Bah Humbug!

Bah Humbug! Christmas is over! Or is it? For sitting in my hall are four boxes of presents all in their bright tinsel wrappings and complete with the buttons and bows that took me until half-past eleven last night to affix: the children's (and the children's partners) presents. Yes, today is another Christmas and day of feasting.

For me this has been a sort of 'before and aft' Christmas, starting with one great family party (over two days) the weekend before and finishing with today's extravaganza. But of course it won't end there, for there will be something no doubt at New Year, followed by something else on New Year's Day and then our traditional Twelfth Night entertainment on 6 January, to test the stomach just when it thought it was recovering.

For the first time that I can remember we actually spent Christmas Day alone this year and it was wonderful! Just to be able selfishly to listen over breakfast to the News Quiz review of the year and then to 'With Great Pleasure' on Radio 4. To be able to cook something simple - we chose to have a venison casserole - and afterwards to curl up with a Christmas present book. Knowing my love of history, J had bought me 'The Other Boleyn Girl' - the fascinating account of Anne Boleyn's younger sister. In the evening we watched 'Love Actually' - not the greatest of films, indeed positively silly and cringe worthy in many places, but infused with such happiness as to make almost perfect entertainment.

All of which prompts me to ask - what, exactly is Christmas for? Now that may sound like the sort of question asked by every vicar in every pulpit at some point in the festive season - but Christmas, in Britain at least, ceased long ago to have any relation to the religious festival that is held confusingly at the same time and under the same name.

The religious festival I can understand - it is the rest of it that has left me grasping for the plot in a manner that happens frequently when I am trying to follow Midsomer Murders. What are we all really trying to do - for what happens in my experience bears as little relation to the ostensible objective of 'having fun' as ice and snow on Christmas cards do to the mild wetness of a south British December.

I mean if you are really wanting to eat well - then why on earth eat Turkey, which is held in such low esteem the rest of the year that it is one of the cheapest meats you can buy? Do people's taste buds become anaesthetised in December so that cardboard tastes suddenly succulent?

And why if we are wanting to enjoy a family day do we so arrange to eat and drink ourselves into a kind of stupor, sometimes even before we sit down? In the middle of the day excess alcohol is just about the biggest antidote to pleasure that it is possible to imagine

Presents are supposed, one imagines, to give pleasure both to the giver and the receiver. But frequently it seems the only person that benefits is the shopkeeper.

The value of a present does not lie in its bigness, or brashness or even its price; it lies in how appropriately it fills some little niche in the receiver's life. There are few people who know how to give presents. Whole books ought to be devoted to this for most of us are hopeless at it. How often do we ask - what would you like for Christmas? - worse we give our families vouchers and tell them to choose a present for themselves - a classic opt-out from the difficult, though rewarding business, of present choosing.

That defeats the whole object of a present, which is the surprise and delight at receiving something, however small, that you would never have thought of buying for yourself but which is so geared to one's fancies that it is precisely 'right.'


My neighbour, Annie, who happens to be French, is an expert at this. She doesn't buy much - but everything usually turns out to be a delightful surprise. Somehow she manages to tune in to some inner need and suddenly there is something priceless in the foil wrapping.

LETTER TO A 13 YEAR OLD FENNIE

Being tagged is a mixed pleasure: on the one hand one is pathetically pleased to be remembered; on the other it means that the mind can no longer roam free over the week’s events in search of something to set the keys a-clattering. Being tagged in fact actually forces you to think, which is what I have been trying to do, since I stumbled across the flattering message from ElizabethM and the summons to confront my 13 year old self.

Now my 13 year old self (a kind of sad cross between an erstwhile Mademoiselle Grognonne and Minnie the Minx) has long passed into history and a good thing too. But since being resurrected, last Friday, she has hovered again inside my head like the ghost of Christmas past, reminding me of all sorts of things I thought had been well and truly consigned to the oubliette of history. This experience has been akin to finding an old newspaper at the bottom of a drawer and marvelling at the gaucheness of the advertisements for soap.

Still I am not sure that the fads and fancies of the 13 year old Fennie - or Fenella - as she was in those starchly cold days of the waning 1950s, would really make amusing reading. Like every teenager she was a complete cake mix of hormones, nerves, angst, trauma, chronic mental instability, rebellion and general sadness. She longed to ‘grow-up’ - something that her parents promised would happen with unfailing regularity, but which never quite did.

Indeed, one of the most disappointing moments in young Fennie’s life was bouncing out of bed on her first teenage morning only to find she was exactly the same person who had gone to bed the evening before. Instead of being greeted in the mirror by a young Aubrey Hepburn look-alike, all smiles and confidence, there appeared only the same unflattering bundle of frizzy hair and spots.

Of course every teenager, believes, indeed knows for an incontrovertible fact, that the angst they are experiencing is the severest angst ever to have been experienced by anyone, anywhere, at any time. To imagine that grown-ups might have experienced the same thing is quite beyond comprehension and certainly just about the least comforting thing a teenager might ever wish to hear.

