Day 55: Clementines and Aggressive Shorts

The muffled days between Christmas and New Year.  Lots of people dislike them.  Not me.  I love the suspended sense of limbo.  Time to do things like boiling clementines for TWO HOURS.  Yes.  I did that today.  A first for me.  I've boiled potatoes, eggs - the classics - but never clementines, and never for two hours.  Exciting times.

(I should perhaps clarify that there was point to this - a clementine and almond cake.  I was not just boiling clementines for the hell of it.  It wasn't an art film.)

And then to see 'The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo' - the new US version.  At the cinema in Hatfield Galleria - a lot more terrifying and a lot less fragrant than boiling clementines.  I liked the original Swedish version, and didn't think a remake was at all necessary, but was interested to see what they'd do.  I wasn't expecting much.  But I was pleasantly surprised - mainly by the performance of Rooney Mara.  Really strong presence - uncompromising and bold.  Some clunky bits of plot slow things down, but that's the book's fault, not the film.  Still a good sense of Scandi bleakness and minimalism.  A little weird that so many of the characters had Swedish accents (journalist = 'yurnaleest'), but not Daniel Craig - who still sounds like he's just about to step out of the surf in his sky blue swimmers.  No matter.  A perfect way to spend a limbo afternoon. 

Not a beret.  Shorts.

But think the title should actually have been 'The Girl With The Aggressive Fringe'.  The fringe most definitely pulled maximum focus.  Any dragon-business was secondary. 

Fringe.  Or, because it is an American film, bangs.  'The Girl With The Aggressive Bangs'.  BANGS.  (According to Wikipedia, this comes from the practice of cutting hair 'bang-off'.  That clarifies, doesn't it?  A more logical approach might be the term 'shorts' - from the practice of cutting hair 'short'.  That's what mine will be called from now on.  My shorts.  As in 'I cut me some shorts.' 

Dare me to.  Dare me to cut some aggressive shorts.  An inch from the hair line.  I've got a pair of itchy scissors right here.  RIGHT HERE.  All it would take is a tiny snicketty snip...   
   

Day 54: Double Sixes

This morning I snap at my mother.  That's less than twenty-four hours.  More like eighteen - and I've been asleep for eight of them.  At least I recover my composure quickly and apologise, but still feel ashamed and guilty.  Her advice on how to run a bath was well-meant.  Guess I'd better make a start on another COC (Cushion of Contrition). 

Into Maidstone to meet my sister.  With a crazed sense of optimism (see Day Thirty-Eight) I decide to get there early, and revisit the scene of yesterday's kerb incident.  Maybe, just maybe, I'll find my hubcap.  It's been twenty-one hours since I lost it (I know, I know - with all this talk of hours, I'm practically Jack Bauer), and on a busy one-way system, I realise there's little hope.  Even if I find it, it will be mashed.  I scout the pavement.  No sign, so I ask a passing street sweeper if he's seen it.  He hasn't, but I still need to give it another shot.  Just as I'm about to give up, I happen to glance across the road.  And there's a hubcap, lying under some bins in the car park of an Indian restaurant.  On its back like a disempowered beetle, so I can't tell if it's mine, but I have a strong sense that it is.  And I am right.  Against the odds, it has managed to roll across two lanes of fast moving traffic and remain completely intact.  Massive result - I cradle it back to the car, hands filthy with oil and dirt, but beaming.  The mangled state of the steel rim remains a worry, but one thing at a time. 

Silliness and coffee in Caffe Nero with Charlotte and Matt (main topic - pornography).  Silliness and chicken in Nando's (main topic - festival in-tent piss systems).  Even more silliness and rudery in The Druid's Arms (main topic - obscure words for genitals).  Agenda complete.   

Charlotte subsidises her degree course by working in a garage (Medway Citroen in Chatham), so I canvass her opinion on the wheel.  The prognosis is strong potential for a blow-out.  Not good.  An expensive trip to Kwik fit is on the cards.  Really not good. 

But not so fast!  There is another way.  Massive thanks to all at Medway Citroen, especially Reg, who hammers the wheel into perfect shape for the price of a hug.  And thanks to Charlotte for being an ace sister and very useful with a jack.  And thanks to Matt for wheel nut magic. 

Four wheels on my wagon.  All intact.  All with hubcaps.  That's how I roll today.  Double sixes all round.

Day 53: Garden of England

The Garden of England

Round the M25 to Kent - slowing to a standstill where the Dartford Crossing conjoins the twin evils of Lakeside and Bluewater.   Progress is painfully slow but I have time to admire the incongruency between the 'Welcome to Kent, The Garden of England' sign and the vista beyond it.   (Reminds me of the German exchange student visiting my school who observed (accurately and with frighteningly good English) that 'If Kent is the Garden of England, Maidstone is the compost heap.'   Actually I'd give that honour to Chatham or Gravesend, but that's a technicality that shouldn't detract from the Wildean brilliance of the comment.)

