Symbolic Forest

I found out later that it was quite a historic room, with all its mouldings and recherché cornicing. Back in the 1910s, when equality for women was all the rage, Sylvia Pankhurst held suffragette meetings there. I didn’t know this at the time, though.

W and P looked each other in the eyes, and kissed, and the congregation burst out into a long, long round of applause, so much so that the registrar was almost bowled away with the emotion. So much so, she started playing the Citizenship Ceremony tape instead of the Wedding Ceremony one, and the room was suddenly filled with the National Anthem.

I did write about W and P’s wedding at the time; but looking back ten months later, this is what sticks in my mind.

Keyword noise: 2006, Civil Partnership, friends, marriage, memories, Memories Of The Year, wedding.

Time to do some looking back. Some of these memories will be good, some bad, and none are in any particular order.

We walked onto the dark beach together, me leading, me holding your hand. It was around midnight, nobody was about, and the moonlight was bright on your face.

I led you onto the beach, and looked around to make sure we were alone. I held you tight with your arms behind your back, and felt you start to go fuzzy around the edges. I chained your wrists together behind you, looked into your eyes, and watched your moonlit smile.

Keyword noise: 2006, beach, memories, Memories Of The Year, moonlight, new year, relationships.

As I came home, after midnight, the skies were clear. I looked up into the sky, and could see it full of stars, clouds and clouds of them like a sprinkling of dust, more stars than I’d ever seen before. I looked up and spotted constellations: Orion, Cassiopea, Lyra, Pegasus, the Great Bear. The sky was filled.

And then I walked into a tree.

Keyword noise: astronomy, constellations, night, night sky.

Next year, and in future, I’m going to make my own Yuletide and/or Christmas cards, pretending to come from intriguing-sounding fictitious organisations.

Blessed Yule from the Chocolate Digestive Research Association

Or, if I feel really energetic, invent complete round-robin letters in a similar vein

2007 was a busy year for everyone at the Calderdale Explorers And Adventurers Society. In January, Sir Reginald Outhwaite (membership no. 207) discovered an entirely new and unmapped area of wilderness near Denholm Clough, but was soon overshadowed by Col. Andrew Davidson-Spong’s discovery of a lost Andean civilisation in the hills just outside Todmorden. February was quiet, but March brought our annual big-game hunting expedition, this year in a part of the world our members rarely visit—Scarborough.

Seasonal tidings to anyone who has come online today. I’m off now, to throw balled-up wrapping paper for the cat to play fetch with.

Keyword noise: Chocolate Digestive Research Association, Christmas, Christmas cards, Yuletide.

A very nice man said to me today: “It’s been a good year, I think.” And it has for me, too. It’s been a very good year, and a very bad year; and the strange thing is, the good and bad parts have been together at all times. It’s been an extreme year, I think, a year of travelling and new experiences, of meeting very nice people, very nasty people. Most people aren’t specifically nice, or specifically nasty, but can be either if they want to be. A few, though, are at one extreme or the other; and luckily I know more of the former.

In the news today: the shops are supposed to be busy. They’re not, though. I’ve just got home from a trip to Leeds, which is usually a horrible place to visit on a Saturday; and compared to most weekends, it was positively quiet. York was the same today, I’m told, and the roads everywhere in the region weren’t exactly busy for a Saturday. The predictions of huge floods of shoppers are more down to the wishful thinking of the shops, I think.

Someone else said to me recently: “do you know what an emo is?” And I found it a rather hard question to answer. So if you have any suggestions, tell me.

Keyword noise: Christmas shopping, emo, memories, new year, self-reflection, shopping.

So, Big Dave has left, in a cloud of adulation and office stationery, getting ready to move house over the break. Everything is booked, and everything is ready to go, and when I get back after Christmas I will have someone new to share the office with.

Things have been a little strange lately, and not just because of Dave. Work has been very stressful, and other things have been very stressful too. I see someone and I want to try to help them, to save them from themself and from dangerous people, but I know they would not accept my help. The stress of all this, and all the work that has been piling on me at the office, makes me want to curl up for a thousand years, not sleeping, just dormant. A bit like King Arthur, maybe.

Talking of King Arthur, here’s more Susan Cooper:

For Drake is no longer sleeping in his hammock, children, nor is Arthur somewhere sleeping, and you may not lie idly expecting the second coming of anybody now, because the world is yours and it is up to you. Now especially since man has the strength to destroy this world, it is the responsibility of man to keep it alive, it all its beauty and marvellous joy.

Maybe that should be my epigram for the coming year. In the meantime, I’m going to occupy myself with the King William’s College General Knowledge Paper. I might only get a handful of answers,^* but it will keep me busy for a while.

* which may or may not include “Copernicus”, “Theodore Roosevelt”, and “The Waterloo and City Line”. That’s how random they are. Feel free to guess what questions I think those are the answers to.

