Snow

There has been a flurry of snow, the worst this winter to date. It must be something to do with my rapidly advancing years, but perhaps I do not look forward to the snow as much as I did in my youth. Then, I would cheerfully throw on some boots and head out for a walk, just for the pleasure of stomping through the unsullied whiteness and hearing the welcoming crunch under my feet. Nowadays I tend to worry about whether I will manage to get the car out of the drive, and the number of meals I can construct from the contents of the fridge in the nightmare scenario that all the local supermarkets are temporarily out of action; which usually is quite a small number, the meals, I mean, on account of never keeping that much food in the house at any one time.

I am afraid I would be useless in the event of a nuclear war or a zombie apocalypse. Perhaps I should make more effort to hoard large quantities of tinned food and bottled water for just this kind of emergency. Unfortunately, I  am not so very fond of food out of tins, perhaps with the exception of baked beans, or tuna (though rarely at the same time). Especially tinned vegetables: they just don't work for me. But I am probably being too fussy: when zombies are attacking, I doubt you are too concerned whether your tinned potatoes are a smidgen water-logged. The bigger problem is where to do the hoarding: I am not blessed with a cellar, or even that much cupboard space. And I don't fancy stashing tins of sliced peaches behind the sofa or under the bed.

Now that I come to think of it, tinned sliced peaches are rather nice, especially served with tinned evaporated (or do I mean condensed?) milk, but it's not something I have eaten since, perhaps, my childhood. But we live in different times: the world has moved on. Best not to hanker for the past. I suspect if I went out to buy some tinned peaches and evaporated milk (zombies permitting), I would be sadly disappointed.

Cathedral: plenty of storage space for hoarding tinned food.

300

– So are you impressed?
– With what? That you've kept going?
– Well, yes. Three hundred posts. I thought it seemed quite a significant number.
– But it has taken you years to get there. Had you managed three hundred posts in, say, three hundred days, that would have been more remarkable. Or in only a month or two would have been pretty amazing. But as it is, you basically write a few lines and then decide to take the rest of the week off to recover.
– That's hardly fair. Writing a blog is an arduous activity, requiring selfless dedication and  unflinching commitment, endless hours of concentrated effort to nurture the creative spark and watch it grow into a work of intellectual rigour and emotional depth. And then painstakingly to craft three hundred of them at the drop of a hat, – well, that seems something of an achievement.
– I'm sure you could get a computer to churn out random bits of text, perhaps with a few grammatical checks along the way to make sure it makes a modicum of sense, and just post that.
– But would that manage to create a work of fine literature with a message of hope and inspiration to the reader?
– Do yours?

Romance

The football pundits are talking, in the cliché-ridden way they have (although cliché-ridden is, I suppose, something of a cliché itself) about the romance of the FA Cup, in that lowly minnows (they are always minnows) can occasionally defeat the big guns (they are always big guns, despite not having much relevance to minnows). Yesterday saw a clutch of Premiership clubs bite the dust (after a while, painfully florid prose comes quite easily), most notably the humbling of Chelsea 4-2 by League One underdogs Bradford City. This is the beauty of football, as José Mourinho said yesterday, although one suspects he was inwardly gritting his teeth (again, probably difficult to grit one's teeth outwardly, unless you're blessed with dentures).

But other sports often seem more predictable, perhaps because they are won by accumulating a large number of points, so that the better team or player has a chance to shine through. Whereas football matches are often lucky to scrape up a goal or two, and even those are confounded by bizarre missed chances and questionable refereeing decisions, so that the result is, literally, in the lap of the gods. It is intriguing to wonder how far you would get by collecting a host of match statistics and feeding them into an appropriate machine learning algorithm, with a view to predicting the outcome of a game, or perhaps a whole season. It can't be any more difficult than predicting the stock market, or the weather, let alone how much I need to save in a personal pension to be able one day to retire in a reasonable degree of comfort. But I suspect these things may be beyond human understanding.