I entertain myself playing radio station roulette.   Pick a random station.   Listen to whatever song is playing and find its relevance to your situation.   This may need some lateral decoding, but persist.   The harder you have to work, the more valuable the guidance or insight.   Whether it's a memory, something in the lyrics or style, receive it as a deliberate message.   As soon as the song is ended - and you must wait until it's ended - change the station.   Repeat until you have a sense of clarity about your situation and/or the traffic clears.   (When you get home, arrange all your shoes like a letter T under your bed and turn all spoons in the house to face north with their bowl ends.   Don't forget to wash your hands ten times first.)

Things improve once I shake the shoppers and get onto the M20.   I'd forgotten how much fun it is to drive down Wrotham Hill.   Economical and ecologically friendly too.   No accelerator needed.   Free speed, man.   10/10 - excellent.

Back to my roots.  Through the mean streets of Maidstone, the nearest local town/compost heap to where I grew up.  Distracted by nostalgia I kerb my car like a twat.  None of the nearby pedestrians blink an eyelid.  That's Maidstone driving for you.  To my mother's house, to discover that my twattish driving has cost me an Alfa Romeo hubcap, and a badly bent rim.  Wrotham Hill coasting fun is forgotten as I start calculating the potential cost in garage fees (and interim risk).  Ouch.  0/10 - very bad.

Arrive at my mother's, where the Cushion of Contrition is received - fairly well. A slow start, with only mildly negative overtones, warming to a generally positive outlook.   6.5/10 - shows promise, could do better with application. 

"Oh, what can it mean to a daydream believer and a homecoming queen?"

Day 52: Clowns and Sprouts

Boxing Day.  No boxes.  Russian clowns. Blizzards of bubbles and tickertape.  A blanket of webby filaments covering the whole of the Royal Festival Hall.  Huge multi-coloured globes unleashed and volleyballed around the giggling audience.  Floating moons and sparkling rain (magical).  Nooses and bullying (dark).  Brilliant hats like aeroplane wings. 

The main man is Slava (hint in the title - Slava's Snowshow), but my favourites are his green-coated underlings.  They are subversive and goonish and playful.  And although the dramatic beauty of the balls and the blizzards leave us open-mouthed, the greatest frisson comes when the green-coats invade the audience, clambering over chairs, demanding steadying hands to help, stealing water and poking people with shabby umbrellas.

The auditorium is covered in drifts of white paper snow - children cannot get over this, and much time is spent stockpiling supplies to hurl at unsuspecting parents.  You don't need to be a child to see the appeal.

Carpet

Onion

I haven't been to the Festival Hall in years (the actual concert hall).  Have spent many hours drinking coffee in the foyer, but no concerts.   That's something I associate with being a teenager (how un-rock and roll).  Going up the stairs to level 4, and I see that the carpets haven't changed.   Still the same seventies pattern, like cells with nuclei.   I remember thinking they were like the onion skin cells we scraped onto slides and put under the microscope in biology.  That dates the carpet.  It's been decades since I bothered a microscope.

Saw Caitlin Moran by the ticket office.  Pleased me very much, as her words have the power to make coffee come out of my nose.  I like her attitude.  And the fact that she finds it almost impossible to resist pulling a 'Muppet face' (her words - see left) when faced with a camera.

Home to leftovers (far more noble and excellent than they sound).  Tired by visual and nutritional feasting (clowns and sprouts - for many the stuff of nightmares, not for me), I sleep early, and dream I have a green coat and a hat with wings.   Sweet.

NB I am going to Kent to offer up the Cushion of Contrition.  Unless my mother has installed broadband since I last visited, I will be unable to update until Wednesday night.   Stay safe, people.  No going to Footlocker.   It's just not worth it.

Day 51: We Three Kings

Classic start to Christmas Day - chocolate (the breakfast of kings).  Then a long walk over Hampstead Heath.  Lots of runners, mud-spattered and looking tense at the prospect of all those festive calories getting in the way of health and efficiency.  One is wearing a flashing Santa hat - but breathing hard and gimlet-eyed, it's a slightly sinister look.  The three urban parrots (see Day Forty-Eight) make a shouty and tuneless appearance.  And it's still all business at the ponds.  But they don't quite cut it like they used to - this picture is from the ponds in 1936.  Sheer class.  Mistletoe!  Santa!  Knitted cozzies!  Listen up, 2011.

