Doing Something Different

This will be a very different Christmas this year. Ray and I are spending the festival away from home for the first time! Christmas Day and Boxing Day with Hannah, Luke and one-year old bibliophile, Finley, followed by a few days with all the family at Kate's home with Darren, nearly two- year old Frank and Jen and family.

 

Since Jen, Kate and Hannah moved away to their own homes, the Christmas Holidays has been evolving.

 

I remember the childhood years, when everybody believed in Santa. Santa was allowed to show up whenever he liked, but the rule for the children was, "Play in your rooms until 8am, THEN get us up!" Santa had obligingly left stockings at the foot of beds for the purpose.

 

Having secured a bit of a lie-in, we the parents, then presided over the grand opening of the big presents around the tree at a reasonably decent hour. Dolls, bicycles, electronic toys and books gradually giving way over the years to scarves, different kinds of books, and beauty products ... One constant though, was Santa's Little Helper, otherwise known as Dad, passing around the black plastic rubbish bag for immediate disposal of the discarded wrappings.

 

Preparation for big dinner always began during, Carols from Kings College, Cambridge, on Christmas Eve. I would return from Midnight Mass and peel, scrape chop and slice to the accompaniment of divine music from a heavenly choir.

 

The dinner menu was unvaried, capon, (or turkey in latter years) Betty Crocker's bread stuffing, mashed potatoes, roast potatoes, roast parsnips, sprouts and carrots with cranberry sauce and gravy. Pudding was always the same too - everybody got to choose. So for the week before the Big Day I would be baking: Sticky Toffee Pudding, Texas Millionaire Pie, Pecan Pie, and traditional Christmas Pudding with THICK custard (for Dad). I rarely made the Christmas Pudding, I admit, it was usually a bought one soused with extra booze.

 

Boxing Day was leftovers and Tuna Plait.

 

Wonderful, wonderful memories!

 

And now, our one family has become four families, and it's a delight to watch them make their own Christmas traditions, and wonderful to be able to share them.

 

I still get to do the puddings though.

 

Merry Christmas Everyone!

 

 

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Quiet!

This is not my first trip to:

I came here three years ago with three dear people: Ray and two friends, Ursula and Jeanette. Appledore is quiet at this time of year. On the way to the delicatessen, I nodded and smiled to just a handful of people, but this is PERFECT.

You know when you book a holiday let, there are always a shelf of books?

?

Well, in 2014 I found ‘The Power if Quiet’ by Susan Cain, and it transformed my life. 

I am an introvert. I love my people in small groups. I am good at allowing others to take the limelight, I adore reading, gardening and solitary walks. I am absolutely at ease with my own company.

It’s not a question of disliking parties or noisy events or loud people - it’s just that I am exhausted by them. 

Susan Cain called me out, and here I am, taking time to do absolutely NOTHING! Except 

1. Shop

2. Eat 

3. Read:

4. Gaze out of the window 

 

4. Walk

All day. For  week! 

Shock! Horror! The Sausage Roll Scandal!

A.report published by the British Medical Journal exposes the sheer horror of the British Government's assault on the poor. Since 2010 there have been over 120,000 'unnecessary deaths' of sick, disabled and unemployed people.

Suicide. Starvation. Chronic diseases exacerbated by poverty. One hundred and twenty thousand.

A mother who can no longer care for her adult disabled son kills herself.

A former soldier dies because he can't keep his insulin at the correct temperature because his electricity has been cut off.

A woman dying of hypothermia in a home she can't afford to heat.

A homeless man freezing to death in a car park, because the night shelters have closed.

One hundred and twenty thousand.

Had these fellow-citizens died of influenza, it would be a public health emergency.

The Department of Work and Pensions, embarrassed by the statistics showing how many people have died within weeks of being declared, 'fit for work', no longer collects them.

Celebrities engaging in massive tax avoidance schemes go on television asking those of us without clever accountants to give to help children in need.

Does anyone believe this is right?

I tell you what gets me really, really, mad. The OUTRAGE by the right-wing media that Greggs the bakers replaced the infant Christ in a manger with a sausage roll. Not a WORD about the professor's report on the 'unnecessary deaths', mind you, forget them, here's a real issue ...

This is what I think, and it might shock you:

If your 'Christ' doesn't compel you to feed the hungry, tend the sick, help the vulnerable and shelter the homeless, you might as well worship a sausage roll.

I'm done.

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Get Mad!

Yesterday at Gloucester Outdoor Church was a celebration and a sadness. Alex Cole, it's co-founder, is leaving. A dozen of us, congregants and trustees, sat under the bandstand in Gloucester Park and broke bread together. It was a moving ceremony. There was a party afterwards, with cake. 

We must look a funny old bunch to passers by. 

I shared a pew (read, 'folded blanket')  with a brand-new Christian, who we'll call Karen. 

She's late-thirties, struggling. 

I wonder, what does, "struggling" mean to you? To Karen, it's trying to live down a life of every type of abuse, it's trying to cope with severe depression, and it's coming to terms with limited access to her teenage children, who are in foster care. 

She's in tears. 

"I have to 'phone in every month to say if my circumstances have changed (to receive Universal Credit). The man I spoke to sounded distracted, I think he was talking to someone else. My call wasn't recorded, and I got sanctioned for not calling in." "Sanctioned". Read, "Punished with the threat of homelessness and starvation, for (in this case NOT) forgetting to make a 'phone call."

"They say it's to to teach me a lesson." 

Now I'm in tears.

Oh, Karen appealed, and her rent was reinstated, but for the rest, she's not believed. She's told she  can apply for a loan, which she would then have stopped from her benefits payment. 

When did we allow our politicians to use hunger to, "teach people a lesson?" I never voted for it. Did you? Is THIS what we have become?

Shame. 

If a pet-owner deliberately starved a dog, they'd be in court. We're doing this to PEOPLE, people, and IT MUST STOP!