Noir

– So, are you planning to write about nothing but Christmas for the next month?
– What? No, no, of course not. Not at all.
– Because it is a long way away still.
– Yes, of course.
– And to witter on about nothing else will begin to get wearing.
– I quite agree.
– When there are so many weightier topics of current interest which are worth discussing.
– Indeed... I noticed on the news–
– Yes?
–  That it was Black Friday today, with desperate crowds besieging supermarkets in search of bargains.
– I hope this has nothing to do with Christmas?
– No, not in the least. I am sure they were just keen to go shopping to celebrate Thanksgiving. Belatedly.

Larder

– And is that it?
– How do you mean?
– Is that the sum total of your Christmas food shopping?
– It's a stollen. They eat them on the continent. Somewhere.
– I know. I meant, is that all you bought?
– Well, it's a start. I wasn't in the mood for traipsing around the supermarket trying to fill several trolley loads. So I thought if I just buy one festive item and put it at the back of the kitchen cupboard, that will be a start. Although there is a risk I'll forget where I put it. But hopefully I will remember in time for Christmas Day, and there it will be, in pride of place on the Yuletide table, a fitting treat to welcome all who may visit.
– It's not very big.
– It was the only one they had.
– If more than one or two people come to visit, you could be in trouble.
– But by then I will have bought some other items to accompany the stollen. Next time I visit the supermarket, I will see what other festive bargains are to be had. And so it will go on, bit by bit, till the larder is full, and, I daresay, the freezer also. Although admittedly the freezer is pretty full already.
– Then this is the time to start eating your way through the contents of the freezer.
– Why would I want to do that?
– So that you can re-stock it in time for Christmas.
– That seems a little pointless. Although, now I come to think of it, quite a lot of the freezer is filled with leftover turkey from last year.

Panic

– It's getting towards that time of year.
– What time in particular?
– You know, shopping and presents and overeating. And snow.
– Christmas?
– Yes.
– But it's not for ages yet.
– Not for ages? It's only a matter of weeks away.
– Well, that's alright. Plenty of time.
– It's hardly any time at all. The weeks will fly by. You will get increasingly panicked by the amount of stuff to do and the lack of opportunities for doing it. The days to come will all be a blur till one morning you will wake up and realise it is Boxing Day and you've missed it all. But then you'll remember you need to start preparing for New Year.
– You have a pessimistic view of all this. You should relax and look forward to it. Relish the unique charms of winter and the chance to make merry with friends and family. And if you spot the odd gift worth buying to show someone close how much you appreciate them, all the better. Anticipate the joys of the season to come and help to bring some happiness into the lives of your fellow men.
– ... Did I mention snow?
– Yes.

Torches

So the choir and orchestra performed The Armed Man by Karl Jenkins last night, after many months (at least two) of arduous rehearsal. The audience seemed to like it, or perhaps had been brought up to be polite and not show their true feelings; we shall never know. But the performance went well enough, and there was a lot of hearty applause, so hopefully it was the former.

It is such an emotional work, pulling together texts from many sources for its graphic depiction of war and its aftermath, and ending with a moment of consolation and hope for a better future. The message is timeless, reminding us that conflict has been a sad feature of our history for centuries past, and is unlikely to disappear in the near future, given the tensions blighting so many parts of world.

Today I feel physically and emotionally drained by it all: after all the weeks of effort, it is over and done with. It always leaves you a little deflated, but that is really just a consequence of the emotional high of the performance. These things take you out of the humdrumness of the daily routine: the highs and lows are what makes it all worthwhile.

Poppy

It is sobering to be reminded so often this year that it is the centenary of the outbreak of World War I; in particular, this week's services of remembrance have taken on a special poignancy. The display of ceramic poppies at the Tower of London, 888,246 of them sweeping across the moat to mark each life lost from these shores, has caught the public's imagination, even if some art critics have been scornful. But it is not difficult to see why the installation has made such an impact, emphasising the scale of the loss in such a dramatic and personal way.

Sometimes we need to be reminded of things we too easily forget amidst the noise of daily life, and the simple idea of a flood of red poppies has succeeded in creating a deeply emotional response. The transience of the display adds to the impact: slowly building up over the summer and autumn, it will now start to fade away till, like first-hand memories of the Great War, nothing remains.

Pyrotechnics

– You wonder how they get all the colours, don't you?
– Sorry?
– In fireworks. All the colours. Especially compared to the ones we had when I was a child, when I'm sure things looked less exciting than the big displays you get nowadays.
– Chemicals. It's just the chemicals they add to the firework. Metals burn with a characteristic colour, as you will remember from school chemistry lessons.
– I'm not sure I do. I don't think we were allowed anywhere too close to a Bunsen flame for health and safety reasons.
– I suppose chemistry laboratories are dangerous places. But even so, explosions and pungent smells are part of the attraction of science. Without them, what chance of encouraging students to become the chemists of the future?
– And I was never that keen about dissecting frogs.
– I am sure the frog was not wild about it either.

Bath

Yesterday I had my first bath in years. It is not as bad as it sounds: it's not that I've been wallowing in unspeakable dirt all this time, but rather I've relied on a quick and bracing shower first thing in the morning, rather than a slow and luxuriant bath. Partly this was driven by some odd peculiarity of the plumbing, which has now fortunately been fixed, so that I can actually get enough hot water out of the boiler to fill the bath were I ever in the mood. And then it happened yesterday morning that the shower refused point blank to work, just at that delicate time of the day when you really want everything to go without a hitch or else you might as well collapse back into bed and try again tomorrow.

So I still did not manage a slow, luxuriant wallow: it ended up more as a brisk dip, as I find mornings to be quite rushed at the best of times, especially when you want to be out of the house before the traffic builds up. But it may be that, inspired by this minor yet still somehow significant achievement, I will one day progress to a more serious attempt at bathing, with appropriate background music and scented candles, and seek to banish the stresses and tensions of the working day. Which you never quite manage in the shower.