Last of the year - be well and be happy!

One of the many nice things about going away for Christmas is that when you come back, it is as if it never happened. There is no tree, so no needles to litter the house for months and there are no decorations to take down. The small display of cards have already been removed, new addresses noted and the remnants consigned to the recycling bin. So it is all over again and it is New Year’s Eve.

Today is an excuse for many to drink themselves into stupors, and to pass on and collect infectious diseases of all descriptions. The pubs will be filled with persons in fancy dress costumes and to declare undying love to all those around them. Then a few will venture out into the cold and beat the living daylights out of each other as a way of demonstrating another sort of affection.

Many will, as sheep like tradition tells them, make New Year’s resolutions. How many will pledge to give up smoking, or alcohol, or excessive eating? How many will pledge to be nicer, kinder or more tolerant people? How many resolutions will last 24 hours? Things look different when you wake up with a headache.

Many of us will attend private parties, where we stand around with glasses that never seem to be empty, nibbling at food that we don’t really need, waiting for midnight to come so that we can sing a stupid Scottish song as the calendar flicks from 2008 to 2009. Everyone hopes that the next year will be so much better than the last. For some that will of course be the case, for many though it will be just the same. There will be ups and downs and everyone will get another year older. These so called special days are days of self delusion and fundamentally are no different to any other day. Why do we celebrate the end of a year or the beginning of another? Why not celebrate Sunday as a New Week day? I have no problem with celebration, but I’d prefer to celebrate something worthwhile. How about celebrating the beginning of spring, at least then the worst of the winter is behind us then. As you walk or totter home tonight, just think – the two worst months of the year are yet to come.

I will make no resolutions, but I do wish anyone who reads this, health and happiness for today and tomorrow and so on.

A family that eats together sleeps together

Well it is almost here, the madness will end in waves of disappointment, and landfill sites wait with open mouths for the debris of tinsel, paper and broken toys. The stores will open again in two days so that people can return all the unwanted gifts, and scratch about for bargains like hungry chickens. Millions of turkeys will have been recycled, and monstrous carcasses will be the last reminders of those few days of sheer gluttony.

Thrusting families together for one or two days a year is a romantic notion, that was probably mad popular by Charles Dickens, though for some families there are very good reasons why they live apart. Burying hatchets at Christmas seems like a good idea in the run up, but often in reality it is someone's head that the hatchet is likely to be buried in. Aunty Beth and Uncle Albert haven't seen each other in a long time and they like it that way. Putting them together with copious supplies of alcohol, limited space, and an overheated room and you have a recipe for disaster.

A family is connected by its DNA, and if members are lucky or careful, then the connection may well go far deeper than that. It is not however a certainty, and many households are just groups of people who share little but a common roof. being forced together for extended periods of time can exceed the critical mass with all of the chain reactions that can follow.

As I write this, My Mother, sister and her family are heading south. Tomorrow I am heading North.

Wishing all a wonderful family time.

Solstice

Well it came and it went and i forgot to comment. Oh well!

Sunshine

It is a sunny day, rare for the time of year and for that all the more welcome. I will spend it in and around my cave, oblivious to the chaos that rages beyond and that suits me quite well. It is getting harder to be me, and I am turning into someone else, slowly but surely a transformation is taking place, but unlike the metamorphosis of a butterfly, it feels as though some sort of reversal is taking place and that a cocoon is forming, thread by thread.

The loss of an ear doesn't seem much of an issue. It is a disability that doesn't show and as a result cannot be understood by others. Most of the time, when i am alone, or in conversation with one person, things are fine. However as soon as there is any sort of background noise, music, traffic, chatter etc, i am lost. The background dominates and that excludes me from whatever else might be going on. That is all very well, but people don't seem to understand that I have good reasons for withdrawing, or not attending social functions where I know that i cannot participate.

And so i write. My writing course is progressing and I have a final assignment to produce in January. That is quite a tall order as it involves the writing of an opening chapter and the plotting out of a novel. Maybe the hope is that from little acorns, some small oaks might grow. I read the other day that the world is awash with new writing and that publishers are turning things away in unprecedented quantities. Clearly more and more people are in retreat, bashing out words on their PCs locked away in their own caves.

This reminds me of a wonderful episode of Hancock's Half Hour, where Tony Hancock decides to become a hermit. Other people see what a lovely lifestyle he is enjoying and before long, the woods fill up with hermits. The inevitable happens- a supermarket opens and then a cinema.

I have done the housework, now waiting for the floors to dry so that I can move out of the office. Not sure what to fritter away the rest of the day on, any ideas?

Woolies

It was so sad today to wander among the shards of Woolworths. A shop that I remember from childhood and one that has been unable to cope with the evolution of the shopper.

Seeing almost empty shelves, the rest laden with the sort of rubbish that has led to their demise, was sad enough but to see the faces of the people that have worked there for years was worse. They all seem resigned to their fate, and of course they have no choice, they are early victims of the so called credit crunch, and we all know that there will be many more.