Back home, a doff of the hat to whole Jesus-business with the watching of BBC1's 'The Nativity'.   Joseph is played by the man from 'Garrow's Law', with an unpleasantly wispy beard and an attitude problem.  Peter Capaldi is a wise man - the myrrh one.  That's a downer of a present, isn't it?  Gold - shiny and lovely!  Frankincense - smells great!  Myrrh?  What...?  Ohhh, embalming fluid...  WHAT?!?  (Myrrh does have the coolest verse in 'We Three Kings', though.  'Myrrh is mine, Its bitter perfume, Breathes a life, Of gathering gloom, Sorrowing, Sighing, Bleeding, Dying, Sealed in a stone cold tomb.'  The only verse I still remember,  How I thrilled to the drama and tragedy of this as a morbid ten-year old.)

Religion done, on to the usual.  Presents.  Food.  So much food.  So.  Much.  Food.  And then, my favourite part of the day so far.  A long walk around the dark, quiet streets of St Albans - breathing in the cold, smoky evening air, and looking into all the sitting rooms lit up by twinkly trees.  It's so still and silent.  The great oak doors of the abbey are closed.  Nobody else is on the street, nothing is open.    (Except for the curry house, where two couples are eating an alternative Christmas dinner.  Under the watchful eye of the staff - all eight of them.  A rather intimidating ratio.)

Time for more religion.  Happy Christmas.


 

Day 50: Crows and Baubles

Christmas Eve.  A bottle of beer, a bowl of pistachio nuts and 'The Chronicles of Narnia' on television.  Magical wardrobes, Turkish delight and Mr Tumnus.  My sister had a wardrobe in her room - mahogany, imposing, pillared.  I used to sneak into her room and open the door carefully, ever hopeful of fur coats and snow.  The boundaries between fantasy and reality were very blurred for me.  I truly believed that on Christmas Eve at midnight all animals were able to speak.  But the logical side of me needed proof, so I stalked the cat for several Eves on the trot.  But she always gave me the slip, or I flaked out before the witching hour.  Don't remember where I picked up that myth.  I think it's Norwegian or Swedish.  A quick internet search has revealed many results, including one titled 'Animals Talk on Christmas Eve - Fact or Fiction?'  Seems like I'm not the only one with blurred boundaries... 

Childhood Christmas Eves were always a strange mixture of the beautiful and the macabre.  The beautiful - in the form of the Christmas tree.  My father didn't let a tree in the house until December 24th, and I found the scent of the pine needles and the lustre of the antique glass baubles completely bewitching.   The smoky blue one was a favourite.  (And still exists - a Proustian madeleine of a bauble.)  Holly, mistletoe and ivy, cut fresh and smelling of bitter green.

Macabre - in the form of the turkey giblets.  A heart!  Liver!  Gizzard!  Neck! And in the annual ritual of cutting down the dead crows in the cherry orchard.  (I realise that this last is not a standard practice for most families.  Bear with me.)  Crows are very bright and very cherry-greedy.  They will strip an orchard bare incredibly quickly.  One way to stop them is to kill a couple and string them up (medieval but effective).  They serve as a brutal warning to the others, who are intelligent enough to give the orchard a wide berth.  This doesn't work with any other stupider cherry-thieves (blackbirds, starlings etc).  The crow gibbet would serve its grisly purpose throughout the cherry harvest and then slowly decompose over the autumn.  It held a horrible pull for me - terrifying but compelling.  I would walk past, eyes front, but hyper-aware of it.  A sickly pulse in my visual field.  By Christmas Eve, all that was left were tatty bundles of feather and bone, like voodoo fetishes.  They hit a jarring note for my mother, against the seasonal harmony of peace and good will.  So she would cut them down, and I was safe from the horror until the summer brought a fresh batch of corpses.  Festive times!

The tension of beauty and ugliness, life and death.  The facts behind any fiction.

Day 49: Big Puddings

A early swoop on the supermarket.  Even at eight-thirty it's a log-jam of trolleys, and distinctly stabby round the sprouts.   

My experience in the supermarket is exponentially improved by my decision to be unfailingly courteous and generous.  I stand back for people, I manoeuvre my trolley considerately, I smile.  And removing the option of deciding to get annoyed makes for an easier life.  I'm not sure anyone else notices (they only have eyes for sprouts) but I have a much better time.  

Within reason.  I have no intention of going anywhere near a supermarket again until next week. Don't need to. Have an unfeasible number of clementines, so no chance of scurvy.

