two weeks’ worth

Because Christmas

and thus New Year fall mid week, we’re all going to be drowning in the holiday season, people are going away (hooray) and life will be a different shape except for those for whom it never is.  

I learned at nearly 13 that Christmas isn’t immovably wonderful which is probably why I feel so strongly about keeping the good bits fresh.  We say “don’t look back” but you do at Christmas, and in New Year, because if you have no memories you have no future – even if you are making memories for the first time this year.

I came out of Waterstones grinning from ear to ear, having seen all four of my favourite assistants in one go.  They are subject to some internal company rota, I see one or two at the most but they are all wonderful and it was a real pre Christmas boost.

As I emerged a woman backed into me and I said teasingly “Have you not got eyes in the back of your head?” and repeated it gently.  She laughed.  I was so proud that she laughed,

I went back to tell her – how lovely to make her laugh.  She said “I thought I would never laugh again,”  I asked why.  She said “Because my son was killed 48 hours ago.”  I asked what happened – it sounds like a stroke and for whatever reason it wasn’t picked up on fast enough – she said “I think it was because he was black, they thought he was drunk” – deteriorated and died.  I took her hands, I said how sorry I was very quietly and wished her peace.   

And I was very struck when a nothing if not positive friend remarked that this year, something is missing.  Well quite a lot is missing actually and the gap will not be plugged with elaborate meals and endless sweet stuff.   If you can afford it.  You have to believe in something,

even if it is only yourself.

This government is no better at communication that the last lot.   Sure, we’re in the financial cart for almost everything but there are better ways to introduce it to the beleaguered public than long , boring perorations.   Learn how to talk to people – in the stocking for the cabinet.  I mention this  (again) because it isn’t that they could do it better but they could package it better which would reduce the sting.

All I can remember about my Christmas stocking is that it was a wonderful knobbly surprise, which is what made it exciting.   The best thing in my stocking this Christmas would be peace – in Ukraine, Syria, Sudan and the list goes on.   I have learned to cherish peace, not just as the opposite of war – but as a state of mind.  

Yesterday a family up the road (ma, pa and “nearly 13” year old son) invited me to lunch.  The house shone, the food was lovely, the effort was generous.   Generosity goes in the stocking. And awareness and when to say “can’t do that any more “and withdraw for your own peace.

Ginny’s sister has an equally  particular nickname so I didn’t recognize her full name on the back of the cards she has begun to design and sell as part of recovery from a long and challenging marriage, three children and loss of self – self everything.  When I recognized  it, I wrote to her – She wrote back.  Worth jewels.  In the stocking.

All I recall about New Year was staying up  to see the New Year in  – which really meant listening to Big Ben on the then Home Service. My parents had a drink  – one drink, usually rum, the cheapest spirit – and I had a thimbleful with hot water and sugar.

This year has seen the failure of organized religion to offer the consolation we had thought to have from it, your religion or mine, the failure of theocracy to observe human decencies, to negotiate.

A Scottish neighbour who came to do me a kindness said the greatest failure was to cease to  talk – to talk across fear, stand off, difference – “because once that door is closed …” he said and shook his head. 

Whatever he has done or not done in Israel, you can’t deny that the chief US negotiator Anthony Blinken has worked at it.

We cannot know what efforts have been made in our names in a vast complicated state such as we live in.  We used to trust it but now we doubt it and doubt is a poor bedfellow.

So New Year is perhaps more important this year than often.  We need to believe  better is to come. 

So I shall light candles to that, and pray to all my gods, and for you who have walked the annalog walk for a long time.    

Back the week of 6 January 2025 and peace in your house.