A curiously subdued day

So, Christmas day over with again for another year, and a fairly easy and laid-back one. No great dramas or traumas. The TV stayed switched off all day. Subdued bonhomie all around. Nowhere to travel, except walking to the pub for a couple of beers before Christmas dinner. My sister organises the annual distribution of meals to the housebound by the local churches. There were a few undelivered, because circumstances change at this time of the year. Some had been taken to stay with their families, and a few, unfortunately, had died between the setting up of the list and the day itself. An occupational hazard for the elderly and housebound at this time of year.

My day was curiously subdued. My sister's stepkids were with their mother, so they didn't have me to use as a life-size cuddly toy and self-propelled bouncy castle. That happens in a day or so. I read a couple of the books my mother had bought me. I received a surprising number of golf-related presents, despite not being able to get out for a game in several months. Later today I'll be out on the driving range to get the cobwebs out of my swing.

Something seems to be missing from my picture, and I think I know what, but I'm not telling.

Seasonal thoughts

It's cold, and it's going to get colder still over the next few days. Ice on the roads and on the outside of my windows, people wondering if there will be snow falls before Tuesday morning. It's certainly cold enough, but the skies are clear, and my friend Lorenzo will be rubbing his hands in glee and looking for somewhere he can set up his telescope to take advantage of good stargazing weather. I've turned my heating on continuous to make sure I sleep soundly and don't have to worry about getting cold during the night. I'm snug as a bug in a rug. But only for the next day or so.

Christmas is about family above everything else, and mine are a good four hours drive away, up crowded icy motorways. I have to fill a car with presents, pack my rucksack (and a few golf clubs) wrap myself up warm and join the annual migration north of all those who moved here to seek work in the south, for their multiple different reasons.

My mother wants me north as soon as possible, because I'm the one who lives on my own, far away, and she doesn't see enough of me as it is. My dad is happy to let me take my time, because he wants me to be safe driving in the adverse weather. My brother is off to his wife's family, and will catch me when he can. My sister and her husband don't have the kids for Christmas day this year, but they will see them a day or so later.

I have a few loose ends to ties up. The last lot of cards to deliver by hand, to close friends. Then my warm little house will be empty for nearly three weeks, two weeks with family, followed by a week away in the US, with work. When I come home it will be a colder, darker, emptier place than the family home, where I will be surrounded by parents, siblings, cousins, aunts and old family friends who want to know about everything I have been doing for the last year. I try to ration them to three questions each, to keep the interrogations under control.

Two weeks with the family makes me realise what I miss by living alone, with only my work and a few friends for stimulation. Once upon a time, when I was younger, this Faustian pact seemed like a good idea. Now I'm not so sure. I gave up a lot in terms of social support when I came to work in the south. This year I have felt closer to the people I have met here, but it's still not the same. I have now spent twenty years living away from my immediate family, and now I wish for a family of my own. Time to grow up.

The nettle grasped...

A big weekend, starting with welcoming back friends on a break from their posting abroad, then a non-stop shopping session on Saturday to cover the family and godchildren, with only a couple of Krispy Kreme Doughnuts and a large hot chocolate with cream to sustain me through the massed throngs on Guildford High Street.

Buying presents for kiddies is the best bit; going into the toy shops and trying to pick out the things most appropriate for the age, personality and educational needs of each child. With the added fun factor of getting to try out the demonstration versions first. It's even more fun to watch them being opened. The look of wonder on the face of a small child with a new toy is a joy to behold. We should find more excuses to do it, or even none at all. Giving joy should not specifically have conditions or a fixed timescale attached.

I have noticed more and more toys for adults, or rather grown-ups, because adult toys are an entirely different matter and probably inappropriate for this blog. Having thought about it, "grown-ups" is also a misnomer, as if we look forward to getting gadgets and gizmos for presents, then we're just overgrown kids ourselves. I'm trying to think of an appropriate label with which to taxonomise those of us who still like to play with toys once we are well into our mortgage-paying and pension-scheme-watching years. All suggestions welcome. My sister will love the one I bought for her, although her husband and the kids will want to have a go as well.

I noticed that one of this year's fashionable presents is a miniature radio-controlled helicopter with twin coaxial rotors. My parents bought me one a few months ago for my 40th birthday, and, to my shame, I haven't even taken it out of the box yet, I've been too busy to get outdoors with it. The potential for flying one indoors hasn't escaped me though, and I'm tempted to take it for a trial run in a big open plan office at work (cackles evilly!).

So, I'm down to the last few little bits and pieces to get. Panto on Wednesday. Office party on Friday, on the road up north for two weeks visiting family from next Saturday. I still have to write and post my Christmas cards, but I'm feeling a great deal of relief that things are finally falling into place.

Philosophy in practice

From my good friends Bruce at the department of philosophy, University of Adelaide

or even an annotated version

so now you know...

In memoriam

This morning, I got into work after a hectic week of traveling to face some very bad news. The most impressive man I met in my days as a teenage prodigy died last week, in circumstances which can only be described as painful.