Following on from yesterday, I have been keeping my eye out for things to say 'yes' to.  No cake or holly - but I have found myself agreeing to make pudding for twenty-eight people on New Year's Eve.  Not quite the 'yes' I was thinking of.  I must be working a different algorithm to Jude. 

Actually, I'm quite happy to make puddings.  I rarely get the chance to cook for such large numbers. 

Unexplored recipes.
Generous quantities. 
Bring it on.

Day 48: Five Gow-wouldd Riings!

An early run as the sky is only just starting to flush with light.   First in the park, so I get to break the somnambulent morning seal - scattering birds as I run.  Moorhens, coots, Canada geese, swans (careful), herons.  Eight herons.  Yes.  Eight.  (It feels like a line from the Twelve Days of Christmas - 'Eight herons sleeping!'.)

And then a drive to Muswell Hill.  It's so odd going back - I walk past the flat, and the numbers I Tippexed above the doorbell are still there.  They've got to be fifteen years old.  All credit to Tippex.  Those streets are so familiar - walking them again is like dropping through a hole in time.  Some of the memories are like faded snapsnots in a shoebox, old and half-forgotten.  Others are a vivid emotional hi-jack, knocking the wind out of me.  Coffee with Jude, and then a ramble through the woods - Queen's and Highgate - and then to Hampstead Heath.  Urban parrots (three).  Pieces of cake (two).  Stones positioned rudely and childishly (one).  ('And a rude stoh-hone sat on a treeeeeeee!'). 

Two offers - chocolate cake from a small child in the wood, in a weird reversal of 'normal' grooming procedures (I realise how wrong it is to combine the words 'normal' and 'grooming'), and holly from a Hampstead allotment owner.  I am taken aback by the surprise randomness of both, so turn them down before even really processing what's happening.  Jude - in line with her current practice of saying yes to stuff - says yes (unsurprisingly), and is therefore ahead by one piece of chocolate cake and a bunch of holly.  (This last makes her festive, but also spiky, so dangerous as a walking companion.)

Interesting that my standard response to something unexpected is an unthinking 'no'.  Don't think I'm alone in this.  Wthout wanting to get all Jim Carrey 'Yes Man'-ish, might be interesting to re-think this.  I think it's quite unusual to get offered free items on a walk, but Jude says that since she's started saying 'yes', this happens frequently.  This could probably be explained through quantum physics, and algorithms, but that would involve Brian Cox and my head exploding again. 

Back through Highgate and a stop off at 'Ripping Yarns' - a second-hand bookshop an antiquarian bookshop.  The difference between the two seems to be mainly attitude and price-tag, though we are informed that these are books that are no longer in print.  I am very taken with the paperback titled 'Hunt the Toff'.  We also enjoy finding a book detailing the sexual exploits of a trucker in the 'Esoteric' section.  Perhaps antiquarian bookshops don't have 'Adult' sections.

 
And then to Sainsbury's in Muswell Hill.  When I lived in Mus, there used to be a man who spent most of his time in Sainsbury's, walking round the aisles shouting 'The BEST of luck!  The BEST of luck!'.  Emphasis always on the second syllable.  He disappeared a while back, but an internet search turns up a picture of him on location in Sainsbury's.  The man with him is another blogger, who posted this picture (thank you). 

On a day when I have learned the power of saying yes (cake AND holly), a fitting and positive end to a post.

The BEST of luck!

Day 47: While You Were Out

Having given no thought to stand up over the last few weeks, I wake up this morning with a bunch of new material in my head.  Completely unbidden.  The god of stand up moves in mysterious ways.  Maybe it's not time for me to hang up the mic yet.  Maybe. 

A visit to the parcel depot to cash in the three 'While You Were Out' cards I have collected over the last week.  A huge tailback of people, right out the door and into the industrial estate.  The staff are managing their stress levels, self-medicating with Roses and Heroes.  I hand over my cards, and wait.  Other people are called to the service hatch as I continue to wait.  Time passes.  I get bored.  I try to summon a mini-Twirl using psychokinesis.  I fail.   

Eventually my parcel-guardian returns, to confess that one of mine is missing-in-action.  He is professionally embarrassed, and bemused, but essentially unable to help at all.  I am sent away and asked to come back 'at any time'.  Nice to know the door is open for me, but not sure what this will achieve, apart from refreshing my sense of betrayal and loss.  The thing that really surprises me is how lo-fi I am about it.  I find myself saying 'Oh - fair enough.  Well, thanks for looking.'  Like I don't really want my parcel anyway.  A nice to have, but nothing more.  Not sure that's the way to encourage serious parcel retrieval efforts.  But at the same time, there's no point having a nose bleed over it. 

