When you are a kid, a year represents a small fraction of your upcoming lifetime, or so you hope. At sixty-two, and with a recent history of annoying health issues, the odds are a little less favourable. For all we know, a year might represent 10%, 50% or maybe even100% of our remaining time. It doesn’t panic me in any way, but it does somewhat focus the mind on not sweating the small stuff. Relish the day, stop to look around and breathe it in, those moments of awe, the caring and the sharing bits.
It's that time of the year when one tends to look back and assess where we are, what were the good bits, what do we need more of in our lives. Whilst I do enjoy occasional solitary moments – the meditative glass of rioja whilst listening to a new album or homing in on a fresh environment with one of my beloved cameras – the bulk of those memories that really stick are those shared with others.
We were unable to get away for a weekend this December, but did make it up into London to hit a couple of Christmas Markets. London Bridge embankment was particularly festive and buzzing, and we found a few suitable yuletide purchases. We wandered along past HMS Belfast and The Golden Hynde, stopping off briefly at the lovely Southwark Cathedral. I had never dropped in before and was particularly taken with the memorial and stained-glass window dedicated to past local resident William Shakespear. Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without a glass of mulled wine at The Beany Café. Regular readers will know this to be one of my favourite spots – the meeting of river and rail, the big wheel and the bridge – it’s a spiritual spot that I feel may well be the very centre of the universe.
We wandered over to take in a second Christmas Market at Trafalgar Square, modest in size and in honesty a little uninspiring in its offerings – but a lovely spot none the less, beneath the (kind of skinny) Norwegian Christmas Tree. Some regular festive shopping followed until our feet could take no more and we headed for a fine glass of red at one of our favourite little wine bars on Endell Street. It’s days such as these that are the hundreds and thousands upon the fairy cake of life.
It was particularly shocking to arrive home to the news of the Christmas Market attack in Magdeburg. The vey idea that, a doctor of all things, might take the life of a nine-year-old child in such a brutal and callous way within this spot of joy and wonder seemed so particularly unbearable. I do genuinely believe that no one is born a monster, but somehow this world allows for the creation of those that can meet out such acts of monstrosity. We must surely, as a society seek to understand how such division, resentment and hatred is fostered and chop away at the diseased roots that can flourish on such a bitter and anguished course.
From a global perspective, things feel rather bleak right now. I couldn’t say with any sense of sincerity that the world seems a better place than it was this time last year. We currently have more wars raging around the globe that at any time since the end of the Second World War. Given that H.G. Wells prescribed the First World War to be the war to end all wars, we don’t appear to be doing too well on the learning from history front.
Closer to home, we played at a ‘Love Music Hate Racism’ relaunch event in Luton recently. It was a celebratory fiesta that brought cultures and communities together within Luton Celtic Supporters Club to stand against the abundant racist rhetoric and violence that this land has witnessed in recent times. It was a joyful day, and we met up with some wonderful comrades both old and new. As I stood in the vaping area looking out at the tower block lights of Luton, listening to the wonderfully raucous Missing the Ferry from within, I couldn’t help but wonder at how we find ourselves at these barricades once again.
As we approach the new year, I wish you all a peaceful and creative 2025. May love conquer hearts and hope prevail. May we celebrate our commonality and find ways (no-matter how modest) to break through the walls of division within this world.
‘War is over
If you want it
War is over
Now’.
John Lennon (1971)
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