Christmas Again

Picture shows a typical dining table scene from previous years.

Alcohol and pyrotechnics

 As this is my private blog, and my husband will never see it, I share here my thoughts on our 45th Christmas since we became a couple.

We spent the day with our elder daughter. She cooked a roast chicken, (no turkey, stuffing, bread sauce, cranberry sauce, sprouts or stewed apple, all of which used to accompany the main course in our Yorkshire dominated household from days gone by).

I have never liked turkey, in fact I grew to loath it over the years. We did give up with the stewed apple quite early on, it was a relic of hub's grandmother, and the bread sauce was eased out too over the years. To be replaced, unfortunately, with celeriac and mashed potato mix (with garlic infused milk).

This year, at our daughter's, no alcohol was served at all with the meal or at any other time of the day.  Our daughter did not serve a Christmas pudding, or any other pudding other than one chocolate each after the meal.

This was the happiest Christmas I can ever remember in all my 70 years.

No one sulked in the afternoon, no one upset anyone else, and there were no arguments about anything.

I have put up with my husband's total domination of Christmas for the last 38 years.  First we had to go to his mother's, until his grandmother died, at 96.  Then his parents and sister came to us for the next 33 years. After his mother died, at 97, we stopped hosting and have spent the last two years at our daughters'. Our younger daughter hosted last year and did a roast ham buffet (well done, don't be a slave to tradition, I said). This year our elder hosted but not the whole family party of nine or ten adults, just husband and me.  

Again, a wonderful refreshing break with the obsessive tradition that EVERYONE must all be crammed in together for the 25th of December. Which, as I said, I put up with for 38 years, 33 of them hosting at our house. 

I was never asked, what would you like to do this year, it's your turn to choose. When his parents etc came, they always came for a full week, until I put my foot down and said they had to go after three days.  Every year we had an argument about whether they could stay for three days or four.

Alcohol was served every day with the main meal, which after a very long time (too long) I realised was making me feel tired, irritable and bad-tempered.  

On the big day itself, my husband always insisted on serving champagne at the start, on empty stomachs, and then opening a second bottle at the table as well as serving wine. There were arguments every year about the second bottle of champagne.

Every year, my husband made a huge performance of getting the camping gas stove out of the garage to heat brandy at the table and pour it over the Christmas pudding then setting fire to it. Everyone dutifully oohed and aahed and clapped.  He thought this was the star piece of the whole show.

This year he was prevented from showing off in this way because there was no Christmas pudding in our daughter's house. (Had there been one, he would have tried to get his own way, even just heating the brandy up in a saucepan on the hob).

Oh my god, how has our marriage lasted this long.  No wonder the solicitors' offices are full of people seeking a divorce in January.

Wonderful daughters, doing it their way (our younger just decided they wanted to have Christmas day in their own home this year, and would not be travelling anywhere).

Thank you God, for this lovely Christmas.

An Uneasy Inheritance My Family and Other Radicals by Polly Toynbee, published June 2023

I wanted to read the book as I am interested in the author's father, Philip Toynbee and recently tracked down a copy of his book "Friends Apart" (published 1954) about Esmond Romilly and Jasper Ridley. 

Above is an extract from "Friends Apart" - a  description of Esmond Romilly as he appeared when Philip Toynbee first encountered him. Philip, eighteen, ran away from Rugby (his private school)  to join Esmond, then fifteen, who had run away from his private school, Wellington. Philip's account is hilarious - vivid, self-deprecating, emotional and entirely without subtext or ulterior motive.  (Other than, very subtley, to point out his own inadequacy by comparison.)

Polly, who quotes much of this in her book, manages to transform it into a rather dull and pedestrian account of some boyish leftists who had the very highest leftwing political ideals even though they had been born into upper-middle-class families and had been privately educated.

Her whole book is about being the descendant of upper-middle-class families and the advantages this confers. For every mention of these class antecedents she then has to justify herself by saying that she is and always has been "on the left" and so were her ancestors, and so they are much better than everyone else.  This seems to be the message of the book, that being upper-middle-class is to be better than anyone else (why else would she be so careful to keep on emphasising her semi-noble ancestors), and that being on the left is being better than anyone else.  Double winner, Polly!  

In Polly's book, Esmond features because of being the nephew (some say illegitimate son) of Winston Churchill and was married to the aristocratic Jessica Mitford.  Polly makes sure to include the information that Jessica Mitford was Polly's godmother.  Jasper doesn't get a look in as he was not aristocratic or related to anyone famous. 

Polly is a frightful snob.  She is careful to list all her aristocratic ancestors in full detail. The ones who are not aristocratic (who went bankrupt for example - at least two of them) or were otherwise insignificant, are hardly given a paragraph.

I am a few years younger than the author, and used to read the Guardian in the years when she was a womens' page  columnist, but didn't take to her. I found her sanctimonious "leftism" and patronising tone boring and soon stopped reading her columns. I did note that her byline photo remained the same for years, always making her look much younger than she was. The photograph beamed out from the Guardian for years and years showed her character in her expression - a smug simper.  Here is pretty little Polly - a blonde (not a natural one, as photos from this memoir show), used to charming people and getting her own way.

