Christmas
2017
Thirteen
weeks sabbatical and I still do the letter two days before posting
deadline. Is bone-idleness genetic? Only deadline panic really helps.
'You
know what I have loved about your sabbatical?' Liz speaking now.
'It's spending the evening with you on the sofa zzz zzz zzz snort.'
It
is advent. Christmas music is playing in the cafe where this is being
begun. I hate joy at this time of year. There is a very ugly dog tied
to a radiator. No idea how long it's been here. Could have been
months.
Am
really in the café to dodge
the cleaners who come on a Wednesday. This is where my middle-class
angst has delivered me; hiding from people who are being paid to make
my life better. Did I flush all the toilets before leaving the house?
I'm sure I did.
So
we have begun to come to terms with being in our sixties. OK, we have
set out the terms. We will not use our Christmas letter to:
Moan
about the many bits of us that no longer work
Anticipate
retirement
Discuss
rail cards or bus passes
Remoan
or Trumpet
Liz
is enjoying her part-time work at Lakeland Bath although having taken
this option in order to reduce her working hours she is frequently up
at 5.00 a.m. to get to the shop in time to take in an early morning
delivery which has been cancelled without telling her. The good news
is that as this is now somebody else's fault it no longer stresses
her out.
We
note in passing that her old South African holding company employer
(the people who owned Cargo) took over Poundland, changed the pricing
structure (restoring 'How much is it' to the status of non-silly
question), reported a massive loss and saw several senior management
arrested in the far east. None of them would be likely to be women.
First
Great Western try their best on the stressing out front. Cows on the
line (a recent problem) may not be entirely their fault although they
tell me fences are an excellent precaution, but late departure due to
missing driver has cropped up more than once this year. As has
cancelled train due to platform widening.
'This
train consists of two carriages' might be one of the most depressing
sentences either of us has to listen to week by week.
Returned
electrical goods cannot be re-sold to the public due to safety
regulations. They are sold off to the Lakeland staff by auction and
the money goes to charity. We got a Vitamix. It is a blender gti.
Leave it on for ten minutes and it makes house bricks into soup,
warming the house the while. If the lead was long enough we could
make frozen lake sorbet.
So,
sabbatical leave - a three month
break from duty this autumn which has been a privilege not many
occupations offer. I have written a few new pieces which will be off
seeking a publisher shortly (let me know if you are interested,
especially if you are, in fact, a publisher). Also tested the welcome
in a lot of local churches. Written reports available for a fee.
We try to avoid talk of
bereavement round here (the dear, departed Roger would understand)
but The Barn at Wraxall closed. The finest drinkers' pub we have ever
had the good fortune to live near simply curled up and died last
month. Tragedy. Strongly considering trying to buy it. Saturday
lunchtime footie and the Guardian will have to be relocated.
Also Maitreya Social
shut up shop– a magnificent veggie restaurant in Easton. Is it us?
At least the Pony and
Trap at Chew Magna continued to be wonderful and we have an
anniversary gift voucher still to spend there. A pre-starter course
called 'snack' is a delight.
The local churches once
again made a good fist of the election hustings and my colleague
James chaired an evening with four of the five candidates. Sadly the
missing one was our MP, the International Trade Secretary. He
increased his majority from 13,000 miles. I swear if he jumped off a
cliff he'd be elected unopposed on the way down. Not many Guardians
sell round here.
Trendlewood Church
contributed hugely to the third Trendlewood Community Festival. For a
population of 2,250 it was pretty impressive to get 1,500 through the
gates and an unexpectedly large profit for charity. Steve got to play
keys with Rachel Taylor-Beales and even to cover for her as she
remembered half way through the tune that she had not put on her
harmonica. Liz got to check the temperature of a couple of thousand
burgers. Vegetarians love this sort of thing.
Trendlewood Church was
granted its independence and there followed a year of doing
everything independently for the first time. Including spending our
own money. The vicar is more to blame than he used to be although he
delegates it when he can.
Whilst not paying
enough attention Steve was appointed Assistant Rural Dean. Anxious to
avoid tiresome admin and awkward questions about things he knew
nothing about he wrote his own job description sticking carefully to
things nobody else knew anything about. That said the deanery now has
a vision document.
Gigs included Josie
Long, David Sedaris, Stewart Lee, Laura Marling (supported by the
excellent Ethan Johns) and a particularly strong Tobacco Factory
Othello. We also enjoyed another 5x15 where five people speak for 15
minutes on matters on their heart. We enjoyed historian Matthew Green
who explained that the advances of seventeenth century thinking were
due to disgusting coffee and The Canary editor Kerry-Anne Mendoza
(nothing to do with Norwich City and not for those of a right-wing
disposition).
The honorary chaplaincy
of Nailsea Mountain Rescue Team continues to be undemanding apart
from the need to write an amusing after dinner speech annually.
Steve also saw
Ghostpoet and, along with Jon, Mercury Rev and the Northern
Symphonia. The band seemed happier about the orchestration than the
orchestra were about the band. They looked, to a person, as if they
would rather be anywhere else. They might have run for it save for
the fact that moving the gig from the Colston Hall to the O2 Acadamy
delivered more people onto the stage than usual at such venue. The
percussionists had to crawl under a keyboard to get in position.
The event of the year
was our ruby wedding anniversary. September 10th marked
forty years since Liz walked down the aisle, heavily made up to hide
the fact that her cat had slashed her face first thing in the
morning. This developed a theme of our marriage as felines were
variously shoe-horned into our relationship and then out again due to
lack of love from 50%, soon to be 25%, of the hosts, plus apparently
fierce dogs and the sound of asthmatic sneezing. She was to get
knotted to a man who looks like it was a couple of years before he
could get parental permission to marry.
We celebrated by my
having the last day of church duties for three months. This meant Liz
going to a hog-roast harvest lunch. Vegetarians love this sort of
thing.
Curate coming next
year. Yabadabadoo. Welcome to Nailsea; a town that swamped a small
village in the 1960s is moaning about new housing. Pass the Daily
Mail.
HC2U from S and M
(Oops) L
