Day 62: Cheap Tricks

Today I struck the Christmas tree.  (Not in rage.  I didn't punch it, I just dismantled it.)  If you're going to do a tree, do it right, and get rid of it on Twelfth Night.  I know many people like to get shot of it on New Year's Day, but that's probably because they've had the bloody thing up since December 1st.  I hate the melancholy of seeing discarded trees lying on the street outside people's houses - a missed bauble hanging disconsolately, bedraggled shreds of tinsel still tangled in the branches.  It's all too Hans Christian Andersen for me to bear.  So I have to chop the tree up small enough to put in the recycling.  Which is good because I get to use a saw (once a year - come hell or high water...), and the sitting-room smells of freshly-cut pine, which is very invigorating, and invariably encourages me to wash the windows (once a year - come hell or high water...). 

As I remove the decorations, I am struck (not in rage - the tree doesn't punch me) by how different they look in the cold light of day.  On the tree, picked out by the lights, some of the decorations punch above their weight (not literally).  Years ago, when I was skint and starting from scratch with my first tree in North London, I bulk-bought some little square silver foil 'presents' from Woolworth's, and some glittery 'icicles' from a pound shop - loads of them, cheap as you like.  I still have them, although I've acquired some fancier glass baubles since - clear and iridescent like soap bubbles; a beautiful reddish-purple like a faded wine stain; old gold, and tarnished silver - expensively mellow.  In the daylight, they win hands down - but in the dark, the cheap ones come to the fore, glittering beguilingly under the fairy lights, and leaving the fancy ones looking mute and dull. 

I fell in love with the theatre at my first pantomime - Jack and the Beanstalk at the Marlowe in Canterbury.  Live music, dusty velvet tip-up seats, ice-cream, anticipation - almost too heady a brew for a six-year old.  And this was before the curtain went up.  When it did, I was entranced.  Everything was exaggerated - a turbo-charged version of reality.  Bigger, louder, shinier, funnier.  With singing and dancing.  A couple of years on, and I managed to wangle a backstage visit.  Up close the costumes looked very different - tawdry, tatty, cheap.  No glamour, and no magic.  Just some smelly polyester, lurex and velcro.  It was like the Wizard of Oz revealed, and I was disappointed.

Since then, I've come full circle.  Yes, I like the expensive decorations, but now I have a sneaking preference for the cheapies.  Shining under the lights like proper little troopers.    

Day 61: Emphasise the Flakes

In a search for some misplaced felt-tip pens (colouring-in emergency), I inadvertently end up sorting a box of 'stuff'.  Most of it goes straight in the bin, but there are some good finds - a box of staples, some forgotten photos from a holiday in 2004, and a set of Oblique Strategies (Brian Eno/Peter Schmidt).  I immediately pick a card, which tells me to 'Emphasise the Flaws'.  I consider putting on a bikini and sauntering up to town, but I suspect this is a rather over-literal application.  I will sit with the advice, and see whether a more sophisticated interpretation reveals itself. 

(Incidentally, I find the felt-tips in the back-up drinks cupboard, along with some weight training gloves, an electric whisk and the ghostly skeletons of many spiders.  On a drinks level, I am surprised by Bols kirsch, half a bottle of Cointreau, brandy, a bottle of dessert wine, and some Creme de Cassis.  I put them all back, so I can be surprised again in a couple of years.)

Eno - Aggressive Shorts

In looking for the picture of Brian Eno to decorate this page, I find an article about his involvement in the development of ambient music.  He was in hospital, listening to music over his headphones, but unable to drown out the additional environmental sounds, he chose to listen to everything as a whole.  (I suspect morphine may have been involved...)  When I had my tonsils taken out, I was given morphine and I lay in bed drinking in everything around me, utterly at peace and at one with my surroundings (a crumbling hospital on the Greys Inn Road).  I didn't need music.  I'd have listened to a light bulb.   

Sigur Ros - Shy

In the mood for soundscapes, I play some Sigur Ros - spacious, chilly, Icelandic.  You can almost hear the glaciers and the icicles.  But it's not quite enough.  So I turn to Sibelius - vaster, bolder, darker.  And then Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherezade, and rippling desert sand.  My excellent Sennheiser headphones fill my head with music and my mind EXPANDS, man.  I am glaciers and dark water and sand.  No morphine needed. 

Perhaps I wasn't in the right mood to pick an Oblique Strategy.  Now I am mentally aligned with EVERYTHING, perhaps I will be able to pick something more fitting. 

I draw a new card.  'Emphasise the Flaws'...  OK.  I GET IT.  This is clearly the card I am meant to have.  (Maybe the flaw is non-acceptance...).

So, what exactly is a flaw?  The word comes from the Old Norse, and originally meant snowflake, or spark of fire (from the word 'flaga' - flake).  The sense of it being a defect or fault didn't come until much later, from the concept of a fragment (or flake) broken off. 

