Saturday December 3rd 2023

Dear reader, have you got your 2023 Christmas costume items yet?

More to the point, have Lois and I got ours? And as we prepare to go to bed we do a quick inventory on our special 2023 Christmas clothing items - our sweaters and pyjamas haven't been delivered yet, so yes it's just my Santa hat that's arrived, but I decide to wear it tonight anyway, and gradually get the full "look" as the other items begin to roll in!

me, preparing for bed in my shiny-new Santa hat for 2023

With my hat firmly in place where it belongs - on my head - we think back on this magical day. 

Despite the raw, freezing and misty weather (31F / -1C), we drive from our home in Malvern over to Alcester in the morning, to watch our 10-year-old "Australian" twin granddaughters sing their Christmas songs and carols with some of their new English classmates, in front of a small crowd of parents outside a local garden centre. 

Lois (left) with our daughter Sarah (centre, in the yellow coat)

waiting in the freezing cold and misty weather for the concert to begin

our twin granddaughters Lily (left) and Jessica (right), in the

freezing cold weather, putting their all into some timeless Christmas

Carols and some modern Christmas songs in front of a small crowd 

of mostly parents at a local garden centre

Oh, how the tears well up in mine and Lois's eyes, as we hear the children sing carols like "In The Bleak Midwinter" and "Away in a Manger" as well as some modern Christmas songs like "Rocking Around The Christmas Tree" etc. 

We're just two old softies, Lois and me, the pair of us. Awwwwwww!!!!!

And we're particularly proud of Jessica - the little choir had obviously been instructed to do various arm-movements to accompany some of the singing, but they all "bottle out" of that whole malarkey due to shyness, with the exception of Jessica, who not only does every single movement, but carries on doing them even after it had become apparent that the others weren't going to. 

Atta girl !!!!!

Afterwards Lois and me, plus our daughter Sarah and husband Francis, and the twins, try to warm up in the garden centre café with steaming hot chocolates all round. 

Then we all go back for bowls of Francis's own warming soup in the family's temporary rental home in Alcester, where they've been living since moving back from Australia 7 months ago. And you can't say they don't know how to "do Christmas" in that house, that's for sure - my goodness !!!!

the public display....

...the advent calendar...

... the Christmas tree...

...and the roaring fire in the corner stove.

Yes, that all says "Christmas" with a capital 'C', now doesn't it!!!!

I ask the twins if they were ever this cold in Australia, and not surprisingly they say "No", but they say they're getting used to it really quickly now that they're in England, that's for sure.

flashback to December 2022: one of the twins (not sure which one)

relaxing on a swing and enjoying the Australian Christmas

15:15 Lois and I set off to drive home to Malvern "before the weather closes in again" - you know, those English late afternoons in winter, as the darkness and the mists begin to fall, and the roads start icing up all over again.

Yikes !!!!!

19:30 We settle down on the couch, and wind down for bed with a bit of "telly", the part 2 of the new Sky Arts series on Gothic novels and films, and all that "malarkey".

Another fascinating episode. 

We hear about an early example of Gothic novel, Matthew Lewis's "The Monk", published in 1796. The eponymous monk in the story is presented uncompromisingly as a depraved being and, given some of the scenes in the book, and given the combination of "oldy-worldy" "Jane Austen English" with full-on seduction, violence and rape scenes, it's not surprising perhaps that it's never been the subject of a successful film version, or so tonight's pundits say. 

Unless YOU would like to try it - go on, have a go! But let me see the "rushes" first won't you haha!

The seductions and rapes in the book are triumphantly being labelled "sins" by the very people committing them, who are all people not supposed to be committing a huge lot of sins - monks, nuns and abbesses. Oh dear!

In this passage, a man is seduced by one of the nuns. "[She] looked upon me for some minutes in silence. There was something petrifying in her regard. At length in a low sepulchral voice she pronounced the following words - 'Thou art mine! I am thine! In thy veins while blood shall roll, I am thine! Thou art mine! Mine thy body, mine thy soul!'."

