The Ghosts of Christmas Yet To Come

I’ve just finished binge-watching the BBC’s new adaptation of A Christmas Carol. Did you see it? Victorian novels, and Dickens in particular, are my thing, so you could be excused for thinking that I’d swoon dead away at the liberties taken with the original text. Where were the cosy scenes of middle-class Victorian life? Whence the beaming Cratchit daughters and their twice-turned dresses? The Ghost of Christmas Past effing and jeffing? Mrs Cratchit as a Sweary Mary? Do me a flavour!

Rather than the traditional elderly man in a nightgown, we have gauntly handsome Guy Pearce brooding in his echoing Georgian townhouse. Bob Cratchit is simmering with barely-suppressed rage in the counting house. Mrs Cratchit has more on her mind than the Christmas goose and the pudding. Marley has a long lead-in, staggering through the snow after the Ghost of Christmas Past and watching his treasured childhood toy being hurled on to a symbolic fire. Hung about with manacles, he finally makes his appearance by his business partner’s meagre fireside. It’s not just Scrooge’s soul which is on the line, but his own, which can only be plucked from the snowy wastes of purgatory by the flint-hearted protagonist.

I didn’t see much TV this Christmas. I meant to, but with seven of us in the house (aged respectively 94, 89, 53x2, 16, 13 and 11) it was hard to find something that we all liked. On Christmas Day, I sat with my parents watching the lovely Gareth Malone as he formed a choir at Watford General Hospital. You know what you’re getting with Gareth. Heart-warming vignettes, cheerful optimism that getting a choir together will lift spirits and build community and a final joyful pay-off as the voices are raised in song. We had all that. But there was something else lurking beneath the surface of cheery Christmas songs and the reassuring voice-over. Something not a million miles away from the Cratchits barely getting by, the workers toiling in a creaking system while their rights are taken away one by one and profit taking precedence over compassion any day.

Gareth has several significant conversations with an anaesthetist in the hospital corridors. She’s struggling to get to rehearsals because there’s so much work to do. People, her patients, her colleagues, her two little boys at home are relying on her. She remembers the little bits of magic that used to twinkle in the hospital at Christmas, but now they’re all gone. Her face, tired, tearful yet determined, could stand for so many, back in 1843 and now.

We’re in the dying embers of 2019, 176 years after A Christmas Carol was written. The emaciated, bent, prematurely aged figures of two children, Ignorance and Want, haunt Scrooge’s footsteps in the original novella. If we carry on putting profit, and money, and progress ahead of compassion and basic human rights, argues Dickens, where will we end up? Quite possibly in a hospital in Watford where staff work themselves to the bone because they care so much about their patients and where there aren’t enough beds or enough funding.

Since I started this blog in October, I’ve been asking myself the question, “What makes me a writer?” Today, with this, for the first time, my query is, “What is writing for?” Often, I think, it’s to shine a light on what is going on. That’s what Dickens did in his revolutionary 19^th century novella, holding a mirror up to his society.

Watching Scrooge race through the snowy streets to save Tiny Tim and release the Cratchits from his icy grasp, my heart lifted. Here at last was the moment I’d been waiting for – repentance, forgiveness, the famous line. But no. It never came. The loose ends weren’t tied up. Scrooge still has a long way to go but he’s made a start. The moment where he stands in his office gazing up at the glassy ceiling where Tiny Tim takes his fateful skate was so clever, so multi-layered, so – well, writerly – that it fired off the neurons in my brain to start writing this.

Is the pen mightier than the sword? Sure is. Can words change a society? I hope so. Will 2020 be a year of changes, of progress, of compassion? We can only pray that it is.

So, to all of you, a Happy New Year, and dare I say it, God bless us, everyone.

Expectation Management

Deck the halls with boughs of holly,

Tra la la la laaaa, la la la la.

‘Tis the season to be – well, a bit overwhelmed and grumpy, actually, since you ask. Christmas cards, presents, food, decorations, remembering a thousand and one things for school, the same annoying Christmas songs being played on the radio over and over again – a few days before Christmas, my mind is whirling, I’m tired, and I just want to lie down on a comfy sofa somewhere in front of a fire reading the Christmas Radio Times and nibbling on chocolate tree decorations. Is that really so much to ask?

This week in particular, I’ve felt that I’m in a vortex. I know that the world won’t come to an end if I don’t get all my Christmas cards done and put my clean clothes mountain away, but the knowledge that my to-do list is getting longer by the minute as time races on is gnawing away at my sense of contentment.