Keyword noise: Big Dave, books, Celtic mythology, children's books, general knowledge, King Arthur, King William's College, literature, mythology, quiz, Silver On The Tree, Susan Cooper, The Dark Is Rising, trivia.

The fog is thick all over the country at the moment, but it’s only now it is affecting The South that it makes it into the news. Up here in The Forest we’ve had thick fog all week, but it hasn’t troubled the press at all. I’ve been driving the Town route home rather than the normal Country route,^* because a fog-bump at 30mph is a lot safer, to my mind, than one at 70.

I’ve recently been rereading *The Dark Is Rising*, by Susan Cooper, for the nth time. And with the weather gripping the country, I couldn’t help thinking about that book. It’s set at this time of year, between Yuletide and Epiphany, and as the great force of evil, the Dark, rises and attacks the land, it brings on a great freeze and blizzards, stopping anyone from leaving their home. A great freeze is rather more dramatic than all-consuming freezing fog, but the fog has the same effect, muffling us all and slowing us to a standstill.

But now it’s the 21st of December, the time the festive season really starts. The solstice is tomorrow, I believe, and the year will have turned over. The solstice is the proper new year – it’s not an arbitrary date, it’s a measurable point in the turning sky. From tonight, everything will get lighter and brighter and on its way into spring. This is the time of year for flame and warmth and remembering that sunlight will come back into our lives.

* which is longer but a lot quicker

Keyword noise: books, children's books, Epiphany, fantasy, fog, literature, new year, seasons, solstice, Susan Cooper, The Dark Is Rising, weather, winter solstice, Yuletide.

No, that has nothing to do with the content of this post. It’s just a nice word that I’ve just discovered, flipping through the dictionary whilst chatting on the phone. Let me know what you think it means.^*

Through the week, it’s been getting harder and harder to clear the ice off the car each morning. A light frosty sprinkling on Monday has become a thick carapace. At this rate, by Christmas we’ll have a small glacier on the front drive. My hands each morning are covered in a chilling icy powder from the scraping.

* without cheating, of course. That would be naughty and wrong.

Keyword noise: frost, ice, seasons, weather, winter.

First Christmas present bought already, but I’m still going to have to devote the weekend to running around the county hoping desperately to find something inspirational. I’m not saying what I’ve already bought. It’s for my dad, and I don’t think he reads this place, but you never know.

When I get up in the morning, I have Radio 4 on in the background. I like Radio 4, but I normally try very hard to avoid listening to Thought For The Day, in case of the very real risk that it will make me want to throw the radio through the kitchen window.^* Today though, I caught a quick flash of it. I can’t remember the exact phrase I heard, but it was something along the lines of “lots of Christians use phrases like ‘God willing’ and ‘if God wishes it’ all the time”. Which left me rather puzzled, because even though I’ve known a large number of devout Christians over the years, none of them have ever said any such thing in normal conversation. Maybe one of the good aspects of Thought For The Day is that it makes you realise there are people out there whose view of the world is so partial and skewed, that they really do believe they are standard conversational phrases, just because that’s what all their friends say.

I was talking to someone last night about the next Book I Haven’t Read that I’m going to write about: House Of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski. “Oh, I don’t think anyone’s read that all the way through,” she said. “I don’t think you can.” So maybe I should invite additional contributions to the next Book I Haven’t Read post – if you have read House Of Leaves all the way through without cheating, let me know.

Big Dave says he’s found a flat now. A “one-bed studio flat”, or what people Up North^** still call a bedsit. At least this means he has the weekend to do his Christmas shopping in, rather than worrying about property-hunting trips down to Barking and Beckton.

* especially if Anne Atkins is the writer/presenter.

** apart from if you’re a property developer, of course. Or you live in Leeds, probably.

Keyword noise: Anne Atkins, BBC, bedsit, Big Dave, books, Books I Haven't Read, Christianity, Yuletide, Christmas presents, house hunting, House Of Leaves, literature, London, Mark Z Danielewski, presents, radio, reading, religion, shopping, studio flat, Thought For The Day.

It’s not quite the Christmas season for a while yet, but it’s getting near the time when I’m starting to think about what presents to buy. And, particularly, what to buy for the parents. I never know. I always try to think of something unusual, different and interesting, and I usually end up buying the same old books and DVDs for them.

Last year, the mother received a fossilised fish, because Colleague M Emily^* had bought something very similar for her mother, so that gave me the idea. On paper it was a terrible present for my mother, because she hates ornaments. Everyone else at the office said “a fish? Why are you getting your mother a fish?” As it turned out, though, she loved it.

This year, though, I haven’t spotted anything equally unusual; and I have to think of things for my dad, too. Any suggestions?

* she asked I use her real name, in case you were feeling confused. Her mother’s present was a pair of polished stone bookends; I bought my mother’s fish-slab from the same shop.

Keyword noise: Yuletide, Christmas, Colleague M, gift ideas, presents.