Christmas Diary

 Dinner with my friends was not such a big affair as I'd thought, and hoped it wouldn't be. Kind of them to ask, I could hardly hope for better neighbours, and they surely needn't have. Not being of Christian lineage, they don't really do Christmas but, then again, I thought, neither do I beyond a few vestigial social observances. I don't know if the card I gave them was the only one they got but I did some internet research and carefully transcribed,

শুভ বড়দিন 

on to the envelope. Carefully enough, at least, for them to be able to read it, the Bengali for Merry Christmas. 

I'm with my mother on Merry. I'd prefer Happy but one takes what translations one can find. I'm with my mother because she thought it implied boozing. Merry would be the least of it but there are no cards with which to wish people a Paralytic Christmas which, if anything, might be the 'real meaning' of the pagan festival co-opted by Christianity but either way I have considerable resistance to compulsory jollity.

It's a time when most things seem to stop before we then go round again. R.S. Thomas did it well in Song at the Year's Turning when he still observed rhyme and metre before withdrawing to free verse,

Song at the Year's Turning

 

And that's what it is.

The 'despair' that Thomas refers to might not be that felt when news items announced that the King was likely to pay tribute to his mother in his first 3pm speech. It would have been something of an omission if it had slipped his mind. It is the same sort of despair that, a few years ago, a news item reported some university research that found that men liked watching football whereas women liked shopping. You simply can't tell the difference between news and satire. I'd have thought that would contravene rules about stereotyping, especially in universities where they have time on their hands to consider such issues, and do. I know and have known women with considerable interest in football. I can't immediately think of many people at all that enjoy shopping.

Despair might also be caused by Jeremy Clarkson. It has done for many years. But just when it looked like he could be personable on Millionaire and maybe modified some aspects of his xenophobia, you simply can't tell how many levels of irony are involved in his latest apparently newsworthy pronouncement.

Irony can only really have one level which is that where what is said is not literally meant. Of course, not even I, here, should add to the publicity he does such things for but I wonder why he does it. It only makes some of us more Team Meghan. I'm not anti-Charles, William or Catherine and I'm sure Meghan's not as perfect as she looks but Clarkson, who is by no means stupid, is a blockhead who writes only for money, to adapt Dr. Johnson. He has very convincingly demonstrated why Meghan has a complaint and he's undone any progress he might have made towards making himself look palatable. He's back at Square One. He's not even there. Look what they did to Danny Baker for an innocent, not very good joke. He was exiled to podcasts and touring provincial theatres to recycle all his inventive gabble.

I dare say we always knew Clarkson was still dreadful but now, alongside the economic theories of Liz Truss, the charisma of Boris Johnson and Trump's campaign slogan that Hillary should be 'locked up', it's all imploded many billions of years ahead of the universe is predicted to do when it will become inert, in stasis and devoid of all meaning.

 

Meanwhile, we have another year to see what happens. Dr. Zhivago is first up on the reading list to see if the book is better without Julie Christie providing quite such unnecessary distraction. I thought perhaps I'd treat myself to another recording of The Well-Tempered Klavier to compare with the long-established Bernard Roberts on the shelf but the reviews, on Amazon at least, suggest I have a very good account already. Three essays are ready to go, more or less, to where they are aimed on top of the one already carried forward. The turf account has recorded worthwhile success for the outgoing year but it remains to be seen if it can get any better and how much gets carried forward.

And so, on the precarious, fragile, temporary basis that we inhabit the moment, life's a gas and I hope it's gonna last but not forever, not until the 12th of Never, because that's a long, long time.

I can't bear not still being the owner of all that pop vinyl I was never going to play again that I sold for mere money. I will have some compensation, though, by re-investing some of that meaningless cash in The Marvelettes. This is an amulet against any kind of despair,