I’m cross with myself for feeling like this because as a Christian, I don’t believe that this is how Christmas should be. These past few weeks, I’ve had glimpses of peace and joy and compassion shining through all the noise and bustle. Sitting at the candlelit carol service on Sunday, I sang the words that promise peace on earth, the fulfilment of prophecies, a baby born to refugees in a busy town, starlit streets. No mention of tinsel or snow or elves, on shelves or elsewhere.

  

I’m a member of the ACW, a fine organisation which, amongst other things, sends me an email every morning with a blog written by one of the members. A couple of days ago, this was by Georgina Tennant, a writer I admire enormously. She wrote wittily and movingly about what she calls Expectation Management. With her permission, I’m quoting the first two paragraphs which had me sitting up straight and shouting, “Yes!” at my laptop screen.

“My friend and I have coined a term which is helping us to navigate the ups and downs of family life – Expectation Management. We remind each other of it frequently, particularly at times when our expectations are in danger of running away with us. We look forward to special days, birthdays, Christmases and holidays – but it is dawning on us both that Expectation Management is essential for these times.

The trouble is that we are victims of our own high expectations as we envisage the most wonderful of days, our Mary Poppins-like selves swirling and singing amongst our children, offering them home-baked wares and fun without ceasing. They, in turn, will listen to every sweet-sounding word we utter, offer their siblings first choice in all things and skip home, to head straight to bed with no need for toenail cutting, three extra drinks, five snacks and seven stories. Reality, as you can well imagine, never matches up – not even nearly.” You can read the whole blog here: https://morethanwriters.blogspot.com/2019/12/expectation-management-for-advent-by.html

And there it is – nothing matches up to those high expectations. Perfection in all things is a message which is hurled at us the second Bonfire Night is over. The right presents, wrapped beautifully, the perfect Christmas dinner served to a harmonious group of family and friends, rosy-cheeked children, tidy house and so on and so forth. Everything will be all right, we’re assured, as long as we buy lots of stuff from the correct shop.

I am in danger of sounding a bit Scrooge-ish. I love Christmas. I love being with my family. Presents are great and I even like some Christmas songs. But as we come to the end of 2019, here’s my resolution. No more being bamboozled by the wrapping paper and ribbons. Look at what lies beneath.

A very Merry Christmas to you all!

 

Images by Pixabay

A heavenly Christmas memory

It wasn’t that long ago that my December was a frantic round of costume making, line learning and general dashing from pillar to post. These days, with only one child in primary school and my Nativity days far behind me, that month of tinsel-bedecked craziness is just a memory.

One thing which sticks in my mind, however, and has floated back to the surface this week, is a Christingle service around 8 years ago. My friend Judith and I were in the midst of running a ladies’ outreach called Pamper Club, I ran Thursday toddlers and I had three young children. I also worked part-time and had no family near by to help me. Naturally, it seemed like a splendid idea to plan and put on the Christingle to end all Christingles.

Our vision was to show everyone that our church wasn’t an exclusive club, a place only certain people could go, but a warm, open, welcoming space full of love. To this end, we started to cast our young performers. Before too long, we had an excitable flock of shepherds, an innkeeper, a fair few Wise Men, Mary and Joseph and so many angels that we had to divide them into three groups according to age, from 3 to 11. There were around 25 of them, a true heavenly host.

We wrote a script, chose a mixture of carols and songs and started rehearsing. It was perhaps inevitable that our carefully thought-out performance didn’t quite go to plan. At the dress rehearsal, the day before Christmas Eve, we got the first text from the mother of a Wise Man who had been felled by the sickness and diarrhoea bug sweeping the village. Head lice broke out amongst the heavenly host.

We wanted the children to enjoy themselves but we also wanted everything to be well organised and calm. We assigned a mother to each group, a wrangler who attended to toilet trips, last-minute costume issues and general confidence. The heavenly host, smelling faintly of tea tree oil, had three. All was well with the abbreviated group of Wise Men. However, we’d forgotten about the bad blood between the innkeeper and one of the shepherds. In the middle of “Away in a Manger”, a full-on fist fight broke out by the font. By the end of the rehearsal, twitching slightly, we were as sure as we could be that this would be an unforgettable Christingle.

The next day, I was awoken by the first of several apologetic texts. A shepherd had been sick in the night. Another Wise Man had developed a fever. Several of the heavenly host were complaining of tummy aches. Joseph had spent most of the night on the toilet. In a last-minute battlefield promotion, my eldest son was persuaded to scramble into the well-worn Joseph costume and tea towel headgear. Lavish bribes were applied.

