Dear EveryoneThe Greens' Christmas Letter for 2001
Lots of people seem to read these letters, including some people we don't
even know, so Happy Christmas all of you.
(This is the partially-illustrated version. To photo album)
Dear Everyone
Greetings Greetings Greetings
Well, we don't know what you lightfooted flibbertigibbets have been up to, but our news is: We Have Not Moved. Gadzooks, you may well cry, we've been scanning every pigeon waiting to hear. More likely you may wonder why on earth we should have moved.
It happened that your gallant editorial assistant was wondering which of his socks to wash first when Hark, the herald, strolled back from work and said that the Garden Design Force should stop forcing designs on our garden, because Jo's entire unit of work, the whole shebang, was likely to be shifted from here to the pastures new of York. And we Greens were to follow, including this editorial office, the whole he-bang.
So for a while we took weekend forays to York, where we learnt that attractive city walls do not encourage the building of rambling suburban houses with rambling suburban gardens. Then one day the s/herald strolled back from work and announced that the g.ed.at. could go back to washing his socks because we were not moving after all.
But never mind, it gave us an excuse for a great leaving/staying party, with dancing on the lawn and singing in the music room, so much so that we have already thought up an excuse for another party. But you'll have to read on.
Jo's now with 4 singing groups. First it was lots to a part, then 3 to a part, then 2 to a part, and now down to 1 to a part. Each more advanced than the one before. Soon she'll be so advanced that she can do none to a part, presumably what the Japanese mean by No music. Or maybe that's what you get when you try to play the piccolo at the top of Snaefell into the wind, as Thos (luckily with box-squeezer Carole) found himself while accompanying a dance group of special needs students at a 'Pan-Celtic' festival, an unexpected way to visit the Isle of Man but tremendous fun. The best bit was when the dancers had lighted candles in their hands. We were all in a marquee at the time and at least one person was hastily recalling key clauses of his Personal Accident policy ... ".... except when the Insured shall be in a situation where no sane person, not even a piccolo-player, would go, such as a marquee full of lighted candles in a strong wind ..." It's so good to have an aid to concentration while playing.
T has discovered a weekly early music group that will tolerate him practising the bass viol. The second week they said, "we're doing a gig this afternoon, can you make it?" Turned out to be open air - the courtyard of the stable blocks at a nearby stately home, to an audience of autumn damp and the ghosts of horses. My strings sank lower ... and lower ... and lower ... Frantic tuning. Applause from the ghosts, less from the despondent man trying to sell ice creams to empty chairs.
This year's cultural good cause is LTAYOC, Let's Take A Year Off Carols. I suspect only one of us has joined, but he's joined ardently. The objectives are quite simple, to survive this season of Good Will To All Capitalist Spendthrifts hearing, and especially singing, as few carols as possible. Maybe by next year they won't be so repellent. (Why wd that be? - Ed.) Having formulated his aims in mid-November, the very next day your gallant ed. asst. was ambushed by a department store that lured him in to silent halls and then churned on the Choons. Their soft slimy harmonies slithered soapily. What do those poor singers think about as they moan out the melodies for the millionth time? (The cheque. - Ed.) Were these the songs the Sirens sang? If so, the wax-eared crew was luckier than Ulysses, if he had to hear those carols.
Speaking of whom (btw I've been practising my segues by listening to Late Junction, a superb gluing together of unlikely combinations of music, delicately connected by slight resemblances) - speaking of whom, I say, T has but recently completed Item 1 on his collection of books that he really meant to get around to reading one day. This collection would be the envy of many a fine library and it is with regret that he has been forced to dispose of even one of the items, especially by anything so brutal as actually reading it. Ulysses turned out to be very funny, in between the impenetrable bits. - Apparently Joyce and a friend used to sit together trying to make drafts of Finnegan's Wake more impenetrable, less obvious. Bet he wrote great Christmas letters.
A mere 7 years late we celebrated our Silver Wedding with our first-ever package tour. Tarragona proved to be the high spot, with Arabic baths - bare ruined tiles where late the sweet slaves sang - where the base of the baths under the water appeared to slope away from you, wherever you stood, yet seemed flat rather than curved (any ideas how it worked?). Next time Jo adds a bathroom to the house, can we have one like that, please? Also an unexpected free piano recital into which we were lured by imperfect knowledge of customs and Castilian: not, it turned out, a recital, but an end-of-term demonstration by students, each of whom glumly played one piece then left with all its friends, relations and appurtenances. Certainly not No Music; either Too Much Music or Not Enough. The longer we stuck it the more we stuck out until there was nobody left but us and the last few students - and, of course, the faculty team, no doubt thinking by now that we were talent scouts. When in doubt, nod regally and run ...
If a silver wedding trip is once-in-a-lifetime, so I hope is another of T's happenings: jury service. It started with two and a half days just sitting around in a room full of about a hundred people (got a lot of music copied out, though). Then inevitably he was hauled off to an actual case. Worse than going to lectures - at least you can go to sleep with impunity there. Even finding the defendants not guilty made all the jury sweat. Astonishingly tiring. Would have loved to ask the defendants "How was it for you?". Could have done, too - several times jury members found themselves coming or going from the buildings at the same time as the defendants. Slightly worrying: they looked harder than us.
Galileo! Move over there, we've come to join you. We too have discovered a new science. Ours is overground geology. An enthusiast for the building stones of Leeds (see book of that title) leads city walks explaining the type, origin, and properties of each stone of each building of any distinction. That's a lot of stones, but you'll be glad to know we can't remember much so it's safe to visit without being glutted with types of sandstone and granite and 'rough rock' and limestone, not to mention the local Burmantofts tiles, which would have stunned the Arab architects with their lack of restraint. But restraint did figure in our other city walks (Hey, Ed! just look at that segue!), through Bath identifying bits from Jane Austen's restrained life and novels. Quite good but outdone by the Bath Comedy Tour, spoofing the lights out of all the serious guides, a single guy (OK, two helpers) doing standup patter, loosely related to the town around him as we moved from alley to alley and gag to gag. The architect of Bricked-Up Doors will always be remembered for his kindness to animals, shown by his Bricked-Up Cat-Flap.
Dept of Unlikely Consequences: have had various emails from people who found our old Crimbo letters on the web. What on earth were they looking for? (Paper models of Mounties, in one case, we discovered - surfacing now from our 1986 letter.) And at a performance of Alice in Wonderland on ice there'll be a Lobster Quadrille based on a dance from T's web collection, performed by 6 dancers dressed as lobsters and, as they couldn't get two more ice-dancers to make up the numbers, two inflatable dolphins. The video should storm the nation. I for one can't wait.
(You haven't mentioned the boys. - Ed.) (Who says they're mentionable? G.E.Asst.) Our sons are in fine fettle and leading lives of such virtuosic complexity that the imagination sicklies o'er at the mere idea of it. Looking back at that 1986 letter we see that Owen was delighted with a mere double-deck tape recorder, Martin with a pinhole camera. Ah, those rustic simple lives of yore.
And lastly: this year it's Bus Pass Day for your g.ed.asst. Our excuse for another party. Come and celebrate by prancing on the lawn next spring.