Salt

– It's not getting any warmer.
– It's certainly chilly out. Wintry, you might say. But that's winter for you. Perhaps there's more snow on the way.
– I keep getting gritted.
– How do you mean? Personally?
– Yes. They seem to be following me about, these gritting lorries.
– It can't do your paintwork much good.
– But it's also when I'm out of the car. They drive past and try their best to spatter me with whatever it is they chuck out.
– That doesn't sound too good. Have you ever done anything to provoke them?
– Not that I know. But sometimes these things are unintentional – a casual remark, taken out of context, and you have an enemy for life. An enemy with a gritting lorry.
– Perhaps you are getting a little paranoid about all this. There is probably a perfectly rational explanation. What seems to be an act of deliberate malice is probably nothing more than a quirk of probability. You'll see, chances are that you won't encounter another gritting lorry for the rest of the winter.
– Are you sure?
– You can never be sure where probability is concerned. That's what makes life so exciting.

Credit

– This is a difficult time of the year.
– I hadn't noticed. In what way?
– Well, the excitement of Christmas is over, the optimism of the New Year has faded amongst the litter of broken resolutions, you are beset by the clamour of sale offers and potential summer holidays, the credit card bills need paying... Need I go on?
– I'd rather you didn't.
– When all you want is a gentle start to the year, to be able to reflect on the months ahead, calmly plan your work and leisure time, perhaps consider a new hobby or visiting somewhere you've never been before, or resolve how to spend your hard-earned wages more wisely, perhaps even pay off a bit of the mortgage or start saving for a new kitchen... You know what I mean?
– You seem to have quite a lot of things on your mind.
– And you don't?
– Not right now, no.
– I prefer to look ahead. Think things through.
– Rather than just make things up as you go along.
– Yes.
– Perhaps you should try it. It could be your resolution. Take life as it comes. Tomorrow will worry about itself. Birds of the field not sowing, and all that.
– I think you mean birds of the air.
– Do I? Maybe it depends on what kind of birds they are? Have you thought of that?

Liberty

A week on from the Paris terrorist attacks, a week which has seen millions demonstrating on the streets of France and around the world, showing their support for the principle of freedom of speech. It has been a troubling week: on the one hand, the sinking despair as you realise that Islam and the West will continue this confrontation long into the future, with little hope of any peaceful settlement or genuine acceptance of each other's positions. On the other hand, it is inspiring to see the passion with which ordinary people in these secular times hold on to the simple truths of liberty, equality and brotherhood.

Society has to come to terms with a difficult compromise: the right of the individual to hold his own beliefs, free from censure or abuse, while at the same time respecting and tolerating the beliefs of others. And with that comes the right occasionally to offend, and the expectation that occasionally you will be offended.

Resolve

– The New Year is moving on apace. A third of the way through January. Practically.
– Indeed...
– And yet –
– And yet?
– You do not seem to have made any resolutions.
– Haven't I? Well, it's not the sort of thing you can rush into.
– I think it is. In fact, it needed to be rushed into ten days ago.
– I don't know... Is there much point? People make them, and then within a few days break them. I've just cut to the chase, and avoided the tedious intermediate stage of having to think up something that I know I haven't a hope of achieving.
– But you're missing the point. That's the fun of it: imagining how you would like to improve yourself, coming up with a plan of how to achieve it, and then trying your darnedest to get there.
– ... Did you say darnedest?
– Yes. And I meant it.

Epiphany

– I see you still have the Christmas tree up.
– Yes. It is a final flourish. One last evening of festive decoration and sparkly lights before it all gets torn down and thrown out with the rubbish.
– You don't really need to tear it down: you could dismantle it carefully, seeing you can use the decorations again next year. Likewise, being an artificial tree, it's a bit of a waste throwing it out with the rubbish.
– Well, perhaps I was exaggerating slightly for dramatic effect. I wanted to put across the angst I feel at the end of the Yuletide season and the commencement of the – for want of a better word – New Year.
– Angst?
– Yes. Angst. It is a common affliction.
–  But Christmas comes and goes, and in eleven months' time will be here again. It is like the circle of life, but involving presents and sherry trifle. There is no point in railing against it.
– It's just that I had been so looking forward to two weeks' holiday away from work.
– And you had a pleasant two weeks' holiday.
– Quite. It's over now, and I had to return to work today.
– But the New Year is a time for optimism and rejuvenation: think what opportunities lay before you, waiting to be grasped.
– ... I'd rather be on holiday.