Armed with carrier bags full of tinsel halos, gold cardboard crowns and heavily annotated scripts, we made our way up to church. Lessons duly learned from the dress rehearsal, an extra mummy wrangler was on duty with the shepherds, keeping the innkeeper occupied to avoid a repeat of the fisticuffs by the font. The stage was up, the sound desk switched on and the Christmas tree illuminated.

The church was filled to capacity. That mixture of abject fear and soaring hope you only get working with lots of children at Christmas time was swirling around us like a golden mantle. The vicar stood up to deliver his welcome speech and we were off.

No-one was sick. No-one wet themselves, although one of the smaller angels departed halfway through “Hark the Herald Angels” to go to the loo and never came back. The enormous feathery wings attached to my daughter's costume smacked her fellow angels around the chops every time she moved. The innkeeper kept his hands to himself. The heavenly host sang “Away in a Manger” and the church was suddenly full of that special, hushed magic we all yearn for at Christmas. It was beautiful.

Hunched between the piano and the Christmas tree, mouthing lines at the angels, I watched as they sang the well-known words, the soft candlelight reflecting off their smiling faces. The Wise Men trundled up from the back of the church and plonked their gifts unceremoniously in Joseph and Mary’s laps. The shepherds milled around while the innkeeper eyeballed them suspiciously. For a few minutes, it seemed possible that there might be peace on earth and that goodwill was achievable for all of us.

I still see those children around the village, mostly teenagers now. Some come to church from time to time, but most don’t. Did that hour of singing and telling the story of the baby born to a young mother while angels sang sink into their hearts? Maybe. It’s not for me to know. But the memory of our Christingle hasn’t faded. This Christmas, as I watch a new generation of children speaking and singing those beautiful words, I hope that perhaps in our uncertain and challenging world, the star that guided everyone to Bethlehem two thousand years ago might scatter some hope on us too.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

Recollected In Tranquility: Poems And Stuff

Happy New Year, valued readers, and welcome to my first blog for 2020. I wrote it months ago, but each time I went to post it, something else came up and I found myself writing a new one. Today, though, is the time for this piece and I hope you enjoy it.

You may remember that in my first blog, I mentioned that I write poetry.[1]Back in the day, at primary school, I knocked out loads of the stuff. If there were competitions for budding young writers, I didn’t know about them. Life might have turned out very differently if I had.

I can still remember sitting in Class 9 at my table, pencil gripped firmly in hand, composing some kind of ode, written on orange sugar paper. If I shut my eyes, I’m back there. It’s probably autumn (a season which is important to me) and outside, the sumac tree by the big playground is dropping scarlet tears near the water fountain, the huge weeping willow is sighing gently in the breeze and the oak by the hall is turning the tarmac brown and slimy with its falling leaves.

Back then, I knew nothing of William Wordsworth and his assertion that poetry is emotion recalled in tranquillity. [2]It’s a good line, though, and it’s true. Stuff happens, it hurts, you push it down and hope never to see it again. If you keep on doing that, plus blaming yourself for it for most of your life, you’re going to end up with plenty of emotion to recall.

I wrote a lot of poems about Epping Forest (the village I lived in is right in the middle of it), the weather and whatever topic our teacher gave us. At 10, I was already constructing the foundations to become a freelance writer, exactly what I am now.

At the same time, without realising it, I was building up a fine reservoir of sadness, doubt, pain and anguish which was going to come in jolly handy for my poetic efforts later in life. I always think there are two ways to look at challenging situations. Either you can wallow in misery (and I’ve done this), saying how unfair it is and how everyone had it easier than you, or you can take the vast piles of ordure life handed you and let them mulch down (much like those oak leaves in the playground). I mostly do this.

I studied poetry for English Literature at secondary school and loved it. I hated nearly everything else, but poetry was my friend. I got it. And I still wrote it, but not nearly as much. By the time I escaped from school, Essex and my miserable life, it was firmly on the back burner. I still read plenty of it, discovering new poets with joy (Carol Ann Duffy, Simon Armitage, Wendy Cope and so on), but I wrote no more.

And that was it until two years ago, in the autumn (naturally). I went to see a counsellor. I was rather hoping he would make me feel happy. As it turned out, he took me to a door, helped me to open it and then stood back while a torrent of emotion foamed out, recollected in tranquillity (sort of).

Gosh, though, it was weird. A phrase would drop into my head, I’d sit down and out would come a poem. They were all really, really cross. Either that, or really sad. None of them rhymed. I showed them to my husband. He’s not a crier, but on several occasions, tears poured down his cheeks. My close friends reacted in a similar way. I was surprised. But also pleased. I’d watch as their lips trembled and their eyes filled and feel really, really happy.