Besides Fennie at 13 was a little pig-headed. Everything that adults said was a plot to sabotage her free-spirit. Trying to work matters out from first principles is a slow and painful way of proceeding, though as a way of getting practice in ‘pick yourself up dust yourself down,’ it cannot be faulted.

So, little Fenella, I don’t expect you will heed any of the advice I shall give to you. But there are things that you don’t recognise now as important, partly because of your age and partly because of circumstances. So I shall confine myself to four pieces of wisdom - from which you neither need to recoil or rebel.

First, pay attention to family. Divorce has shattered yours but in later years you will come to appreciate the usefulness of being related to a wide web of people. You will bring happiness to them and they to you. Time invested in family affairs will bring dividends out of all proportion. And never be afraid of hugging!

Secondly, you know that what you get out of life depends on what you put into it. However, what you put in must be what life wants to have, not what you decide is good for it. If someone is hungry there is no point in giving them gold. Everybody needs something - possibly something as small as a smile. Learn what each person wants and give them that. Do not give what is not wanted.

Thirdly, learn to do the minimum. This may seem strange advice. Doesn’t everyone tell us ‘to do our best?’ Most people attempt much more than the minimum; they may aim high but they rarely achieve that minimum, properly and completely. They deliver not enough of what is really wanted and too much of what isn’t. So ask yourself always what the minimum is. Then deliver it - on time, properly, without fuss.

Fourthly, in a few short years you will be embarking on a career. My advice is to choose something that will always be in demand, which you can practice in any country, which you can step away from and if necessary go back to. Something like medicine, for instance.

Do not expect instant success. Do not expect to be a film star, or a great writer or to marry a fortune or any other shortcut that girls dream about. You have been through and will continue to go through some tough times. But soon you will shed your adolescent coat. Look inside yourself in the quiet moments and you will go far.

FRANZ KAFKA WITH LOVE FROM FENNIE

Country bumpkin that I am I had never until a week ago visited Canary Wharf. In the days when I lived in London that part of the East End was left blank on the map and carried the legend 'There Be Dragons' or so people told you. Kids sidled up to you with an evil look and a demand to 'look after yer car;' one journeyed there at one's peril they said - though I suspect on reflection this 'keep out' persona may have been something invented by East Enders to hold the snotty West End folks at bay and house prices within reach.

Anyway there I was, summoned by a UNESCO meeting, emerging out of the new Jubilee Line tube, into this fetching imitation of New York. Skyscrapers on every side and designer labelled people rushing hither and thither looking terribly serious. As the sky was as grey as the concrete architecture I have to say I found it all rather soul-less.

In one of these buildings was my meeting. I clacked across acres of marble to the reception desk with a lone uniformed man behind it. Had he sported a touch of gold braid I could have mistaken him for a species of despot half-hidden by his elephantine marble desk. Apart from me the place seemed to be empty. I wondered if I had fallen into some Kafquesque novel from which there was no escape.

However, I was directed out of my reverie to an escalator and to another reception desk on a higher floor behind which this time sat four young women speaking language school English in a variety of accents. Everyone was polite and helpful. I smiled, they smiled. One gave me a pass, I said thank you. From the cinemascope window I noticed I was looking down on the Millennium Dome - it looked quite small - and sand dredgers on the river. This too was faintly bizarre.

I had travelled up from Wimbledon where I had stayed with some lifelong friends in their beautiful house which they have inhabited for more than twenty years, steadily extending upwards and outwards and which conveniently is a quick ten minute walk from the station.

The morning journey into town had been almost normal journey except that the public address system on the train seemed to have no idea of where the train actually was.

A woman with an elegant voice, who sounded as if she might in former times have done voice-overs for the Wombles, kept telling us that we were about to arrive at the station we had only just left. When we were about to enter Waterloo she announced that this was the train for Guildford. My collection of Kafquaesque experiences grows longer each day.

After the UNESCO meeting I had to rush home again as our local drama group were holding their Christmas party. My contribution to these proceedings involved stumbling through AA Milne's poem about King John's Christmas, which is all about...er...King John and his wish for a big red india rubber ball. It contains the couplet '...when by the window, big and red, there whistled by the royal head and bounced and fell upon the bed, an india rubber ball.'

Obviously my bizarre experiences were not an end for on a walk the next day, head down against the gale, there came bouncing towards me (and almost whistling past my head).....a red ball. 'Apt,' I thought, if a day too late. Anyway I couldn't resist picking it up while looking around for the likely lass or lad to whom it might have belonged, for I discounted the possibility that it might have been dropped by a passing Royal. It was not made of india rubber, but of a light plastic, though there is not a lot of difference in the gathering dusk of a winter afternoon.

As no wailing child hove into view and as I felt a bit silly dropping the ball back on the pavement (I could have got myself arrested for littering) I placed it in my right pocket and continued on my way. Imagine my surprise then when a little further on I found a pink ball lying at my feet. Had someone been playing snooker in the heavens? Was there now a whole frame of balls dotted around these streets? I picked up the second orphan ball and put it in my left pocket.

