But I'm afraid they are not the first to be so ungrateful. The revelations a couple of years ago of who had declined such awards in the past brought to our attention Philip Larkin's refusal of one of those 'British Empire' appendices to his name and he went up further in my estimation all too briefly until it further transpired that he wanted something better, which he did eventually get.
But, really, such attitudes simply will not do and not for the first time it is Ken Livingston that exhibits some common decency, although possibly offering a diluted reason for doing so.
Following on from my own summer's Olympic triumph in our family bag boggling tournament, the Christmas events in Swindon had one major star in my neice, Laura, who established herself in a class of her own at Scrabble, including the remarkable game pictured in which she produced three 50 point bonus words. I am sometimes suspected of being good at Scrabble, or I ought to be, but I'm not. Laura has found her talent for the game and from now on we are all merely Joey Bartons playing in the shadow of her Lionel Messi.
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So, we are now in a position to audit the second season of the Saturday Nap feature here and find that we improved on the marginal profit our selections showed in 2011. Those that stuck with it and didn't take the profit after 10 weeks were rewarded with two further winners (at short prices) that left the £10 level stake profit at starting prices at £28.45 and a 23.7% return over 12 weeks which was enhanced to £37.60 (31.33%) if you had taken the mostly better prices that I did. That is a healthy enough return, with 6 of the 12 selections being successful, and next year- who knows- I might have to make it a subscription-only feature and charge for such gilt-edged information.
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The highlight of the Christmas television was surely Restless, the William Boyd novel brought to the small screen. Not because of any older woman glamour provided by Charlotte Rampling but for an all-round good job well done. Celebrity Mastermind continued to downgrade the brand by asking some apparently well-known people (and I realize that they are well-known to some if not to me) questions that didn't really belong in the Mastermind quiz book. In fact, with some knowledge of the specialist subjects- like David Bowie- even they crossed over into the General Knowledge area at times.
But I got done those things I had saved up to do in the midwinter break, which was to write the introductions to two forthcoming Portsmouth Poetry Society meetings for 2013- one on e.e.cummings and one on Is there a difference between poetry written by women and men, which I notice we have been beaten to by Pascale Petit's piece in the winter issue of Poetry Review. I'll be able to use these to fill a gap when ideas are running short here in the new year and when Portsmouth Library have made available their copy of Sean O'Brien's Collected Poems, I will try to find something I haven't said before to say about that major career retrospective.
And 2013 might be the date of a new booklet of poems by me. It's possible that the file of poems for inclusion will stretch to the requisite number of pages by October and at present the working title in progress is The Perfect Murder, so if I could just reserve that title for the time being, I'd be grateful if nobody else used it in the meantime.
But if I find myself still here doing the same thing this time next year then we will count 2013 as successful as 2012 was. I don't ask for much.
HNY, Best, D.