I Snap A Picture

I find Christmas more enjoyable, whatever its shape, whoever I'm with, however the food turns out, if it's accompanied by Handel's Messiah. It's often sung at this time of year because of its distillation of the Christmas story into quotations from the bible, the first part focusing on Unto us a child is born.

I listened to the first section yesterday as I ran round the Quarry Park in Shrewsbury for my 80th parkrun, sporting my Santa hat. I was somewhere behind Mr Yule Log, and amid 700 or so other Santas, Elves, Christmas Trees and even, I think, a Christmas Pudding. 

Here's a photo I snapped at the start. See if you can spot Mr Yule Log - he's well-camouflaged against the tress. 

And here's the first photo I've ever taken while running up hill and not wearing glasses. The first few hundred runners are a blur in front of me, cresting the hill underneath St Chad's church.

As I ran, I listened to the words of the Messiah.  Comfort ye my people, all flesh shall see it together, yet once a little while, but who may abide the day of his coming, and shall call his name Emmanuel, lift up thy voice with strength, be not afraid ... and later ... why do the nations so furiously rage together?

I love the poetry and cadence. I love the way that human experience is present and ancient in the texts. Yet once, a little while. It's so beautiful: rhythm, harmony, melody. 

This work of Handel's has survived its own popularity. This is song that can be sung in any season, even this one with its ugly-beautiful mix of religion, commerce, greed, altruism, cynicism, hope, loneliness and partying. I do not experience this work as a sermon, but as a poem. Similarly, parkrun with its accommodation of logs, fast runners, walkers, dogs, puddings and all - I don't experience it as a race, but as a temporary community with volunteer marshals encouraging us on every step of the way. 

Christmas. It's a whole mix of things, and we've not failed if it's not merry, bright, happy or joyful. We can't buy our way out of the human condition, but maybe we can sing it, maybe we can write about it. This is not a message from on high, but one from on low, from our daily experiences which includes grief and loss, hunger and cold, as well as birth and mysterious gifts. 

I think that's what I'm trying to say in this poem, which I'm grateful to Ink, Sweat and Tears for publishing today. 

28th July, 2021

Mist blankets the beach, blending

the horizon to something of a mystery. 

The air whitens to peace,

the sun, our star, glows a yellow lamp-bulb.

Gulls call the sad, glad news,

trace holy ghosts in simple pilgrimages

above the seal-grey sea, calling

holy, holy, holy are the days.

We've brought gifts from the Christmas

none of us could spend together,

sit to open them on sand warm enough

for a camel's footprint. 

Later, there'll be room at the inn.

Twelve will sit at the next table, and we'll witness

a father reach to take his silent daughter's hand.

We'll eat together at last, drink water, drink wine. 

I Unwrap Three Gifts

In the years we knew each other (not enough) GKA brought surprise into my Christmas Eve, or whenever it was we were able to get together with a few friends. He brought presents for us all - treasures he'd found on his meanderings round the charity shops of Shrewsbury. On these evenings there were no expectations, no disappointments, only the excitement, the wonder of a child's Christmas.

I'll tell you about three of these gifts, ones that I'll carry with me for the rest of my life, because that's how it rolls, isn't it? (Graham would've liked this touch: to be cast as all three wise men in the nativity play -- at last).

The first gift is gold and green -- a precious casket which says You are special. It contains a paperweight, and a paper.

It's gold - pure and true, heavy, precious, rare. 

The second gift is strong, saved for an emergency which hasn't yet happened. Souvenir from another land and time - if I need to open these tiny bottles one day, I expect what will remain is perfume, a prayer of alcohol and malt, of memories of holidays, of those holy days of happiness. 

The third gift is the place Graham still is, all residue of him. To wrap this for me was what he was like -- he found the solar system in an Oxfam shop, then gave it away. And with this must come the last poem -- the one he read to us in the park in September.