I had a lot of nose bleeds when I was at school.  Particularly in the swimming pool or when I lost my temper (or both - Venn possibility here).  Useful tactic to underline your point with visual impact.  Especially in the pool.

Day 46: Dreams of a Life

A trip to John Lewis for a refund on the insufficiently-penitent cushion (see Day Forty-Five).  The trip was a penance in itself.  Suffocating crowds, thrusting elbows, flushed faces - both in the store, and outside on Oxford Street.  I escaped as soon as I could, then got caught up in drifts of tourists gawping at the lights on Regent Street.  Resorted to walking in the gutter (although looking at the stars, obv) - best bet for speed and a frisson of danger, as buses clip your coat. 

Finally took sanctuary in the Apollo Cinema - to watch 'Dreams of a Life', a drama documentary film about Joyce Vincent, a thirty-eight year old who died alone in her Wood Green flat, and whose body was only discovered three years later.  Skeletal, surrounded by wrapped Christmas presents, with the television still on.  The film sets out to discover how this could have happened, without anyone noticing.  An extraordinarily beautiful woman (these pictures are her in real life - not the actress who played her), who'd worked at Ernst & Young, and was a talented singer.  A fractured family background.  A friend-drifter - someone who socialised with the people in her immediate environment (work, flatshare) and then moved on, largely leaving that set of friends behind.  But still with friends.  And ex-boyfriends - many of whom she still knew.  Terrifying.  For whatever reason, she chose to cut herself off.  Many of the friends interviewed assumed that she was off somewhere, leading a glamorous, exciting life - an assumption based on the glossy image she worked hard to maintain.  Not living alone in a shitty flat above Shopping City, surrounded by piles of washing up.

Can't get the film out of my head.  It's prompted a lot of discussion in the media - how have we created a society where people can fall through the cracks unnoticed?  And there are some obvious answers - lack of community, individualism, broken homes etc.  But to me, one of the most interesting issues raised is the disparity between how someone appears to be - their social mask - and the truth behind it.  We all wear different masks all the time, for different reasons.  They can be very useful.  But I think it's absolutely essential to have at least one relationship in your life where you don't need the mask.  Or you run the risk of real isolation.  Which is dangerous.  More dangerous than loneliness - because at least loneliness is a product of the desire for company.  Not always the case with isolation. 

Sometimes it's just easier to stick with the mask.  It feels safer, less complicated.  But it comes with a pretty hefty price tag. 

So I was grateful to be spending the evening with old friends from university.  We laughed, we drank beer in a horrible pub in Euston where you needed a special code to access the toilets.  We then went for an aggressively servile curry on Eversholt Street.  We laughed some more.  We wore the masks we created when we were twenty, and it was fun to wear them again.  But we took them off too. 

Good times.   

Day 45: The Cushion of Contrition

Last week I hung up on my mother.  It was the second of two conversations in one evening.  Although the topic was nominally generous (Christmas presents, Christmas visiting, Christmas cards), the tone was not.  She wittered, I intolerated, she generalised, I snapped.  So I hung up.  And then felt racked with guilt.  But still really irritated.  It took me a full thirty-six hours before I felt able to ring back and apologise.  I felt bad about those thirty-six hours. 

One of the things she wants for Christmas is a cushion.  Not any old cushion, but one suitable for the seat of a particular antique kitchen chair.  I went to John Lewis and bought something that would do at a pinch (ie not really) - but this was pre-hang up. 

I now realise that there is an opportunity to do penance.  By crafting the Cushion of Contrition.  So I have spent much of today doing exactly that.  Not fold-it-over, seam it, stuff it, done.  Oh no.  Fuelled by guilt, I have made this as complex as possible.  I have created a made-to-measure round cushion pad from scratch.  I have included handmade piping (no ready made bias binding - I have made my own from especially slippery fabric to try my patience to the max).  I have used spotted material to maximise the pattern matching challenge.  My fingers are needle-bruised, and my guilt is assuaged.  I am cleansed of badness.

For now.  Watch this space for what happens when my mother opens her present, and reacts thus: 'Oh.  What is it?  Oh, I see, it's a cushion.  Is it?  Oh, yes.  Well.  I suppose that's... nice.  Yes.  Very nice...  I suppose.' 

Best start planning a secondary penance right now.  Maybe a draught snake.  An EMBROIDERED draught snake. 

Maybe not. 

  

Day 44: A Game of Shadows

To the cinema for the ridiculous new Sherlock Holmes film.  What it lacks in storyline, it makes up for in character, verve and looks.  Particularly taken with Sherly's 'Urban Camouflage' - absurd trompe l'oeil romper suits, allowing the wearer to seamlessly blend in with the background. 

