Humbug

Today

My niece posted her view of Christmas today on Facebook. She deplored the commercialism, the consumption of meaty things, the cutting down of trees; the whole, as she saw it, charade. She even said the "H" word.

Now, my niece is a sweet-natured and joyous person who feels strongly about waste and corruption and does her best to contribute to creating a more honest and clean world. So, what made her react in this way? And should her feelings make me re-evaluate my own about Christmas?

In My Day

I love Christmas, just about the whole thing (except the Coca-Cola ads), so it seems appropriate for me to try to trace the source of the whole joyous feeling I get.

When I was a child there was definitely a sense of not just anticipation, but waiting. There was an exciting event about to happen. From the moment Mamma hang up the austere Advent wreath on Advent Sunday, there was mounting excitement as each day passed. The Advent calendar doors were opened for the delight of seeing the celebratory and biblical pictures; there was no chocolate; and you always knew that the 24th door would reveal a beautiful nativity scene.

The house was decorated, including a tree (and these are farmed nowadays, not ripped out of virgin forests), which I considered magical. It was like putting on glad-rags for a party.

At school we worked to produce nativity plays and  carol concerts. Without heavy-handed bible-bashing, we learnt the story that lies behind Christmas. Although I don't now confess to the Christian faith, I am constantly touched by the story: its absurd hope that somehow mankind will someday live in peace, that we can all love each other, will live forever, and by the solid human quality of the protagonists (always excepting the angels). There were also a slew of Carols that reminded us that the festivities (at least in Northern lands) are also a solstice celebration; when the darkness begins to recede and the land regains its fertility.

These are all things to celebrate with friends, family and feasting. As the charity collector in A Christmas Carol said, "want is keenly felt and abundance rejoice".   I read A Christmas Carol every year to Paul, just as my Father did to us, and, like him, have difficulty getting through some parts of it.

The gift giving was a shared opportunity to show how much you understood and cared for your loved ones - we were all doing it together. We sang carols and songs and played games. This was proper together time. I confess I didn't like the meaty part of Christmas either, but that is easily managed.

I remember someone who, when asked how she'd enjoyed Christmas with her boyfriend's family, said, "Well, you know, TV and quarrelling", That sounded truly dreadful, and no amount of charming John Lewis commercials and present giving can sweeten that. But gifts kindly given, homemade or otherwise, and kindly received, and time spent generously with people, meets the criteria for the season, whether Christian or Pagan. We have the power within ourselves to resist the oppressively commercial aspects of the time and embrace all that is positive.

So, I can't really say "humbug" I long to see all my large family and especially love welcoming them to my home for shared feasting and fun. And I happen to be quite good at vegetarian and vegan cooking....

A Proper Person

Today

After a few weeks of agonising, we at last made the decision to say goodbye to Abby. She went quietly and peacefully on my lap at the vet's. It's going to feel strange, not to have her on my lap each night and hear her little greeting chirp each day.

"She was the only cat I know", said Lizzie "who thought she was a person."

In My Day

We first saw Abby in 1997 at a friend's garden party. (That was also the occasion that Paul rescued Tessa the tortoise from the pond). She had been nicknamed "Baby" because of her habit of crying until you picked her up and crying again the minute you put her down. Paul fell instantly in love, we anagramised her name to Abby, and picked her up a few weeks later. 

Here are few little memories: 

This is Abby during her collar-wearing stage.

When she jumped up and knocked her feeding bowl out of Paul's hand and onto her head, from which the other cats ate up her food while she looked bemused.

Inspiring a friend's two-year old son to his first proper sentence "She's got little feet on her!"

The incident with Arietty and the Father Christmas (see blog 1/12/09).

After her accident in 2008, figuring out how to get out of the catflap wearing a "lampshade".

The travelling cat; coming down to the Brighton flat with us on numerous occasions and also to Becky and Richard's flat. How she objected to roundabouts, giving a little yowl whenever we went round one.

