and then …

Do you think that the more and the longer you build up to something (ie Christmas and New Year), the further to fall in comedown when it’s all over ?  

And over so fast.   Buns calling from Mayo remarked  “ those discarded trees in the street say it all.”  And poor old January, despised of months – the weather chills, the bills come in, those so-and-so resolutions,  remaindered as a long series of pieces about joining the gym or LinkedIn, laying off alcohol, any excuse to go away, everything deferred

surfaces again.

A couple of days before Christmas, I greeted a young Asian with “Good morning” on the way to get the paper.   He stared.  “Good morning” I insisted, smiling.  He grinned, taken aback, got on his bike and called back to me “God bless you, lady.”   “You too” I called, waving and he waved too.  A living Christmas card with a phrase from a book or a film.  

I spent Christmas morning – candles lit in every room, yes, even the bathroom –      in bed with strong coffee, the best panettone

and my first ever John Banville called April in Spain which is not a new book but was recommended as prep for his new one by a thoughtful reviewer.

This is not a course open to anyone with young children or a pet or a dependent of any kind.  It was open to me and I loved it.  I read the book to the end, about 2.30.  I can’t remember anything on terrible tv except a news check. 

On New Year’s Day my son asked what I wanted for the ensuing year and I retorted  “You mean apart from a change in government …?”    He asked again when I saw him and I said easier movement walking, we talked about physio and I told him my best news was goodbye to the energy company that has caused me so much distress.

We all have desperate moments. 

Something happens that is outside the normal run of things and this is often heightened by being one of a couple, the other of whom is generally insouciant, believing somebody else will deal with whatever it is (usually you), or by being alone, when there isn’t anybody with whom to share your absurd but powerful sense of dread.  

And it is terror.  You wake at four, you sweat, you scheme and you try to talk firmly to yourself – don’t be silly, of course you can manage – but you don’t feel or think you can.  Once in conversation with a woman talking about being rescued,

I said, “What you want is a knight on a white charger.  I am just sure that if he turned up, he’d be rude, the horse would stand on my foot and I would get (excuse me) shit on my shoe !”  And we laughed, good old Anna.  Not much of her in evidence at the hands of edf.

My rescuers were private people.   If I wrote about them, they’d hate it but they knocked the  longed for knightly rescuer into his own helmet.  And I live to fight another day.   As did the subpostmasters.

If you ever wanted proof of the value of a television dramatization, it would be Mr. Bates versus the Post Office. 

It made accessible a frighteningly debased story – the brutalisation to death in four cases, 33 dead while the cases remain unresolved – of decent hardworking often very useful people at the hands of their managers, mechanical and allegedly human.  Their worst fears were realised.

It highlights how helpless we are in the face of the so called “big boys”.  I think of the taxi driver turning thorough Hyde Park Corner years ago, saying to me “Very few of us ever get up off our knees.  We’re afraid of being shot at “  and the Chancellor on the news yesterday  saying “the government will do everything it can.”  So – when ?   The Post Office cannot pay and if the government offers to, that’s every tax payer.  Their money is our money. This is no longer a story on the inside pages.   The police are involved with the unenviable task of retrospective investigation.    And as Michael Flanders once sang “Back to bloody January again !”