How useful would that be?  Obviously, the trompe l'oeil element limits movement - a shift of an inch, and you're out of register.  But an excellent concept.  And you don't actually need the suit.  It's more of a choice. 

Today in the cinema, there were several people who chose NOT to blend in.  The man in the front of me - the human equivalent of an English bull terrier.  Checking his text messages every five minutes, the bright light from his little screen pulling focus in the darkness.  After the third time, I asked him politely to turn it off.  At the fifth time I kicked his chair.  He turned round, all aggressive and steroidy.  I played dumb, as if the kick had been entirely accidental.  I realised his agenda and mine had no shared business.  Pick your battles wisely (and not with a bull terrier...). 

Then the couple some way behind and to the right.  Who discussed the film throughout.  Not loudly, but a constant stream of chat, especially after any action sequence.  Like they were in their own home, watching a DVD.  And the man behind me, to the left.  Two hours solid crunching and rustling.  Twenty minutes before the end of the film, he went out and came back with another tray of nachos and a drink.  Lest there be a single minute of on-screen action unaccompanied by snackage.  Horrifying but strangely impressive.  But maybe he can only see and hear when he's eating. 

A couple of years ago I went on a bushcraft course.  (Yes, I know.  Believe.)  Right at the start, the woodland guru, a sort of Vice-Ray Mears, told us to go off and sit by ourselves in the forest for ten minutes.  When we returned, a little non-plussed, he explained that this is how long it takes the environment to settle around you, once you've crashed your way in.  The first five minutes will be - whether you are conscious of it or not - full of alarm calls and tension.  Until slowly, the sense of threat ebbs, and the forest relaxes into its natural state, accepting your presence.  And in sitting still for ten minutes, you also become aware of what's around you, rather than purely focusing on where you're going, getting through brambles, finding a sweet in your pocket etc. 

I like the ten minute rule.  If you are in a new situation - physical or emotional* - just to exist in it as an observer, and see what happens, rather than thrashing about/distracting yourself/buying nachos.  For ten minutes.  It's not long - but at the same time it is.  (It's one of those Brian Cox things - the way you use the time expands or contracts it, and now my head has exploded.) 

(*Obviously this rule should not be applied in critical situations - bull terrier attack/house fire etc).

Off to search for a trompe l'oeil romper suit.

Day 43: Spiritual Guidance

Days are short and nights are long.  Still dark this morning, with the moon high in the sky as I crossed the park, crunching over the frosty grass to get a paper.  Time to be bringing evergreen into the house, and setting big logs on fire - to, you know, celebrate the, um, birth of Jesus...

So, with that in mind, up to the market to get a Christmas tree today.  St Albans is in festive mood, with a Sally Army brass band playing carols, and all the stall holders wearing Santa hats and felt antlers.  Now the house smells green and resinous.  The tree is fairy-lit and baubled up.  And I am mince-pied. 

And watching 'A Christmas Carol' on television.  The Patrick Stewart version.  He's just been haunted by a door knocker/Jacob Marley.  'I wear the chain I forged in life'.  Cue redemption and transformation in the form of a tri-ghost therapy intensive.

"I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach. Oh, tell me I may sponge away the writing on this stone!"

Brutal, fast, effective, and all in the comfort of your own home. Where do I sign up?

(The Ghost of Christmas Present has a particularly excellent hat. Like a pagoda trimmed with holly. I would totally wear it.)

Day 42: Stitch and Hitch

Strap in.  St Albans Abbey has a knitted Nativity scene.  Yes.  A KNITIVITY.  Created in 2009 by Ann Hudson, wife of one of the vergers - the product of over five hundred hours hard knitting, and more than five kilos of wool.  She adds more characters every year. 

"Last year I added a donkey and an angel, this year I've made two camels," said Mrs Hudson, in a BBC interview (yes - there's some media heat around this, let me tell you).  "For some people Christmas is more about presents and what's on the telly, I hope the 'knitivity' reminds people of the true meaning of Christmas," she added.

The Herts Advertiser is running a competition to name the camels.  The prize is a PERSONAL tour round the Abbey, plus a DELUXE tea at the Abbey refectory.  I am most definitely entering.  Got to get those names right, though.  Paul and Susan?  Too plain?  Hilary and Beavis?  Too arch?  God, it's so hard.

In other news, the incomparable Christopher Hitchens is dead.  And the world is a poorer place.  Fiercely intelligent, free thinking, original, vibrant, humane, articulate, deeply moral, bold, witty and charming.  A sharp blade that cut through so much bullshit.  Sad that he's gone; glad he was here.     

Hitch and the Knitivity.  I think he'd have appreciated a fabricated Jesus...

