Christmas Treats
30 December

Well, the Christmas season has passed very nicely.

It's been bloody cold, however. The local coastguard station recorded -19°C one night and that's as cold as it's ever been for thirty years at least. Cats did not take kindly to a frozen pond (no ready lickable water supply) and frozen earth (no outdoors toileting facilities). There was much grumpiness. And an awful lot of ostentatious sleeping on beds.

For about a week, the temperature did not get above freezing. Snow lay deeply all about. Crusty and gritty rather than deep and crisp and even. The bonus was that the skies were clear and morning and evening, despite the lack of full sunlight hours, there was still a goodly amount of twilight to travel into and from work by.

The Christmas Eve came. I packed my students off at lunchtime. There were only five of us in work. A late decision to close the office between Christmas and New Year meant that many people took the last week as holiday. Wise council prevailed and, at 2pm, we were bidden au revoir and a good holiday break.

I whizzed home and started to prepare the chicken for the following day. The deal was that we prepared the bird and mum prepared the vegetables and so, between us, we summoned up a full traditional Christmas meal. Presents went well. Ross and I set up my parents new answer machine so that it has all the necessary information plumbed in. Honour was satisfied.

The following day Linda, Mary and Ian travelled up from Surrey. This had been the most likely part of the plans to fall through, given the ongoing weather situation. But, by Boxing Day, a general thaw had begun which persisted and made driving conditions easier by the day.

We all met up for a meal at the hotel - they stay at a Premier Inn near Heswall. It was well enough and, once again, present changed hands. Apart, that is, from Linda's. Hers was the one casualty of the disrupted lines of distribution from Amazon. (Her present actually arrived the day after the Bank Holidays; it was forwarded on and got to her before New Year)

My dad took all of the organised mayhem reasonably in his stride. How much of it he understood is debatable. He fades in and fades out again. He's jolly but frustrated at times that he can't join in more. Even mum now admits that he is "slowing down".

What we all know but don't say is that he has a form of dementia and that he is gradually losing his mental faculties. It's going to be a bit of a race to see whether it's his body or his brain which gives out first.

Please do not think that I am being callous in saying this. I love the old buffer enormously. I love him so that I do not want him to suffer and I do not want him to linger on beyond his natural term. And I would like him to preserve his dignity which he still has.

Both my parents are both adamant that they do not want to go into a home and I support them in that desire. But they are lucky that they are limber enough to look after each other. I simply wish they would accept more help but they will not hear of it.

Other that that Ross and I have not done very much. We did not go over to see his parents as planned. The weather and domestic crisis with burst water pipes put paid to that. I was glad. It gave me the space to continue being ill and to get a second course of antibiotics to clear my chest.

I got to see Roland and Colin. Ross and I did some sales shopping (we got some bedding and some kitchen utensils). Otherwise, it was a quiet time.

We did manage a trip out to the cinema to see Voyage of the Dawn Treader. We'd already seen The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Prince Caspian. I actually think that this was the best of the three. That might be because Disney are no longer involved and so it felt less Americanised.

Nevertheless, I'm still not convinced by C S Lewis's allegories. Ross is reading the books at present. I might have a go myself next year. Ben Barnes is still very yummy.

Otherwise, we just watched stuff on the television. Quite Interesting is hosted by Stephen Fry. It is full of useless bit of information which are, nevertheless, quite interesting.

One of the guests this week was Daniel Radcliffe who, as usual, came across as a very personable, bright and intelligent young man. Remarkable when you consider the upbringing he has had.

He now sports manly chest hair along with his plaid shirts.

It is with a small shrug of the shoulders that I note that I have not attended a single ballet or dance performance this year. So, it's nice to note that I really enjoyed the telecast of Birmingham Royal Ballet's performance of Cinderella danced to Prokofiev's score.

The bad thing is that I'd been wondering about going to see this production at the Lowry in January but now won't. Not, you understand because it is no good but it will simply be a cost cutting measure. Why spend the time, money and energy attending something which I have already seen after such a short interval?

Sorry Birmingham Royal Ballet and the Lowry. But that's just the way things are at the moment.

I also watched a telecast of Don Giovanni from the Glyndebourne Festival. Well the set was very interesting is all that I can say that is positive. Thank goodness I wasted no time in trying to see it in situ or on tour or at FACT.

I could almost say that I'm thinking that the work is unstagable but I think that this only happens when you try and impose a view upon the piece. The most successful staging I have seen in recent times was the Welsh National Opera production which I saw in 2003 and that just set about trying to tell the story. This was very disappointing.

Much better was the DVD that Roland and I watched of the Bregenz Festival production of Karol Szymanowski's Krol Roger. The staging by David Pountney was stark and spare and the lighting effects were quite wonderful and would probably be even better when viewed in the theatre rather than in the long shot and close-up format of any filmed presentation. Mark Elder conducted the Vienna Philharmonic in a radiant performance of the music. This year, I've also heard him conduct marvellous performances of Billy Budd and Adriana Lecouvreur. His music making is superlative; I just find him very difficult to warm to.

On the singing, Scott Hendricks was fearless in the title rôle and Will Hartmann gave an impassioned reading of the Shepherd. As Roxanna, Olga Pasichnyk was crystal clear in a thankless rôle while John Graham-Hall gave yet another matchless performance as the sage, Edrisi. Unlike the performance of Cinderella mentioned above, if this were on in London in January, I would find a way to see it live. Excellent stuff indeed.

Back on television, Ross and I wallowed in the luxury casting on offer in the latest offering from Poirot on ITV. They finally caught up with Murder on the Orient Express. The tone was much less jokey than the famous film with Albert Finney. It was all seen as a great internal struggle for Poirot to actually let the murderers go. I'm not sure that Agatha Christie plots can bear that much Shakesperean weight; the chase is usually much more important than the capture. Still, it was good fun.

However, the crême de la crême of televisual entertainment was Downton Abbey. It must be confessed that Ross and I missed out on this when it was first broadcast but I kept hearing excellent things about it from all and sundry. So, I bought it for him as a surprise Christmas present. and we were both enthralled.

The scripting was literate (Julian Fellowes - same writer as for Gosford Park), the acting was uniformly excellent, the staging was sumputuous - you couldn't ask for more.

Finally, back in November, I was bemoaning the fact that this years's Liverpool FC kit was far from form hugging thanks to a strange padded and reinforced gusset in the shorts.

Well, praise be, young Fernando has triumphed over even this inglorious obstacle to demonstrate his true assets.