I've always thought that anyone who still calls themselves Polly in their sixties and seventies is hankering after their lost childhood - and lo and behold, it turns out that she was christened Mary Louisa - but hung on to her pretty childhood nickname throughout her life.

I later found that my longstanding impression that she remained, at heart, a silly, spoilt little girl, has not been altered by reading this memoir. If anything, the memoir has confirmed it.

I thought I would find her trademark smugness and complacency irritating, and so it proved.  I almost snapped the book shut and almost flung it aside in the early chapters, so boring was it to keep on reading about how superior it is to be "on the left" even if you have a holiday home in Italy and a multi-million pound house in London. She admits on Twitter (2012) to the holiday home in Italy but denies that it was in Tuscany and says she has it no longer. 

In the last chapter of the memoir, however, she admits to having a holiday home in Sussex.  So much for her leftist rants in the Guardian about middle-class property owners hoarding property that should be let to the poor.  Camels and eyes of needles kept on coming to mind as I read on.  She smugly admits to failing her 11-plus, then being rescued by her parents sending her to a private school - not for her the run-down secondary modern.  She admits she paid for private school for two of her four children - this is typical leftie "Do as I say, not as I do" behaviour.  Harriet Harman, who campaigned via her position as a grandee of the Labour Party for the abolition of Grammar Schools, chose to send her son to one. Because, presumably, she wanted the advantages this would confer for her own child, while denying them to others. Diane Abbott's choice to send her son to the fee-paying top private City of London School is more understandable - being the black son of a black single mother (albeit a member of the Shadow Cabinet) represents a hurdle one would want to overcome if one had the means, ideals or no ideals.

One of the deep failures of logic in this line of thinking  is that she assumes everyone would want to be a journalist or a doctor or a lawyer. It is therefore so unfair that these careers are reserved for scions of the upper middle-classes. Well, Polly dear, you are wrong. Not everyone wants to be a journalist, doctor or lawyer. I have met many very happy and fulfilled plumbers, decorators, electricians and carpenters in my lifetime. Conversely I have met several doctors who complain of unbelievable levels of overwork, and lawyers who, while not actually complaining, (they are very well paid, after all), look drained and exhausted and struggle to have any family life. Polly's flawed (and self-centred) logic is that because she has enjoyed her career, everyone else would love to have the same.

I've also met poorly paid journalists, who, while they like their job, don't recommend it any more than they would recommend acting as a career - both represent a chimera of apparent fame, but actually shallow celebrity that is soon forgotten.

I kept going in the hope of reading more about her father Philip, her grandfather Arnold Toynbee, and other famous (in their day) eccentrics. This was what I found reasonably interesting in the book. 

These eccentric middle-class and upper middle-class intellectuals remind me of the Knox brothers.

Their relative Penelope Fitzgerald (nee Knox) wrote a superbly witty, detailed and empathetic account of these four (her father and three uncles.)  Apart from their intense interest in literature and religion, the extraordinary eccentricity of the four Knox brothers is their most outstanding characteristic. In fact, intensely intelligent people often come across as eccentric, I think. The author captures, in dry, succinct prose, their loveable awkwardness and their fondness for each other in a close-knit family. She relates what are obviously family anecdotes which are sometimes laugh-out-loud funny. The similarity to Philip Toynbee (highly eccentric, highly intelligent, and a superbly witty writer) is notable.  Philip Toynbee even became interested in religion later in life, despite his initial communist atheism. 

The Knox Brothers is a far more entertaining and informative book than Polly's.  That's because Polly can't stop interjecting moral lessons throughout about leftism.  Penelope just presents the lovable and endearing old boys as they were, Polly always wants to point out a lesson.

The lesson hammered out over and over is that leftism is right and everyone else is wrong. On many occasions she just states this categorically, without any self-awareness. Everyone else is wrong. She never questions this, never wonders why (in her own words) the Tories have been in power for two-thirds of her lifetime. She infers that it is because the electorate are stupid or believe lies. Or the electoral system is rigged. It never occurs to her that the Tories are elected because a democratic system of one person one vote shows that the larger mass of the British people broadly agree with them. 

The overall tone-deaf obsession becomes more and more boring, leavened slightly by the interesting family photographs and vignettes of her elder sister Josephine, and other tragic figures from her family.

I was glad to finish this book, and returned to "Friends Apart" with renewed interest - her father's prose certainly sings, and is laugh-out-loud funny in places. It has no dictatorial moral asides throughout, unlike his daughter's. 

The Death of Martin Amis

 Martin Amis, enfant terrible, described as the literary "Mick Jagger" has died at the age of 73. 

A shock - he seems too young (and only four years older than me).

I've commented on him in passing in two posts hitherto (see labels), in which I noted that although I had read some of his non-fiction, I had never read any of his novels.  This situation has not changed.  Now I think it never will.  If reading a serious novel is a dialogue with the author, there is no need for this dialogue now. (I'm not including entertainment novels in this generalisation, and most novels I read are for entertainment only).