Day 41: Oh my darling Clementine

Canary Wharf.  Financial buildings towering skywards in monumental cock-offs - Jenga in steel and glass.  Such an odd place.  The dated show-offy gloss - champagne & oyster bars, Rolexes, red braces (still).  And a very cold wind blowing off the Thames, howling through the empty plazas.  No feeling of soul or warmth.  Can anyone love this place?  I can't imagine it.  But then I only get a visitor's glimpse.  A bank of granite-faced receptionists with immaculate talons and air-hostess hair.  Sculptural flowers (penile, waxy) intimidate deliberately.  Then up thirty-six floors in a sickening matter of seconds.  ADMIRE our boardroom table.  It is BIG and SHINY and EXPENSIVE.  QUAKE at its might.  (I want to launch myself at it - on my stomach, and see how far I could travel.  Like curling.  With a couple of people brushing frantically in front of me.  I don't, but one day I might.  When I burn my bridges (yet again) and have to find a new start.) 

Things looks up immensely when I go for a coffee in Pret a Manger, and a woman called Agnes gives me a clementine.  Free of charge.  She balances it carefully on the lid of my coffee, where it sits and glows orange.  It pleases me disproportionately.  Then I notice the whole place is studded with clementines.  Everyone is getting one.  But I seem to be the only person to eat mine.  Lots are discarded, left on tables amid sandwich wrappers.  How can people not want a free clementine?  If not now, then in the pocket for later?  Perhaps finance types can't have clementines.  Perhaps zest will smear onto balance sheets.  Juice will make ink run.  Or they just simply don't understand or trust something that is given freely. 

My last job of 2011.  As I go home, the cold that I have been holding at bay finally wins out - eyeballs aching and feeling large as space hoppers.  Throat lumpy and raw.  And I'm tired.  But that's fine, because I have time to lie on the sofa and watch black and white films.  And drink hot lemon.  And eat clementines.  Because I have a pocketful.

Day 40: Love - Forty

Forty days of blogging.  And also the anniversary of my accident.  The accident that almost killed me, and left me with a scar like a tennis ball seam on the left hand side of my head.  One minute, talking to a friend in a bar; the next, waking up with lights in my eyes, and surrounded by a medical team in masks and gowns.  A brain haemorrage, a fall, a skull fracture and a blood clot - in that order.  Two questions - 'Do you know who you are?' and 'Can you move your feet?'  And thanks to the brilliance of the National Neurological Hospital in Queen's Square, the answer to both was 'yes'.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  The debt that I owe you still moves me to tears. 

Today - a job in Gloucester. A long drive, with the temperature dropping all the way, and ominous skies.  On the way home, rain turns to sleet turns to snow.  Whirling blizzard.  The markings on the road disappear in a total white-out.  Makes for tense shoulders and dry eyes, but worth it for the fairytale scenery - Narnia in the Cotswold hills.  Park appallingly when I get home.  So badly that it makes me laugh.  Normally, I'd correct it.  Today I can't be bothered.  Very liberating.

I know who I am.  I can walk.  I know who I am.  I can walk.  I know who I am.  I can walk.

There are many days I take this for granted.  Not today.

Day 39: Hair like Syd

Today I had good hair (for some of the day).  This rarely happens.  It can't be planned, as any form of intervention (applicances or 'product') is guaranteed to be spectacularly counterproductive.  (Good news, because quite frankly I am too damn lazy to do anything other than wash it and comb it.)  But today - possibly because of some strange alchemy born of damp air and violent winds - I caught sight of my reflection in a shop window and my hair was definitely, definitely Syd Barrett-ish (early era - before the drugs had done their worst).  In my book, this is a GOOD THING (I am not, nor will ever be, a proper lady.)  The heating and oppressive atmosphere of a few City firms put paid to my look - by 4pm I was distinctly limp and bedraggled.  But for one glorious moment, the planets aligned and I was Barrett-ish.

Two more jobs to go, and then my work calendar is done for the year.  I fully intend to retreat and hibernate.  Like a spent bulb, beneath a blanket of earth, slowly restoring reserves of energy.  I will need books, and films, and walks, and clean air.  Some historical ruins.  Possibly a ghost story or two.  Good smells.  (Anything cooking in wine and garlic.  Smoke.  Flowers.  Rain.)  Stupid amounts of sleep.  Time to fritter.  Broad margins.

I wish I was eight again, so I could read 'The Children of Green Knowe' for the very first time.  I remember lying in bed, reading and reading, retreating into a world of ebony mice and ghost children.  All contained in the walls of an ancient house - solid and safe, but alive with magic.  The writer, Lucy Boston, used her own house as inspiration - the Manor, Hemmingford Grey.  You can visit it.  I'm going to. 

