Shit Christmases I Had and Liked

Lessons in expectation management and a very MERRY CHRISTMAS to you

Hello Dear Reader

On my desk is a battered fake Christmas tree I have had for the best part of a couple of decades. Like so many of my festive knick-knacks, it came from the now sadly departed big Paperchase on Tottenham Court Road. Out it comes every December, a bit rough around the edges like its owner, for its month of hope and glory. This year I have designated it the Treehouse Home for Broken Baubles™.

In the photo above is but a small selection of The Dejectables as I like to call them: a moose from Big Bear who used to ski but has lost his legs; a still surprisingly alert fox who has suffered both brain injury and partial deafness, and - perhaps the most hazardous of them all - Dave if he was marooned inside a shattered glass ball. Every year, I accidentally slash my fingers bringing it out to play; every year I wonder if I should just throw it away. But then every year, I wrap them all up as if they are the finest Limoges porcelain and leave them to hibernate until the following December, greeting them like the old, dear friends that they are when the trees go up.

I don’t mind that they are broken. I love them precisely because they are.

A lot of people use this time of year to look back on the year just gone to take stock. I was of the same inclination when younger, but now when those end-of-year round ups come thick and fast in the newspapers and such, I have to catch my breath. It’s like standing on a precipice of time. Was that only the start of this year? I ask myself, incredulous. Did Dame Maggie Smith really only die in September, it seems like years since she left us. And has Philip Schofield already been allowed back on the telly? I thought he was only disgraced and sent back to live in the cupboard with Gordon the Gopher five minutes ago!

Time is going by so fast, so very fast now, that it makes one feel vertiginous. It is moving so quickly, that I don’t even think about it anymore. What is a week ? What is a month? What is a year? I find myself clinging to that Larkin poem, Days, with renewed vigour:

What are days for?

Days are where we live.

They come, they wake us

Time and time over.

They are to be happy in:

Where can we live but days?

Ah, solving that question

Brings the priest and the doctor

In their long coats

Running over the fields.

I don’t know what time is, I don’t even think it exists. But I know that Christmas exists, and so that is my marker now. I know that when I look at forty years’ worth of ornaments on a tree, that is how I know the time. That is how I remember where I’ve been and who I’ve been there with. That’s enough for me.

One of my friends, Dan, is famous for his annual Christmas newsletter. I credit his one from December 2006 as being a part of a chain of events that changed my life (included in this chain were MySpace and yet another one of those dreadful movies of which I am so fond, The Holiday.) Every year, he relates his travels, his work and his family updates while weaving in observations that are both moving and philosophical. He has such an interesting life, but these newsletters are never boastful; they are inclusive, as if to say I did lots of fun things this year, and it would have been great if you could have joined me, but if you couldn’t, here’s a taste of what it might have felt like.

I thought I might try a very pale facsimile of this, with the beauty being that this year, so many of you reading were physically part of the highlights reel. In fact, that highlights reel was because of you. The night we shared at the Palladium; the gorgeous Saturday afternoon at Latitude, the release of a new album in November and the terrifying one woman theatre experiences earlier this month. You were there with me every step of the way; in my head, in my heart and literally in the same room.

Thank you. There is nobody I’d rather go on these adventures with.

Before I sign off on this magical year, I would like to leave you with a little gift. In a change from my usual weekly offering, I have made you a special Only The Old Songs Episode, direct from the fireside and in front of the tree. If you’re at a loose end in coming days and want an old fashioned story and song, then pull up a chair, fire up your laptop or whatever it is you use to watch YouTube, pour yourself a drink and sit back and enjoy.

The story is called Shit Christmases I Had and Liked, and it formed part of my I Digress show. It’s a meditation on expectations, counterpoint and Harvey’s Bristol Creme.

Wherever you are, whatever you are doing - please know that I am sending you and yours all my love and thanks for this year just gone, and the one to come, and that I wish you a very Merry Christmas.

With love as ever,

Nerina xxx