How she came to the door to meet and greet visitors. 

Being the cat that cat-haters loved - by my cat-resistant neighbours at Mead Close and by another friend who would cuddle her for ages, saying all the while, "I don't like cats".

Her little cannon ball body careering down Mead Close at supper time.

And she was Carmen's first great love, outside parents; saying her first word at eight months: "Bah! Bah!", meaning "Cat! Cat!" and trembling with excitement.

As Lizzie pointed out, Abby, you lived with us longer than she did; and I miss you already.

Stage-Struck

Today

In my last blog I said that my education seemed to offer the best teaching to the best pupils, creating a greater divide as time went on.

In My Day

I can think of one glaring example of this. At Selhurst there was a class banding system in place and then streaming for specific subjects (French, Sciences, Maths, if I remember correctly). English was not streamed.

Thus it was that I found myself in an average class band  but in the A stream for French. My far and away best subject was English. Grammar held no terrors for me and I was an avid reader and fluent writer. I also loved drama.

Our class teacher for the first couple of years was a Miss Hutchcroft (I think that was her name). She was also an English teacher so, by default, took our class for English. She was a dumpy, cheerful and voluble soul whose greatest love was the theatre. She always produced our school plays, often with great skill.

She pretty well never taught us any English; the lessons were almost entirely taken up with anecdotes about the theatre, plays and stage personalities she had known. 

Now, as I have said, I had a natural flair for the subject, so managed all the grammar and language exams with ease. Not so my colleagues. With the unerring snobbery of schoolchildren, we'd noticed that on red-letter days, Miss Hutchcroft wore no cap and gown, so that meant we had been saddled with a teacher of inferior status. For the most part, we were good grammar school material and preferred to pass exams if at all possible. During revision time my classmates looked around for someone with good grammatical knowledge and their eyes soon lighted on me.

"Julia, what is  the subjunctive?" "What's the difference between subject and object?" "Should I put an apostrophe here or not"? and so on. I was only too happy to help; pleased, possibly, at my sudden and unusual popularity. 

Passing an English Exam under Miss Hutchcroft was done in spite of her, not because of her, and natural levels of ability weren't disturbed one jot by her influence.

I have no idea why the powers that were didn't pick up on this and shuffle her into a thespian corner, to give us all a chance. But education seems to me to be a bit chancy at the best of times.

Vault

Today

Whatever did we do before Facebook? Today someone posted a picture of old-fashioned school gym equipment which provoked a flurry of nostalgic comments about climbing up parallel bars and playing pirates on the ropes.

In My Day

Both my schools had reasonably good gymnastic equipment. At Junior school the dining hall doubled as a gym and much work had to be done before you could use anything.

At grammar school we had a purpose-built gymnasium. It sported a terrifying array of wall bars and ladders, and ropes could be swung across from the ceiling. It was also marked out as an indoor netball pitch.

There were vaulting "horses", benches and other pieces of movable furniture. All very nice, you might say. I hated everything. I had no physical confidence (how, exactly, do you climb up a rope?) and struggled to achieve anything. When the ropes came out I got well into the centre of the fray and hoped no-one would notice me. The wall bars were simply frightening, struggling with a vertical climb was so hard and there was nothing to break your fall. I think Beatrice did actually fall off them once, was concussed which may have caused or contributed to her epilepsy,

The worst of all was the vaulting horse. For this you stood in a queue and then rushed at it, hoping to get over. I generally failed to get even close and there was no place to hide. I think I once did get over it, but I had no idea how, wasn't encouraged in any way, and never succeeded again. One teacher even scolded me publicly as "sloppy". 

Looking back, I think that the method of teaching was designed to help those who could do it anyway get better and, probably unintentionally, left those who couldn't in a humiliated limbo. In fact, I'm not sure that wasn't true of nearly all my schooling; the best received the best teachers, the worst had to follow as best they could.

I rather regret that I wasn't taught to develop better confidence and feel that I missed out on an essential skill.