He was a mentor, a grandfather figure, an acerbic wit, and thinking back, for a man with an immense, long-standing global reputation in his field, why, in the name of everything that is holy, did he spend so much time with me, as a 19-year old, trying to teach me the subtleties of things that I am still trying to fathom out.

In his retirement, he suffered a serious stroke, which paralysed the left side of his body for a while, and from which he progressively recovered. He became a lecturer in Nietzchean philosophy to those of advanced years. I challenged him on the choice of Friederich Nietzche, because of the pain and suffering that his view of the world had caused. Why not someone like Spinoza, equally disconcerting to someone of a literalist bent, but much more humane. He was of the view that Nietzche was much maligned, particularly because his sister took to editing his works posthumously.

Posthumous. A difficult word of which to face the implications. Damn it Jeremy. I'm going to miss our little talks. Requiescat in pacem

Grasping the nettle

Well, after three weeks of non-stop travel and two weekends to crash, I'm looking at the last weekend that I'll have available to do my Christmas shopping. No cards written, let alone posted yet. Too many air miles on the clock and not enough time to get it all in. Next week is less hectic, but I have more business travel to sort out before I finally give in and stop for my family time over Christmas and the New Year.

Surprisingly enough, looking back I realise how much business travelling I've done, and how little time I've had to stop and smell the roses. Even on holiday, the pace never slacked. 3000 miles driving in three weeks. I need to stop, I need a break. But it's going to be busy from the start of January until at least the end of March. I like travel, and new experiences, but I'm not the wunderkind I used to be, and the demands on my time are starting to be too much.

Tomorrow is a suit-wearing day...

And there have been too many of those lately. It means I have to wash and iron shirts, which takes up time that I'd rather spend doing other things, like reading, thinking and collecting my thoughts together to write down here. Besides, some people think I look somewhat intimidating in a suit. I certainly don't feel comfortable in one. I don't wear them that frequently, so when I do it gets noticed, in the way that my aunts tell me that I look better with my hair cut, and some women tell me I look more impressive (is that a status judgement?).

I tend to buy new suits for specific rites of passage, predominantly the three main ones: hatchings, matchings and despatchings. The third of these is the most important of all, because you want to convey your respects to those who you might not have had a chance to say goodbye to since you last spoke. A suit, for me, therefore carries baggage, emotional and psychological. It also takes away some of my individuality, and forces me to conform to the expectations of society, like a child being made to wear a school uniform. I have no difficulty doing this for the major events of life, particularly for my nearest and dearest, but wearing a suit is not something I do lightly. He who forces me to iron shirts must have a pretty good reason for doing so.

On the road again

An early start, in the dark, coming home to a dark house. Yup, it's December and the days are getting to their shortest. Only the regular pattern of the radio programmes on the car stereo to let you synchronise your body clock while driving. No wonder the dates of the old pagan festivals were taken over to provide a meaningful pattern to the year. If it's a dark December in Northern Europe, you need a damn good party to keep your spirits up at this time of year.

The archaeologists tell us that the megalithic tombs at Maes Howe in the Orkneys and Newgrange in County Meath were designed precisely to capture the rays of the sunrise at the winter solstice, and convey them to the darkest depths of their ancestral tombs. Maybe the principle was the same as the alarm clock that roused me abruptly from my slumbers this morning, because the sun certainly wasn't going to do that job. Was the intent of the megalith builders to wake the dead, to let them know of another year past, or just to let the living know it was time to celebrate and get a few beers down their neck because the days were going to get longer from here on in.

Did the megalithic passage tombs come with a snooze button? Probably not, but if you're living in the neolithic, you probably don't have an enormous amount of leisure time. There are fires to be lit, crops to tend (if you've discovered agriculture by this point), large furry animals to be trapped, skinned and eaten and big lumps of rock to carve into shape and stick around the landscape to impress the neighbours. Even if your flint-knapping skills are up to scratch, and you have a regular local supply of megafauna to barbeque with the family, this takes up most of your spare time. Go on, have a party, you deserve a break.

A lazy Sunday afternoon

The number of shopping days to Christmas is quickly ticking down, with two more weekends to go, but being December, the nights are closing in towards the solstice and it's dark and cold outside in this part of the planet. So, why go out and face the elements, when you can sit in front of your screen and be bombarded by online advertising from everyone you've ever bought stuff from in the past.

The Sunday supplements are full of glossy leaflets, encouraging conspicuous consumption, and they still manage to keep coming, even when you shake the newspaper over a wastepaper basket to get rid of the looser ones. To quote the great Tom Lehrer :

"Christmas time is here, by golly,
disapproval would be folly,
deck the halls with hunks of holly,
brother, here we go again"

So, toy-shopping for God-children aside, much of what I need to get for friends and family is available from the comfort of my desk at home, with a big mug of warm chocolate sitting next to me. All the major physical effort is left to the postmen who have to deliver all this stuff to my front door, rather than being stuffed down chimneys by a fictitious, bowdlerized version of a pagan Nordic demigod, dressed up for modern audiences by the Coca-Cola company.