In my head I'm eight.  On my head I'm Syd. 


   

Day 38: Bold-drunk and resourceful

Today I must face the possibility that I have lost my favourite cardigan.  It was baggy.  A bit loose at the seams.  But I loved it.  I've not seen it for a week, and given the weekend dust-mice corral, it's definitely not in the most likely spot - the bedroom.  Or the sitting-room.  Or my car.  So unless it's gone Houdini in the dining-room, kitchen or bathroom - which I doubt - it's gone.  It was looking rather tired, and I slightly suspect it has diminished and gone into the West, like Galadriel.  (In other words, I left it behind at the meditation retreat.) 

I've not given up hope yet.  I once found a contact lens deep in the entrails of the sofa - a hand blindly thrust down between stuffing and webbing, grasping at aged crumbs of crud.  A handful of tissue fragments, staples, pennies, grit, lentils (WHAT?  Oh, yes.  I made a bean(lentil)bag...), and at the bottom, my lens, belly up, dusty and all helpl ess.  On another occasion, back in my Crouch End days, after a particularly craven evening at The White Lion of Mortimer, I'm weaving home unsteadily when a twig flips a lens out (OK, my fault - I bounce off a bush).  On a particularly dark stretch of pavement.  No matter - I am bold-drunk and resourceful.  Noticing a well-lit house, I barrel up the path and knock at the door, in search of a torch.  I've stumbled on a party - no torches, but lots of drunk helpful people who came out with candles.  We stagger around loudly but ineffectually for a while, to no avail.  I go home, still bold-drunk and resourceful, and set my alarm for 5.00am, thinking that I'll get up early and go back to search the streets before the daily pedestrian traffic destroys all hope of finding my lens intact.  (Logical.)  The alarm goes off at 5.00am - I'm still bold-drunk, still resourceful.  Wellington boots on and a coat over my nightshirt (ever mindful of fashion), I retrace my route in the dawn light.  Not hard to find the area - spattered with footprints and waxy drips from the candle-fuelled search party.  If the lens is still there, chances are that it is ground into the pavement.  Having come this far, I lean over for a final look.  And the first thing I see is my lens, plump and shiny, sitting demurely on a dandelion leaf growing out of a crack in the wall. 

Sometimes things are lost.  Properly.  The watch that I got for my 21st birthday - lost the same day.  I knew it was gone.  Maybe my cardigan.  It feels gone. 
But I've had so many instances when I've almost given up searching for things that I thought were lost, but the final push, against the odds, has yield fruit.  Many lenses (so, so many).  My wallet.  My ring.  Some friendships.  So this post is dedicated to the final push.  Whether you're bold-drunk or bold-sober, bothering to go again. 

Go on. 

(This (left) is a message left for posterity in wet pavement concrete.  Nice work.)

Day 37: Cake or Death?

This morning there was a festive charity run in St Albans, so the town has been full of sweaty Santas all day.  I particularly like the ones who decided to make the most of their visit with a bit of post-run shopping, and have obviously forgotten they're in costume, so are trailing around looking bored/eating Nando's/having arguments.  It's a grey day, and the splashes of red are very 'Don't Look Now'.

Imagine this.  A man with half a face (and an off-putting manner) delivers a box containing a button to your house, and tells you that if you press it, you will receive a million dollars, but someone (unknown to you) will die.  (Premise of 'The Box' - Richard Kelly, starring Cameron Diaz and James Marsden.)  Do you press the button?  NO.  Because firstly, you are not some half-faced man's tiny dancing puppet.  And secondly, you know (as any fool do) how this works - that this is morally wrong, and will come back at you in more ways than you can fathom.  Obviously, in the film Cameron does press the button, because she knows (as any fool do) that unless she does that, there will be no film.  (Actually, I really wish she hadn't, on those grounds). 

Perhaps it would be a lot easier, generally, if most life choices came with a button, and a really clear signpost (turn left for cash/chaos/pain; turn right for poverty/happiness/freedom).  Most of the time I've not even been aware there was a turning, or that I'd taken it.  On the odd occasion I've clearly been presented with two choices, the signpost is inevitably incomplete.  There'll be some useful facts, but the missing element will be the one thing I've not even considered.  That thing on which everything hinges.

Every time I've made bum choices, it's when I've made a so-called 'rational' decision - even though it felt wrong.  My error has been paying attention to the signposts (source - unreliable riddler types) and ignoring my gut instinct (source - me.  Whole face, no riddles). 

Anyway, I've already had a man present me with a button in a box (see Day Twenty).  I didn't press it.  Tick.