That's more like it.  Not flaws.  Personal snowflakes, yeah? 
My FLAKES in your FACE.  (EMPHASISED.)

Day 60: Sherlocked

Gales and lashing rain.  I wake to hear the wheelie bin taking off down the road, skittering and dragging.  I retrieve it, following the trail of coughed-up Christmas debris, and getting a soaking in the process.  That's me done with the outside for today.   

What to do?  A New Year clear out?  Strategic planning?  HELL NO!  Not while I have the first episode of 'Sherlock' Season 2 to watch.  Because I can think of no better way to spend a couple of hours.

The plot is important, but secondary to the real brilliance - the dialogue (pithy), the relationships (fascinating), the cinematography (stunning).  Not surprised that Steven Spielberg dubbed Benedict Cumberbatch “the greatest onscreen Holmes”.  So good to watch.

Last year I saw Mark Gatiss (co-writer) on the underground platform at Kings Cross.  He was wearing (amongst other things) gaiters, a flat cap and a striped scarf.  We got onto the same carriage, and I watched him observing the people around him keenly but softly - very contained and present.  I caught his eye, and he smiled at me.  Properly.  As befits a man who has made his childhood passions and dreams into reality as an adult.  Fantastic. 

I recently read an interview with Benedict Cumberbatch, where he talks about how playing Holmes has changed his approach to daily life.  This is what he says:-

Our daily lives are so mundane, we get taken over by what is immediately in front of us and we don't see beyond that.  We don't observe, as he (Holmes) keeps on saying, we see things.  And what is so thrilling about him is it all suddenly becomes a potential adventure.

I think if you look at the example of Holmes, or at least what I have learnt from playing him, is that you see extraordinary depth in the smallest detail.  It's joining the dots, that's the fun thing, building a narrative.  So I sit on trains and I try to see, 'Is that mud on the bottom of a boot?', 'I wonder where he has been'.  'That collar looks a little bit frayed', 'I wonder whether he is has been travelling for a while or has he forgotten his washing?  You do try to piece together personal stories from bits of   information.

When I saw Mark Gatiss on that tube, that's exactly what he seemed to be doing.  He was quietly absorbed in everything around him - so unusual for anyone with a measure of celebrity in a public place to be focused on anything other than themselves.

Extraordinary depth in the smallest detail.  Nice.

Day 59: Split Peasonality

The hard month of January.  I usher it in with a visit to the gym, and a vat of split pea soup.  There's something heroic about split peas - I have always suspected they absorb evil.  I have no proof.  It's just a hunch.

Today I test my theory with an internet search.  Some interesting findings:- 

Firstly, any round legume (eg SPLIT PEAS) eaten in the New Year brings luck.  (Indirectly absorbing evil by promoting good fortune.) 

Secondly, split peas act as a cholesterol-mop (expliciting absorbing fatty 'evil'). 

Thirdly, they can be used to rid your house of ghosts.  All you need to do is leave a pile of anything small and granular (beans, sand, salt - but in this instance we are using SPLIT PEAS, obviously) overnight in the room that is haunted.  Apparently any ghost will be spiritually obliged to stop and count the grains, but because they cannot physically separate them, they lose count, and have to repeatedly start over.  Several nights of this will have them flouncing out in tears of frustration*.  (Absorbing spiritual evil.)

Split peas.  Working against ill-fortune, clogged arteries and ghosts. 

Split peas are available at most supermarkets and will cost you about a pound for 500g.  Heroic and cheap.

Peas be with you.   

*  This approach is not recommended for use with autistic savant ghosts (playing to their strengths) or poltergeists (messy).

Day 58: Janus on Pause

New Year's Day, twenty twelve.  A rubicon is crossed.  Nobody says twenty eleven.  It's always two thousand and eleven.  Nobody says two thousand and twelve.  They say twenty twelve.  Rubicon.  And we've just saved two syllables. 

I wake up with just the very mildest of hangovers - one cup of coffee away from feeling fine.  This is AMAZING. 

Particularly when I see Mandy (who wanted to be a spinning top last night).  She's may not be spinning anymore, but the room still is.  And she's in a sorry state - so sick she can't even face water, and sitting quietly (but for the odd moan), pale and with a sheen of sweat on her face.  This is normally me.  Not this year (feel mixture of deep sympathy and smugness).

Home.  Supermarket for supplies.  Hole up.  Today is not about achievement.  There are no resolutions.  There is no review of 2011.  Janus is on pause.  Instead there will be steak, mashed potatoes and peas - the sort of graphic, clearly defined meal Mr Happy would eat.  There will be watching of unsophisticated television.  There will be deep sleep.  And tomorrow the year starts properly. 

Blank page, sharpened pencil.  (The page represents the year ahead, the sharpened pencil optimistically represents me.  See the power of metaphor).