The end of Woolworths is the beginning of the end of an era, and maybe if we come out of this recession, we will, as a society, change, and begin to appreciate the difference between wanting and needing. Maybe the shops that survive will offer useful goods, at prices that are affordable, and just maybe, we can stop making and importing from China, the horrific plastic crap that is left on Woolies shelves.

Shopping

I went shopping today. That is to say that I was taken to the shops and got to push the trolley. It doesn't happen too often but this morning I thought I'd go along and reinforce the reason why I don't get taken too frequently. As I wander around I tend to see things that I fancy and just drop them in with the essentials, and of course these things mount up. As a result, the shopping bill is always much greater if I go along. It isn't deliberate but it works and so i am rarely asked to go along.

Some people actually enjoy shopping - they look forward to it and wander around the various stores, spending money and accumulating stuff as if there was not going to be another chance. Our house is full of stuff that rarely gets used and i have no doubt that one day we will move again and the accumulated matter will get thrown away or donated to worthy causes.

I look forward to the day when all shopping is done online. Then there will be no need to mingle with the masses and will reduce the tendency towards impulse buying that is encouraged by clever people who arrange shop displays.

I still have yet to approach the prospect of gift shopping - that can wait until the 24th. By then many retailers will be so desperate to sell stuff that I might even save some money. Bah Humbug!!!!

'Tis the season to be a prat

I have tried hard to exercise restraint, and have got as far as today without mentioning the unmentionable festival that parts fools from their money, and also from their wits, seemingly for the whole of the months of November and December every year without fail.
OK I don't get out much, and these days that is a positive choice on my part, but I do poke my nose out of my cave now and then, only to withdraw it quickly and for a much longer time.
What is it that possesses people to walk around with red felt hats covered in cotton wool as soon as an R appears in the month? I can understand the needs of the shopkeepers, struggling to make a living, trying to tempt people into buying what no sane person would normally even look at, but surely there is a limit to how much crap people will actually find room for?
One of my pet hates hit me between the eyes last night as i went out to the pub. Houses festooned with muticoloured lights, inflatable Homer Simpsons, Bambi, fat Santa Clauses, multiple reindeer running over rooftops in the rain and the grossly huge snowmen. Some house here are positively dangerous. Turn a corner at night and you can be temporarily blinded by the sheer power of some of these displays, not to mention the distinct possibility of throwing up at the incredible lack of taste.

How do people afford it? With energy prices having risen through the roof, i can only imagine that many of these offenders are bypassing their electricity meters or even tapping into the empty house next door.

There are 16 million households in the uk, and if we exclude those of a Muslim nature, an estimate of one million remain. Now if each of these houses has a small display of lights on their Norway Spruce or their Woolworths, tinsel tat, then I reckon that just for trees alone, there is a power usage of 2000 MW. That is approximately twice the output of a major power station. THis does not even begin to account for the high street lights, the shop displays and the hundreds of thousands of Griswald wannabees that pollute every city, town and village in the country. It is probable that several power stations are required, just to feed this fetish. People say they are concerned about carbon emissions, but at this time of the year it seems to have been forgotten.

It is a peak time for suicides, burglaries, car theft, and violent crime. It is a Christian festival and yet only a small fraction of the population are practicing Christians. Churches open their doors to everyone of course, and for one service, on Christmas eve, the places are full of people, many travelling there on a wave of alcohol, and then twenty four hours later it is all over.

I remember a commentator making observations on the British at this time of year. He got is so right when he referred to a two month build up to a day when people eat too much, drink too much and then fall asleep in front of the TV.

Please don't try to tell me that it is a season of goodwill. Try shopping on the saturdays remaining before the 25th, and watch the scowling faces, the harrassed mothers, the bored husbands, the pushing and barging, the shouting and raving that are commonplace. It is a season of greed, of pseudo-bonhommie, and of huge stress and financial ruin.

Merry ..........king Christmas to you all.

almost nothing

Well it is now December so i guess that it has every right to be cold and damp and miserable, and so it is by and large. However the sun has been sen now and then and that always brings a little cheer to wintery days.
On top of that, i had a phone call from a dear friend this morning. She has been busy and not well and i guess that we have both neglected each other for a while, so it was nice to catch up a little.
I seem to be locked into a domestic life at the moment and feel rather isolated from the world. It is of course my choice and i am happy with my own company most of the time. It is a habit though and staying at home can become too comfortable.
Where i sit in my office, I overlook nothing but a small patch of garden and a tall fence covered in foliage. The only distractions are the birds that come to feed at the table i provide for them, and the occasional silver tube that passes overhead, taking people to their various destinations. I can see why people become reclusive and must avoid that trap if I possibly can, but I have to say that loss of hearing does in itself produce a sort of isolation and just following a conversation can be very hard. In groups now, i have given up trying to participate. Any sort of background noise really tends to block out voices and people just do not understand that.
I realise that i have not much to talk about right now. It is not the greatest time of year for me, but at least the shortest day is in reach and after that we can look forward to the arrival of spring even if it is a long way off.