Yikes !!!!! Not ideal bedtime reading perhaps, but what do YOU think? Let me know, will you? Thanks in advance!

We also hear tonight about Gothic Architecture and some of the medieval gargoyles that you see on cathedrals etc. All of these are an expression of the originality, imagination and stubborn humanity of the humble workaday sculptors who created them. 

Some might call the sculptures hideous, but John Ruskin disagreed. In "The Stones of Venice" (1851-3) he wrote, "Go forth again to gaze upon the old cathedral front, where you have smiled so often at the fantastic ignorance of the old sculptors, examine once more those ugly goblins, and formless monsters and stern statues".

"But do not mock them, for they are signs of life and liberty of every workman who struck the stone, a freedom of thought, and rank in scale of being, such as no laws, no charters, no charities can secure, but which must be the first aim of all Europe at this day to regain for her children."

And by coincidence earlier today, Steve, my American brother-in-law, suggested that the UK send some of these gargoyles to Athens in payment for the Elgin Marbles, which we seem to be determined to keep in the British Museum. 

It's a long shot maybe, but could such an act of charity perhaps defuse the current Anglo-Greek crisis?

I wonder.... !!!

Fascinating stuff !!!!

21:00 We calm down with episode 4 of Michael Portillo's celebrity travelogue about Andalusia.

Lois and I didn't know that the British-owned mining corporation Rio Tinto, which bought up the ancient copper mines in this part of Spain in the 19th century, created a special little walled enclave, called Bella Vista, centred on a village built just for its British managers and their families, with a Home Counties-style British suburban street of houses.

The enclave included 2 British-only schools and a social club where the managers drank brandies  in the evenings while their wives played bridge in the "salon", a club where everybody sang "Auld Lang Syne" on New Year's Eve, and where there was a Presbyterian church down the street for services on Sundays. 

the club-house, for Brits only, where "Auld Lang Syne"

was sung every New Year's Eve: here Michael recreates

the atmosphere for one of the women who grew up here in the 1950's

The place was eventually "given back" to the Spaniards in the late 1950's, and the Presbyterian church replaced by a Catholic one.

What madness, though !!!!

And we didn't know, either, the part played by the city of Huelva in the discovery of America (or rediscovery, if you like. The Vikings discovered it first, of course, but they famously "kept quiet about it" - another madness !!!!).

Columbus came and lived here in the monastery for a couple of years, because he knew that the monastery's head, Juan Perez, was a personal friend of Queen Isabella, and that if Columbus played his cards right, Perez would "work hard" on Isabella over a period of several months and eventually persuade her to put up the cash for Columbus's great voyage across the Atlantic. And the rest is history.

Fascinating stuff !!!!!

21:30 We decide to go to bed on something lighter. The first episode of a new sitcom Such Brave Girls, on BBC3.

This new sitcom seems to be about 2 teenage sisters, Josie and Billie,  plus their divorced mother, Deb, and her new lover, Dev, "Deb and Dev".

Like a lot of teenagers, Josie and Billie often look moody and miserable, but their mum Deb takes that in her stride, of courses, as mums do, and she happily "fools about" with Dev in the kitchen, even when the girls are watching.

However Lois and I can see that the two teenagers are beginning to get on the nerves of Deb's "fancy man", Dev, and are beginning to put him off his stroke sexually.

But it all makes me wonder - do you remember Kevin the Miserable Teenager in those Harry Enfield sketches in the 1990's? One thing that was never really explored to my satisfaction at any rate, was the possible toll on the marriage of Kevin's marvellously patient parents.

a typical outburst by Kevin, the miserable teenager

I don't know whether Kevin's parents' marriage survived his teenage years, or not. But I definitely think we should be told - and this time I'd like a full doctoral thesis if you're got the time: you can send it via Evri if you like, to save our local Royal Mail postman the burden of carrying it - poor guy!

[That's enough telly! - Ed]

Can I just say....

[No sorry, we haven't got time! - Ed]

[Just put your Santa hat on and go to bed! - Ed]

22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzz!!!!!