Day 57: Take the Pace

Very hungover.  Way too hungover.  It's New Year's Day, but on New Year's Eve.  This is exactly what happened last year, with exactly the same people, and we have not learned our lesson (twats).  The well-trodden path to recovery.  Small reliable steps - water, breakfast, shower, clean teeth, long walk, big coffee, cheese toastie, another long walk.  Some of the steps are harder to face than others, but all are necessary.

The second walk is impromptu and beautiful.  Past the boatyards to the river.  The sun is setting on the last day of the year in dramatic style, and the breadth of the estuary allows for expansive skies.  The light fades quickly, and we are in darkness, with a bright nail clipping of a moon shining through the tree branches.  Unsure of the route, we take a wrong turn and end up cutting through a wood, and spooking ourselves with Blair Witch talk.  Eventually sounds of traffic lead us to a road, and human life.  Including a man, sat outside his house in the dark, reading in the beam of his head torch, and a woman who has chosen to decorate her child's pushchair with fairy lights.  The Woodbridge equivalent to the Blackpool illuminations. 

A slow easing into the evening, responsibly drinking water at sensible intervals.  The priority is to avoid a repeat of this morning's pain tomorrow.  An evening of many parts.  Food.  Beer pong (ping pong with beery forfeits).  Fireworks.  Less rocket, more bazooka - we vulgarly trounce the genteel neighbourhood efforts, amidst raucous cheering.  The 'bongs' on the radio - more vulgar whooping and many big hugs.  Champagne.  Dancing (Mandy wishes to be spun like a top, and we make it so).  Guitars and singing.  More dancing.  Lighting a camp fire in the garden.  A blind rum-off - smell first, then taste (which is the premium 7-year old Havana?  The 3 year old?  The cooking rum?).  More dancing. 

This is unbelievable.  I am PACING myself.  I am drunk enough to cheese it up on the dance floor to 80s classics, but still together enough to stand (without swaying) in the kitchen, arguing (without slurring) the case for freedom of speech on the internet.  I'm not sure I've ever managed this balance before on New Year's Eve.  It's always been either coldly and disappointingly sober (rarely), or disgustingly messy (frequently).

Bed at half three.  I ACTUALLY drink water before I go to sleep.  UNBELIEVABLE.  I think I may have learned my lesson.  (Finally...)

Happy New Year.

Day 56: Eight and a Half Bars

Three batches of chocolate brownies.  I've never made them before.  A first.  Like yesterday's clementine-boiling.  I don't consider myself a sissy, but I pale at the obscene quantities of chocolate and butter.  There's something deeply disturbing about any recipe that requires 185g of both, against a paltry 85g of flour.  All in all I used five and a half bars of plain chocolate, one and a half of milk, and one and a half of white.  EIGHT AND A HALF BARS.  And almost a whole tub of cocoa.  By the time the third batch goes in (a long-drawn out process as I only have one suitable baking tin), I have a chocolate fume-induced fever.  I am a drugged drone.  Chop the chocolate.  Melt the chocolate.  Stir the chocolate.  Cook the chocolate.  Chop the chocolate.  Melt the chocolate.  Stir the chocolate.  Cook the chocolate.  Chock the chopolate.  Chock the meltolate.  Chock the stirolate.  Chock the cookolate. 

Finally I am done.  Probably the very best aversion therapy available.  Eyes glazed I turn my attention to the raspberries.   Five bags of them (frozen).   I heat them with sugar and lemon juice, and then sieve.  For ever.  And ever.  Twice through the big mesh.  Twice through the fine mesh.  Who knew sieving could be such hard work?  In kitchen job terms, I guess it's on a par with turning a spit.  Or in Cinderella terms, picking lentils out of ash.  The kitchen looks like the set of a very niche film.  All is covered in spatters of raspberry gore and faecal smears of chocolate (told you it was aversion therapy).   Cleaning the kitchen feels spiritual.  (I will  probably never even THINK that sentence again, it's so foreign to me.) 

I have dedicated all the daylight hours to chocolate, like some suburban Aztec, so it's a dark drive to Suffolk.  Beyond Essex the big radio stations start fuzzing up and dropping off.  To be replaced by local stations - my favourite is Garrison FM, an army station that barks 'Be the best!' and advertises skills training for 'civvy street' in between relentless market town Friday night club choons.  

Mandy's birthday, so everything is far more extreme than the night before New Year's Eve has any decent right to be.  At two-thirty in the morning I find myself wearing a luggage label with my name on it, attached to a button on my cardigan.  It was tied to my wine glass at dinner - a groovy name place thing.  I have decided to wear it, in case I become 'lost'.  (Spiritually, emotionally, causally - but mostly geographically, as the house is rambling and intricate).  Safely labelled, I am weighing Daisy's ears (floppy, heavy, silky) to see which is heavier.  I realise that the 'lost' refers to the powers of speech and balance.  Oh dear.  Roll on New Year's Eve...