance of a person’s eyes can be, and usually are, radically altered by the strength and style of eye make-up. And you now what that means: it means you can neither assess their outer selves nor trust the inner person. That’s because:

a. You don’t know what they actually look like in real life, and

b. The revelations about character traits, which are usually so reliable if you know how to read them, are all but lost behind a cloaking device of Klingon-esque proportions.

So that must be my lesson for today. When encountering heavy eye make-up, ask first what it is trying to hide. (And while I’m at it, scorn the skilled make-up artist who works to create a false face in order to trap the unwary.)

I lived with a woman for three years once and never saw her without make-up, including the painted eyes variety. Every night at bed time she would disappear into the bathroom, there to remove the jaded mask and don a new one. And then she would emerge from the cocoon a freshened but flatteringly false butterfly. What time was left the relationship became characterised first by acrimony, and then silence, and then separation. And I never did get to find out what she really looked like or what she really meant when she said 'God will punish you.'

Vicarious Discomfort.

You know, I always find it most uncomfortable to watch somebody playing a long solo on the flute. I keep needing to take deep breaths because I feel I’m short of oxygen. It was the same when I watched Harry Potter dive into the freezing pool – having had to break the ice first – to retrieve the sword of Gryffindor. I had to put an extra sweater on. I expect the psychologists have a name for it.

The Human Touch.

I was just watching an old episode of House in which the young woman doctor in the team – whose name I can never remember so let’s call her Doris – is being told off by the consultant oncologist for being unprofessional.

Dr Onc – because I can never remember his name either – has been watching the lovely Doris chatting amiably with a young woman patient who has just been revealed to be suffering from terminal lung cancer. What Doris should have been doing was not chatting amiably, but calmly informing the patient that she has only about six months to live.

‘It’s not your job to be her friend,’ says the very professional Dr Onc rather too sternly for my liking.

But the lovely Doris seeks to correct him. She informs him that the patient has nobody close in her life. Her husband has left her, her parents are dead, etc, etc. And then she gives him the punch line:

‘When somebody dies it should matter. Somebody should be upset.’

Well, I’m not entirely sure that I agree with her, but I did appreciate the thought.

Picking the Bones of Christmases Past.

As the course of yet another Christmas Day runs inexorably to a close, I find myself looking back and trying to remember details about the many which have gone before. It surprises me that the album of Christmas memories is so sparsely occupied. Most of them seem to have congealed into a gloopy mass of inconsequence, which is odd given how magical I found Christmas during a couple of phases in my life.

I remember the two bad ones well enough – the one in which my 17-month-old daughter was badly scalded and spent Christmas in a specialist burns hospital, and the one in which I was literally on the verge of suicide. And then there was the amusing one when a young actress friend of mine from the theatre invited me to the flat she and her husband were renting at the end of my street. When I got there at around 7pm she was just putting the turkey into the oven, and was suitably horrified when I pointed out that a turkey that size would take around 4½-5 hours to cook. She was young, as I said, and it was her first married Christmas. She’d never cooked a turkey before and hadn’t bothered to research the matter, so we ate rather late that Christmas night. The following year I went to stay with them in London. That was when I had that surreal experience of lying on a four poster bed in a room above an Italian restaurant in Soho, talking all sorts of drivel to a similarly-recumbent middle aged woman while sundry thespians wandered around the bed in party atmosphere.

So that’s four, and that’s virtually it – apart from the one which I consider the best. It was the first year in which I was allowed to stay home instead of accompanying my parents on the reciprocal visit to Mr and Mrs Greenwood. Being on my own at Christmas, playing with the half size snooker table which had been my main gift, was an enlightening experience which led me to understand my distaste for too much close company. I was fourteen at the time and the reclusive tendency was in its early stages, but it grew as the years and the lady companions came and went. And that’s how I got to where I am today.

But now I have to write a brief note back to my young friend in America who tells me that my grammar is 'really nice.' She says she loves magic and still believes in Santa Claus. Such are the people I cope with best these days.

Christmas Day Notes.

I’ve thought about Christmas from all possible angles and I still don’t know why people do it, allowing themselves in the process to be subjected to all manner of social and financial pressures. I assume it has something to with the cultural togetherness thing, which is why it’s such a mystery to me.

The correct answer to the question ‘how many wise men were there?’ is: nobody knows. I gather the Bible doesn’t say, although I admit I haven’t checked.

I've decided that when people ask me why I don’t have a Christmas tree or decorate my house in any way, I should do the sad face and tell them it’s because I have nobody to share it with. It strikes me that it would make a fitting antidote to being called Scrooge.

I had a visitor this morning – a slug in my kitchen. It’s quite common to get slugs in my kitchen at night, but almost unheard of during daylight hours. I supposed it had something to with it being Christmas Day. I’ve never had a visitor on Christmas Day in this house before.

It hasn’t escaped my notice that even visits to my blog plummet on Christmas Day. If I didn’t know better I’d assume that people have something more interesting to engage with.

I did go for a walk today after all, but chose a time and route which would minimise the risk of being accosted by trite and inappropriate felicitations. It worked.

The bottle of port I just finished off was about seven years old, so now I’m wondering whether the new one I subsequently opened, and which I bought last week, has any chance of being consumed before I head off into the undiscovered country. I also wonder whether they have Christmas in the undiscovered country.