So, goodbye, Martin.  Golden, good-looking boy, famous son of a famous father, acclaimed and praised voice of an era.

"Golden girls and boys all must

As chimney sweepers come to dust"  (Shakespeare, Cymbeline).  

I've realised that this is why I find planting trees more important (see previous post).  They will outlive me. (And most writing other than Jane Austen and Shakespeare).

You can measure an oak tree's circumference with a tape measure and refer to an app to see how old the tree is.  This one is approximately 350 years old.

Reflections Inspired by Thomas Hardy

This picture shows a house in Sturminster Newton, Dorset, where Thomas Hardy lived with his first wife Emma for two year from 1875.  They had been married just five years and were still very happy.  He wrote a poem about it called "The Two-Year Idyll".  His diary extracts from this period suggest that the maid they had at the time might have inspired his famous novel "Tess of the Durbervilles".  The maid was seduced, left their employ by climbing out of a window at night (the same window through which her seducer entered), had a baby which died, and then disappeared.

I've visited Thomas Hardy's birthplace at least three times, and the house where he died likewise.  They are both now owned and managed by the National Trust, and are filled with tasteful period artefacts (none of them original to Thomas Hardy).  This is the first time I have managed to track down Sturminster Newton and it has been on my "list" for about 10 years.

As a first wife myself, once much appreciated, but in old age resented and ignored, I had enormous sympathy for poor Emma.  Once adored, then neglected and despised, her story struck me as tragic but probably fairly typical. As Mrs Charles Dickens wrote in a letter " I was loved once."  Mrs Dickens, just a few years ahead of Emma in age and experience, was cast aside for a mistress, made to leave the family home, and forcibly separated from her children.  

Emma and Thomas had no children.  A diary entry from the Sturminster Newton interlude suggests that this was a source of sorrow to Thomas ... "Not a sign of one for us". 

A recently published book called "The Chosen", was shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2023. https://www.walterscottprize.co.uk/seven-strong-shortlist-announced-for-2023-walter-scott-prize/

This novel imagines the relationship between Thomas and Emma and how it deteriorated in the final years (Hardy's mistress Florence Dugdale was actually invited to the house and spent a Christmas with them).  I thought it was very well written, and well imagined except for one thing - Emma blames Thomas for the fact they never had children whereas his actual diary entry suggests otherwise.

It's well worth a read as an insight into their marriage.  I recommend it if you don't have time to read his diary, her "Recollections", their letters, and his awe-inspiring poetry.  After Emma's death he realised what he was missing and poured out a torrent of poetry re-creating their romantic meeting in Cornwall, their four-year courtship. Significantly, perhaps, he wrote nothing about their wedding, and not a word about their  honeymoon.  

I finally tracked down the house, and the porch where Emma used to wait for him in a white muslin dress at the end of a long, lonely day with no friends and virtually nothing to do. He immortalised this vision in a poem.

"..The dusky house that stood apart,  

And her white-muslined,waiting there 

In the porch with high-expectant heart..." 

 

The porch above is unlikely to be the original, as porches especially wooden ones have a short life. However, the position is the original one, and it is amazing that there are no new houses built up around this pair of semi-detached villas. Emma,dressed in white muslin, as she was not expected to do housework, was very lonely, waiting for her husband's return, and he knew this, as his poem shows.

 

 Guilty, but not enough to stop him doing so, he admitted that he dawdled on the way home, knowing that she was lonely and eager to see him.  He spent time looking at the river, and lingered on his walk over these meadows, which are virtually unchanged in 150 years.

We walked across this meadow, as he would have done.

I had thought that I would be overcome with emotion at finding myself at last treading in the footsteps of Thomas and Emma, and re-creating the feelings he wrote about.  He was actually quite good at imagining how Emma must have felt, after she was dead and it was too late.

This did not happen, however.  I was pleased to have ticked the visit off my list, took the above three photos, and then went off to find a pub for lunch.  I realised that something has changed.

 For those who wonder if I'm still here - having posted nothing for nearly a year.

Yes, I'm still here. About to celebrate my 70th birthday this month.  

The pandemic changed a lot of things in my life - some things have never recovered - my relationship with books has changed. After the compulsive reading and listening to audio books which spread over the two years 2020 to 2022, it no longer seems so vital to engage with other people's versions of the world.  My own, rapidly running towards its conclusion, seems far more important.

I no longer volunteer, since the pandemic closed all the outlets in which I did so - the museum, the local historic monument (English Heritage), plus a nearby National Trust venue.  I have not returned to volunteering, being that much older, being less mobile and active since two falls - one in 2021, one in 2022.

My mother-in-law died (unrelated to Covid). The last member of the older generation, and leaving a big gap in many people's lives. The world seems a little emptier, and it has definitely affected husband's outlook on life, not for the better.

I'm still reconfiguring, and trying to come to terms with the finite nature of existence, which didn't seem so finite whilst mother-in-law was still going strong at 97.

I still keep a record of every book I read, and every audio-book I listen to, but it doesn't seem to be so important to share.  Planting trees seems much more important.

Best wishes to those who have enquired, why not let me know how your views on life have changed, or not changed, since the events of the last few years.