Once they’d read a poem, I’d quiz them on their feelings. “So that made you feel sad?” I’d enquire. “How sad? A dull ache? Sharp pain?” They would explain their feelings, wiping away tears, and the sadder they were, the more I felt I’d succeeded.

This is exactly the opposite of my normal behaviour. I hate it when my friends are upset and will do anything I can to make it better. Seeing people responding viscerally to my words, however, was quite another matter. Something powerful was pouring from my heart on to the page. It took me a little while to realise what was going on. Long-buried memories, none of them pleasant, were coming out into the daylight. One of the ways I processed them was to write poetry.

Reading my poems doesn’t make me cry. I remain quite imperturbable. But then I suppose I would. I’ve already gone through the pain and misery which occasioned them. They do say, “write what you know” don’t they?

The great thing about poetry is that you can write a poem which isn't about a specific person but was inspired by a situation or experience.

One of these days, I may put one of my own poems into a blog. I nearly did with this one, but decided against at the last moment. Emotion recollected in tranquillity is great when you feel tranquil, but perhaps those emotions need a bit more time to simmer down. A bit like making jam. There's a poem in that .......

  

Photos by Pixelbay

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[1] https://bigwordsandmadeupstories.blogspot.com/2019/11/how-i-became-writer.html

[2] “Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.”

Life is copy

I’m sitting in A&E with my 94-year old father. It’s Sunday morning and we should be at church. Dad arrived via ambulance through the green fields on the approach to Ipswich on a bright, clear, sunny day, the endless Suffolk sky washed clean by rain storms overnight.

He’s lying on a hospital bed hooked up to monitors. A beep escapes the machine every 5 seconds or so. Dad turns his head. “You’ve got perfect pitch, haven’t you Ruth?” he asks. I haven’t, but sometimes it’s easier to agree. I’m the only other member of the family who can read music, so that probably counts. 

“What’s that note, would you say?” he asks. Dad’s been playing the piano since he was 2 and only retired as a church organist last January. It’s November now.

I listen intently. “E sharp?” Dad’s not sure. I watch as his face takes on a faraway look. “Have you got my denture?” He’s asked me four times now. I reassure him. His face clears. “C sharp. Yes, that’s what it is.”

This is a straight repeat of what was happening last November, except then it was a different hospital and a different parent. I’m a pro now. It wasn’t that long ago that I was fielding questions from three children while I tried to cook tea and break up fights about who said what to who and whose turn it was to sit at the tap end of the bath. Now I’m being bombarded with questions by my father, who has been in brilliant health all his life and has only been felled by palpitations and breathlessness in the last few weeks.

Perched on a chair drinking a cup of tea, my mind is in its usual state of extreme activity. If you unscrewed the top of my head and peered in, you’d see thoughts, memories, half-written articles and chunks of stories and poems whirling around. This morning is no exception. I make a mental note of our conversation about the exact pitch of the machine. I know it will be forming part of an article at some point.

Anyone else in my situation might be running to the loo to have a private cry, then coming back with a brave smile to carry on the reassurance; updating Facebook so that friends know what’s going on; using this time to have a profound conversation, before it’s too late.

Not me.

I called the ambulance. I will make completely sure that Dad gets what he needs. I’ve already organised for Mum to come and live with us while he’s in hospital. I am being a good daughter. Since my parents moved up to live near us, this is a phrase I’ve heard a lot. People keep saying it, so I suppose it must be true.

I’ve kept my innermost emotions and feelings carefully locked away for as long as I can remember. That’s always been the safest course of action. During that time, I’ve become a writer who produces work from the head, good work which touches people and does what it’s supposed to do. I even get paid for it (excellent). But recently, something else has happened. I’ve started to write from the heart and the world has not stopped turning. People are still talking to me. It feels good although a bit scary.

In the last few weeks, I’ve realised that what I’ve often said in the past is entirely true. Life is copy. Everything that’s happened to me, good and bad, every disappointment, betrayal, loss, every joy, achievement, realisation has dropped down into my heart, quietly mulching down and waiting for me to release the catch on the door.

The single, repeated note in the hospital. The tired faces of the staff. The reassuring hand of the GP on my father’s shoulder a couple of weeks before. The pale, set face of a mother holding her unconscious daughter’s hand in the next bay. All this is copy. All this is released by the simple act of sitting down and starting to type, by allowing those long-protected feelings to see the light of day.

And there is nothing I’d rather be doing than this.