Ah well, Christmas is coming. I shall put the two balls in someone's stocking. Perhaps I shall hang one up specially and put a tag on it that says 'Franz Kafka with love from Fennie.'

THANKS TO WAITROSE, I CAN BE REINCARNATED AS A DUCK

Maybe it is the result of dental drilling, of which this week I have had my fill, so to speak, but I find my thoughts turning towards the Grim Reaper and what happens after he has reaped. On a previous visit my then dentist cautioned me against cremation on the grounds that he wanted me dug up 3,000 years hence so that the quality of his dentistry might be appreciated anew. Alas, nemesis invariably follows such hubris and his beautifully crafted filling was the very one to crack in two, necessitating this week's painful excavation operations. If I wasn't dying, then it felt like it.

All this put me in mind of Saki's disconcerting exchange between Laura and her friend Amanda.

“You’re not really dying?” are you, asks Amanda.
“I have the doctor’s permission to live until Tuesday,” replies Laura.
“But today is Saturday; this is serious,” gasps Amanda.
“I don’t know about it being serious; it is certainly Saturday,” says Laura.

Laura’s unconcern about her rapidly expiring mortal status is down to her belief that she will be reincarnated as an otter. Such beliefs are comforting and are fast becoming fashionable, especially, I am told among today's minor ‘celebs.’

Reincarnation, you see, offers the opportunity for prolonging one’s existence without having to contemplate the baffling inconsistencies of paradise, or for that matter being examined on arrival like a naughty child, which is what more conventional beliefs seem to require.

Lying in the dentist's chair I reflected on another advantage. If you are reincarnated presumably your teeth are reborn too, whereas if you merely ascend to heaven you will find yourself having to put up with the ones you've got. Still perhaps in paradise dentists work on a Sunday.

Had the idea been put to me at an early enough age, I might even have joined Laura in desiring rebirth as an otter. The thought of that effortlessly svelte figure, hair that didn’t frizz uncontrollably in the wet and the prospect of lunching on salmon every day could well have appealed. However otters in my childhood were noticeable by their absence, both from the banks of rivers and the pages of my reading matter. Beatrix Potter, AA Milne and Enid Blyton appeared never to have heard of them.

So my choice fell on the humble duck which seemed to offer several advantages to the would be reincarnatee. As a human I could only splash about ineffectually in shallow water, but a duck could really swim properly, and dive too. And should terrestrial locomotion not suffice, a duck could always shoot up into the sky after the fashion of Wonderwoman. Wow!

Feathers, I thought, also offered interesting possibilities. I liked the idea of living perpetually in a warm eiderdown; besides, I had been impressed by the decorative properties of my aunt’s feather boa! I knew farmyard ducks didn’t actually wear feather boas, but Beatrix Potter had drawn a duck with a muffler around its neck so I felt it was just a matter of choosing carefully the type of duck I wanted to be.

Ducks were also much more sensible about reproduction. None of that messy and unspoken business of producing babies from within one’s bowels! Eggs could be laid without any fuss at all. Had I not once observed a strolling goose simply dropping an egg on the soft grass without even breaking stride? And then to have infants - genetically programmed to follow you - I mean how cool is that? Any parent who has ever experienced the sheer unfathomable horror of 'losing' a human child, if only for a few minutes, will know this must be true.

Yet despite such advantages, what finally put me off the duck reincarnation idea was foie gras - that exquisite paté made of fat goose or duck liver that the eighteenth century wit and gastronome Sidney Smith, said should be eaten to the sound of trumpets.

But....as you probably know, foie gras is made by force-feeding ducks and geese a mixture of fat and grain so that their livers swell to five or six times the normal size. From this gross distended liver the sublime paté is made. Most people hold this to be very cruel.

Despite my fondness for my web-footed friends, I have to confess I have eaten foie gras on rare occasions when French hosts have served it. I cannot personally vouch for the trumpet experience but I have tasted foie gras accompanied by Chateau Yquem, one of France’s most delectable and sought after wines, and the combination was quite beyond words. Never has the conflict between morality and gastronomy been so acute.

But wait - help is at hand. Clever people at Waitrose Supermarkets have had the elementary idea of combining two by-products from normal table ducks into a new delicacy. What is foie gras, they ask, but liver and fat?

Now as it happens the said by-products are just that - duck liver and goose fat - and at present there is little market for them. The clever idea is to whisk them together in a blender to produce 'Faux Gras.'

It tastes, say testers, almost the same as the real thing. Perhaps not a perfect imitation but certainly most palatable. In any case a little experimentation will surely improve the recipe.

So when the time comes to shuffle off this mortal coil I can at last become a duck without fear that I shall be paying for the sins of this life by being stuffed with greasy muesli three times a day. Like Tobermory, another of Saki's creations, I may have more than one life, but I have only one liver and I intend to keep it the size that nature intended. I have had quite enough filling for one week.