Christmas
A mental spring clean
This week I’ve ticked several things off the list that have been lingering far too long. Feels good. A kind of mental spring clean.
Most importantly for this blog, all my books in Kindle format have now been reduced to 88p – a target I’ve had in mind for some time. Question is: will they now tick boxes for a different kind of reader? Time will tell.
On the domestic front, the railings and gates at the front of our house have at last been installed. Just over a year after the accident (first reported in this post).
It’s rarely that we call in workmen chez nous, but this last couple of weeks we’ve had two sets of men working on our behalf; repairing the stonework of our 19th century establishment, as well as replacing the iron work. You hear endlessly of sloppy timing and poor workmanship, but I’ve been so impressed by these two teams. What skill. What precision. What a transformation. What’s more they were all so friendly and quiet and courteous and focused. Meticulous perfectionists. Highly recommended. Thanks to their abilities and application we launch into 2012 with a new image.
And indoors there’s my own year-long project. Contrary to what my blog might suggest, reading and writing don’t absorb all of my time. But I am a self-confessed workaholic. I find it hard to give myself permission to ease off. I do know it’s an unhealthy way to go on, though, so last January I resolved to take time out to relax before bedtime as often as I could. By way of motivation I started a complicated piece of counted thread work (already a hobby of mine) and set myself a target of early December by which to get it finished.
My timetabling was thrown by a rush of visitors and various unexpected illnesses and crises however; 
things that just had to take precedence over several months, and consequently it was actually January 2012 before I sewed on the last bead. Here’s the completed article ready to go for framing – to be converted into a Christmas firescreen, I hope. In reality it’s alive with sparkling gold thread and colourful beads which you can’t see to best effect in the photo.
All the credit for the finished product though should go to the minds that created the design, and worked out the careful combination of colours, and strategic placement of beads and gold thread. I simply followed their instructions.
Oh, and before I forget … I promised to let you know how that acer (maple tree to you and me) damaged in the crash, fared – the one that valiantly sprouted new growth against all odds (see post). Having been buried in rubble for a year, sprayed with various building materials and tramped on by heavy boots, the poor thing has finally given up the ghost entirely. Time to move on. Ticked off the list but not forgotten.
Fantasy and fun
One of the things about being freelance is there’s nobody to give you official permission to take a holiday. But I’ve granted myself time out to celebrate this week.
Dominating the Christmas period for me was, of course, the grandchildren’s story. It duly went ahead on 27th and parts of our house became a magical emporium run by a delightfully benevolent professor …
His apprentices got into some amusing scrapes learning the trade …
but eventually earned the opportunity to enter the sacred portals of the professor’s laboratory where they turned into serious scientists …
The lab came complete with bottled voices and jars of virtues and abilities …
which they titrated into their own amazing prototypes …
Back in the emporium a shy but cuddly orangutan featured …
and a raucous toucan …
A game of charades brought out imaginative traits and not even a spectral visitor could scare the professor out of his perpetual bonhomie …
Innocent fun.
It’s all over far too soon but there’s no time to pine. First, the prospect of a run of regular visitors is driving me to restore an orderly establishment. Then the provisional script of Professor Devine’s Emporium must be converted into a limited edition book (5 copies), which by tradition has to be finished by 12 January (the first family birthday of the year). Would that all publishers were as efficient and committed, eh?
Wishing you a thought-provoking and happy Christmas!
Christmas week! Looks like it’ll be a white one at that, too. (Funny how that prospect has rather lost its sparkle this year.)
But as I mess about with the usual preparations, thoughts keep turning to the reason for the season. So my blog ought to reflect that.
I guess it all dates back to October. 
Then, visiting Morocco, I felt as if I was walking through a film-set during a Biblical epic. I even wrote notes at the time to accompany photos, so strongly evocative were they of familiar scenes from the New Testament.
And recently, with Christmas very much in mind, I’ve been sharing reflections with friends about the sense I had that Moroccan cities, villages and landscapes, dress and customs, are so much closer to the kind of life Mary, Joseph and Jesus would have known, than anything we in the UK take as the norm today.
Well, it looks like someone else got the same feel. This week the BBC has been showing a four-part drama, The Nativity. And where has it been filmed? In Morocco! I’ve just finished watching the last in the series.
My interest was piqued originally by two articles in The Daily Telegraph on Saturday. The first was a rather touching piece by Olly Grant in the Review pages. As he says, the fact that the BBC is showing a Bible story on prime time feels ‘like something of a miracle,’ given the decline in religious programmes over the year, and all the talk of political correctness and discrimination, etc etc etc. And the second was an interview with the screenwriter, Tony Jordan, who didn’t believe the gospel story three years ago when he began working on the play, but now does.
Well, The Nativity wasn’t ever your average religious programme. And what’s more, the author set out quite deliberately to make a film that would ‘reach beyond the “God Channel” fringe’. So he framed the story in a way that would bypass the usual scepticism about angel visitations and virgin births, and instead unravel a young couple’s relationship in a meaningful way – a ‘marriage in meltdown’. As he says, we may know that Joseph and Mary were caught up in an incredible event, but they didn’t. How did these happenings affect them?
He has researched his subject thoroughly, and been remarkably faithful to the gospel accounts. Having said that, only two of the gospels mention the nativity at all, and those that do (Matthew and Luke) devote a mere 120 verses to the subject. So there’s not a lot of material to go on; lots of room for the imagination to manoeuvre then. But Jordan has created a narrative that challenges the viewer to look again at the impact of these events … on a young woman who finds herself unexpectedly pregnant at a time and in a place where adulteresses were stoned to death; on her devastated parents; on a man who feels betrayed by his promised wife; on his family; on a debt-ridden shepherd … I for one see no harm in a little speculative artistic licence if it provokes healthy challenge and helps us engage with the big questions, though others beg to differ.
Jordan’s aim was for those who have a faith, to have it reinforced; and for those who haven’t, to think: ‘Wow, I don’t know … maybe …’ I suspect that there are hundreds of clergy this week wanting exactly that. But they don’t all have Morocco as their backdrop, prime time TV as their conduit, or key figures being converted along the way.
For me personally, though, this approach has an extra allure. It’s trying to combine entertainment and authenticity with emotional and intellectual challenge. Much as I’m trying to do with medical ethics. Would that I had their publicity machine and audience ratings! Maybe a word in the ear of Tony Jordan …?
But in the meantime, Happy Christmas, everyone!
VelvetEthics
Have you noticed? My blog has a brand new name: VelvetEthics. I’m rather pleased with it, I must confess. Big thanks to my website designer for her skill and for patient tweaking.
So, it’s Christmas Eve. I’ve been immersed in the editing of Remember Remember this week – a brain-splitting session with my courageous editor on Monday drove me back into it. But today it’s time to down tools and take a few days’ break.
I’ve been having a ball creating a Magical Forest. Each year I write a story for my grandchildren and they act it out; DJ takes photographs throughout, and in January we present them each with an illustrated book of the story.
This year preparation involves making magical trees – the chocolate tree is destined to become a favourite, I suspect. And there’s a stone which mysteriously lights up when the children (actually forest pixies – well, I come from Cornwall) touch it when they’re energised by magic from the chocolate tree. A sort of mini-Geiger-counter. The photos show the staircase in the process of being converted into a forest. If you thought you had problems with needles shed by one tree …!
Once 27th is over I’ll be back to rooting out inelegant juxtapositions of metaphors, scanning for homophones, and pruning adverbs, but for now a very Happy Christmas to you all, and thanks for visiting my blog.