Nils Frahm ‘Re’

Why I like Christmas

Mainly because my daughter said I had to. She wrote on the calendar: no grinching allowed.

I do like spending time with my family.

I like having loved people enough to miss them when they can’t be here.

I like walking the dog.

I like having a break from work.

I like having time to catch up on work.

Whatever way you slice it and dice it: I am one mixed up kid and Christmas brings it all to a head like a pudding stuffed with sixpences, in a pressure cooker that’s long since boiled dry.

So stand back and cover your ears.

That’s it for this year folks. Back in 2015.

Why I hate Christmas

The food:

Crappy chocolate, candy canes, bad mince pies – or overpriced good ones, too much meat, dead turkeys, the smell of the cooking, brussel sprouts, all manner of dried fruits and nuts (which anyone over 40 well knows are the Main Enemy of Teeth), overeating, the stress, the compulsion to buy food, overeat and be stressed fore and aft. Standing in the kitchen hating everyone and hating Christmas.

The gifts:

Too much packaging, wrapping paper, crappy sellotape, stolen sellotape, spending money on things that people (mainly) hate.

The decorations:

Lights polluting the night sky and burning electricity, the competitive neighbours, the trees shoved in the front windows (see competitive neighbours), fake snow, winter wonderlands from October in terrible shops, baubles.

The Post Office: or anything to do with stamps and queuing and last posting dates. All terrible.

The madness

The loss of perspective

The lies

The crazy expectations

The mindless staring at the tv

The fact that my brain shuts down to cope and then doesn’t get going again until mid-January

The passing of another year closer to dying

Yes, that just about covers it.

PS My youngest daughter read this and called me a Scrooge. Maybe she’s right.

To vape or not to vape

Vaping through the rain

Makes me think; we really

Need an umbrella

The Loneliness of the Long Lost Traffic Cone

 

Its tattered orange tail fluttering in the wind.

I have a tattered tale fluttering behind me too.

But not yet for the telling.

A Poetry Prescription to Myself (and anyone else who needs it)

Not Intrigued With Evening What the material world values does not shine the same in the truth of the soul. You have been interested in your shadow. Look instead directly at the sun. What can we know by just watching the time-and-space shapes of each other? Someone half awake in the night sees imaginary dangers; the morning star rises; the horizon grows defined; people become friends in a moving caravan Night birds may think daybreak a kind of darkness, because that’s all they know. It’s a fortunate bird who’s not intrigued with evening, who flies in the sun we call Shams.
From The Soul of Rumi. Translated by Coleman Barks.

Bike Remains with Energy Drink

An Antidote to the Autumn Statement

What the hell is up with George Osborne anyway?  Doesn’t he know it’s December?

December Dawns

No advent calendar.

No Christmas tree.

No lights.

No shopping.

In one minor concession to the madness that seems to be descended upon us, I have hung some wooden stars from a pair of fabric antlers.  There may be pictures nearer the time of Yule.