Starlight

I will bury my bones beneath the earth

grow flowers from my soul

trees will feed from my essence

I shall be forever untarnished

eternal gold

I will scatter my ashes across the sky

fly like flocks of birds

like moths before the moon

I shall become the wind

travel fast

until I burn

yeah! burn in the heart of the star

Graham Attenborough, 2021

And there's something else. A gift which couldn't be wrapped. And it's this -- that it's possible to dance to Handel's Messiah, and that joy when doing this is inevitable. After we'd opened our presents, we'd push back the  coffee table and prance around: And the Glory of the Lord. All We Like Sheep. His Yoke is Easy. Hallelujah! 

Here he is, wearing a coat made by Gabriel. Here he is. My beloved friend. Here he is - Graham, GKA, Gray: half fallen angel, half risen dervish. 

Love to you, love to you all, at Christmas. 

 

I Alter My Time Zones

It has been noted by one or two devoted readers (thank you) that I have often posted this blog in the middle of the night. I have long realised that, rather than being an unaware insomniac, my settings have been wrong. I've been unable to work out how to fix them. Today, with the help of an expert, I have been able to alter my time zone from GMT minus 8 hours (Pacific Time Zone: useful if I was writing from the Pitcairn Islands, which I'm not) to GMT plus / minus no time at all: useful if I was writing from Shrewsbury, which I am.

Last week, I switched time zones by crossing the Channel, entering GMT plus 1 hour: a time zone with darker mornings and later dusks. The shift of an hour reinforced a sense of separation from my usual routine, though it got me up at 7am with the bonus of a feeling of having had a holiday lie-in.

Geographically, Britain has been determinedly distant from the  main landmass of Europe for 10,000 years or more - since the end of the last ice age. It's also currently separated by currency, language, well-surfaced roads, and expressions of Christmas which include, in most shops, proficient and very welcome gift-wrapping.

On this visit to Belgium, I felt these differences as I always do: as something to be welcomed, something fascinating to do with the wonderful, intricate, subtle diversity of human cultures. I envied Antwerp its central square on a cold and damp December evening with its publicly provided chimineas, its cathedral bells chiming out Wham's 'Last Christmas ...' - a church with a giant outdoor nativity scene, and a tongue in its cheek, surely.

Britain is soon to be separated from Europe by more than these existing differences, though no one seems to know by quite what, except, we have learnt recently, different coloured passports, and, as many have experienced for a while now, a deeper and troubling sense of anxiety.

I'm back in GMT, although in that special part of GMT that's called the Fourteen or so Days of Christmas, when time stretches out and contracts in equal measure. This is the zone in which there's not enough time to get every chore done before Christmas Day, but where there's time (once the moment of giving up on ideas of Christmas perfection has passed and we've settled instead for incarnation) to listen to Bach's Christmas Oratorio in its calming entirety: to listen to it sung in German, as I'm doing now.

I Sing A Solo

When listening to choral music, as I have been this evening, I find it hard not to sing along.  A particular temptation is How Beautiful Are The Feet from Handel's Messiah.  This is a lovely solo aria, and I am not a soloist.

The good thing, for everyone else, is that I usually restrict my singing along to times when I'm alone.  I know intellectually that my voice adds nothing to, and in fact detracts from, any performance by a well-trained soprano.  But I love singing, and as a girl in a church choir, I used to dream that one day I would be asked to sing a solo part.

My singing along got a bit out of hand at a party I went to last Christmas.  Past midnight - and past a few bottles - my lovely host was at the piano accompanying various songs which everyone else seemed to know. Noticing my floundering attempts to join in, she kindly asked me if I had a request.

Without missing a beat, I suggested How Beautiful Are The Feet.  No one else knew it, but I didn't let that stop me. Everything seemed possible on a starry winter's night with friends, good food and wine.  I waited for the intro, then stood and sang, much to everyone's surprise.

I sang recklessly, with abandon and without attention to details of rhythm and tune.

The next morning I woke to a dawning realisation, and burst out laughing.