Does this make me feel slightly guilty? Well, yes, actually. If it's the thought that counts, my first thought is that I really don't want to go out in the cold, irrespective of whether what I really want to get for my nearest and dearest is easily available online. Having said that, most things make me feel guilty, including drinking mugs of warm cocoa, when I could be out saving the planet from global warming, helping little old ladies to cross the road (particularly if they actually want to do so) or campaigning for world peace and harmony. I even might want to contemplate getting my garden into some semblance of tidiness, but that might be a step too far.

So, it's a lazy Sunday afternoon for me, keeping myself snug at home, and feeling a little touch of ennui. I can't help but feel that King Wenceslas was a far better man than I, and that technology is turning me into a cosy little couch potato. So should I feel guilty?

Mmmmm, beeeerrrr

Alcohol, a social lubricant. Work is the curse of the drinking classes. Yup. Burp. sorry ;-)

So, back from the pub, having bumped into a variety of old friends with whom I imbibed a few pints. I found this a nice relaxing experience.

One of the people I met was a lady who I knew reasonably well in the days when I suffered badly from depression. We knew each other socially then, and she was fundamentally embarrassed to find me in the same therapy/recovery group after we had both been through breakdowns. She was keen to avoid any knowledge of her condition getting out. So I have never told anyone, although when we have met in subsequent years we ask each other elliptically how the other is doing. She is now married to a very nice guy, with whom she is very much in love, but she's still waaayyyy too thin for my comfort. Is this me being massively overprotective again, letting my inner Mommy loose (I have a strong anima)?

I enjoy (I hope) and take enormously importantly the trust of my female friends. Being a mensch is one of the things I care about. Does it make me less of a man?

Open for business

So, the new place is beginning to look reasonably tidy, although there are a few boxes of stuff round the back which might need to be unpacked and put out for display at some point.

The state of the world today: Confused as ever. The government of Iran has sent an official letter to the US to criticise them for spying on their nuclear programme, just as the aforementioned US intelligence community has published the conclusion that Iran isn't chasing the bomb all that hard at the moment. You think they might have sent them a thank you note instead. It's only polite. Just goes to prove that you can't please anybody these days.

So, the basics are all in place. Good.

Now, what on earth is it that drives someone to place their thoughts in a public venue, to be shot at by their fellow, men, women and other sentient beings? Is it a form of narcissicism? Maybe. Exhibitionism? Well, there's plenty of that about on the blogosphere, but not necessarily here. The disconnectedness of modern life? Possibly. Michel Houellebecq would make a great, but possibly highly opinionated and certainly controversial blogger.

Some blogs are about the great political issues and challenges of the era. They have a purpose, like a soapbox in the Speaker's Corner of Hyde Park. Does this blog have a political purpose? Well maybe, but only in the sense that every thinking person has opinions, whether they express them openly or not. I have great respect for those who use the blogosphere to air publicly what they might not otherwise be able to express without personal risk or disapprobation, like my friend Jewaira, who manages to combine humour, literature and serious comment on her collective pages. I may express political opinions, but only in passing.

Some blogs are predominantly about titillation. I have no problems with that. They probably get more hits than most, which just goes to prove that there's an enormous demand for it and that to deny it is an unhealthy form of hypocrisy. Each to their own, as long as no-one is harmed in the process, as the old Hollywood caveat about small furry animals goes. You won't find much to titillate here, for which I apologise to those on the look out for something salacious.

So, why? Predominantly so I can give my friends and acquaintances somewhere they can have a go at me. Or where I can immortalize my thoughts in HTML (chunks of Portland Stone being expensive and unwieldy for this particular application).

So, you ask (both of you), is this going to be Pooterish posturing? Maybe too early to tell.

So far, so good. I've managed to get some piccies up, but not necessarily the ones I wanted.

So, for future reference: http://www.flickr.com/people/stephen_dedalus

So, here we go

I've been drawn into the habit of reading and commenting on other's blogs. Now I think it's only fair to let people get back at me. Quid pro quo. Sauce for the goose. After all, it's only fair. Please bear with me, because I'm a newbie, and all the bells and whistles might not work. I do believe in courtesy, tolerance and the politeness that my grandmothers expected from me.

So, who am I? Indeed what am I? I'm a befuddled, slightly world worn and weary man who's been through umpteen mid-life crises since my teens and yet managed (I hope) to preserve my ideals, ethos and sense of humour. Humour is important to me. It's part of what makes us all human. And apologies to all the non-humans out there on the blogosphere who are now worried that I think they might not have their own equally well-developed sense of the absurd.


I'm also lucky. I have good friends, wonderful family and a whole host of creature comforts. Many, most do not. I have a soft, liberal, soul with an overactive Catholic conscience. I believe the state of the world deserves serious consideration. I believe in human frailty, and I like a pint.