Covid lockdowns have changed the face of the festive season this year.
Nevertheless, at the winter solstice, the rising sun performed its yearly miracle of shining down the full length of the entrance passage and into the main chamber of the 5000 year old Passage Tomb at Newgrange, 8 kilometres west of Drogheda nestling in a great bend of the River Boyne.
I've long had a fancy to sit in the main chamber and watch the brief illumination come and go but tickets are fierce hard to come by. This year, a benefit of Covid was being able to watch a live Webcast of the event. Less numinous than being there but still a gentle treat to be savoured.
There was further cause for celebration from the emerald isle. Northern Ireland has had a sodding awful press for over 50 years now and yet the two occasions that I have been there were very pleasant. So here's a good news story from Belfast which shows how people demonstrate by their actions how communities are stronger when they act in concord with each other.
I caught the Met's Webcast of Nabucco as a time filler. If you're going to present opera as a matter of big women in big frocks singing big tunes on big sets, then this is the way to go. Liudmyla Monastyrska as Abigaille and Jamie Barton as Fenena were utterly fabulous. Liudmyla's Slavic timbre is absolutely in keeping with Abigail and Lady Macbeth (the role in which I first heard her flex her vocal chords) - mind you, I would pay good money not to sit through her Violetta or Norma but in her fach she is supreme.
Domingo's portrayal of the title role was underpowered. I don't think the work overall is irredeemably damaged by a miscast titular role. The excitement is in the women, the chorus and the orchestra. However, I do wish the old goat had bowed out before his past became public gossip. But that's fame, fortune and the drug of acclaim for you.
Covid has taken its toll nationwide in the build up to the Festive Season. Whilst we have been fairly untouched by proscriptive measures in this part of the country, in other parts there has been pre-emptive mayhem. Linda was relieved to get Mary home from Loughborough. She was glad that they no longer lived in Epsom. Other friends of theirs jumped in their car and drove to Sheffield and back in the dead of night to get their daughter home just before midnight! They had been meaning to go the day after.
Nevertheless, she had to cancel seeing Helen and family on Xmas Eve. She was in bits on the phone: sleep deprived and hormonal with the second pregnancy bless her. The country has probably never needed a Strictly Come Dancing Final so much!
They've still got to work out what they can still do for Ian's mother. The hope is that, because they are all still in Tier 2, they can form a bubble as she will be an emergency without care. Ian is going to discuss this with care agency but, to be honest, I can't see anyone making any fuss. By and large, pragmatism still holds sway. If they don't have resource, it's best for the Prescotts to be the carers. I'm so glad that mum is where she is and is in good hands.
Whilst I do understand people's concerns about new rules, there's an element of being overly scrupulous. It's not as though road blocks will go up and passport identification is required for any substantial journey... The Berlin Wall is not being built. However, the pictures of London rail stations last night would fit that description. Paddington was like last train from Warsaw/Saigon scenario. And doesn't that train station scenario fill any thoughtful person with dread. How to spread a virus 101.
Meanwhile, Roland gallantly ferried me up to Formby to collect our Christmas cake from Waitrose. My car wasn't going to be out of the MOT process before mid-afternoon and so he facilitated. We had a happy coffee at the Crosby Coffee outlet in Waterloo and exchanged festivities.
Wednesday I chauffeured Ross to Aintree Hospital so that his mouth ulcers could be checked. Unsurprisingly, since he was chewing on them after the biopsy, they do not look as good as they might and, while the specialist does not think that there is anything wrong, she would rather have them checked out.
The mutant strain of Covid identified in the South East of England has caused the French to take back control of their borders within 48 hours using only the medium of a press release - something that has taken the UK, what, a referendum, two general elections and five years of bitter wrangling. And, even then, we still haven't got it right with open borders to the world encouraging any old Covid infected Tom, Dick or Harry to travel here from abroad and enter the country with no discernable checks whatsoever.
I've been commiserating with Leo about the latest London lockdown and the creation of a whole new tier of restrictions to cope with these new more virulent strains of Covid. Luckily, I have remembered my manners.
Modern Manners
No 72 in a continuing series
Would it be considered bad form to wish friends living in London a Happy New Tier?
Thursday was Christmas Eve and I'd made arrangements to have a face-to-face meeting with mum to make sure that she had some family contact. I'd been in touch with Linda and the Prescotts and Joe and the Volks and asked them to send me short greetings videos which I edited together for a family mix. Mum was delighted, like a little girl, cooing and clapping her hands and calling out and waving to the screen. It was such a right idea and gave her the sense that people had not forgotten about her and that we could bridge the gap. And then right on cue Linda rang through WhatsApp and so they were able to talk on a video link. Both sister and cousin have been full of praise for my endeavour and I feel that I have given some real Christmas cheer to a 93-year-old.
We woke up not to a snowy White Christmas in Crosby, Merseyside but certainly a frosty one.
The day was deliberately relaxed. Greetings were exchanged throughout the family and across the spectrum of friends by voice phone or text phone.
There was a particular communication from Leo: he was claiming the weird Christmas morning award for this year as their dog Momo was (understandably) freaking out and kicking off because, at some point during the night, a fox had decided that the owl statue in the garden was a good place to shit and had indeed managed to take a shit on said owl statue. He was not mollified by my suggestion that the event could be seen as a good omen of blessings to be deposited on him and his.
Over the afternoon, I watched La bohème on a recorded cinecast from the Met in New York. I've previously seen one cinecast and looked at a couple of excerpts from recent Covid transmissions and mostly thought the whole enterprise irredeemably flabby and overblown.
Usually, I find it difficult to resist the pull of Bohème's well-crafted charms: tears must flow. This presentation was from the show's first run in 1982 and it was the first time that I've felt engaged by the spectacle. The transmission demonstrated to me how much of the Director's original intentions had been lost over the years.
What I have been watching up until this occasion has been a series of shabby, underprepared concert performances presented inside a series of stage settings. The characters I watched this time had intention and subtlety in keeping with the music which supports them.
Carreras was just so handsomely vulnerable: Stratas was fragile and engaging. Scotto and Stillwell were fine but I've seen productions which make their relationship much more believable. The band played for its life under Levine.
Meanwhile, Ross cooked a splendid meal with roast beef as the central item complemented by excellent roasties, Yorkshires, gravy, carrots, parsnips and greens.
We were too full to even attempt the Christmas pudding and simply had some cake with a cup of tea later on in the evening.
Boxing Day became the day of the Christmas Pudding with brandy cream as a follow on to beef and salads.
We did find that the traditional German fruit bread that we had bought has gone missing: we believe it was stollen. Now all we can hope for is that any thieves are brot to justice.
So, by the end of a somewhat differently organised Yuletide Festival, I do wonder how many people will, like Ross and I, reflecting on how it has been a much simpler occasion but nevertheless very pleasurable way to celebrate the season. However, I also wonder how many family gatherings were ruined not by Covid restrictions but by the arguments at mealtime about the terms of the post-Brexit trade deal. Such bitter irony in that scenario.
Thanks to the miracle of the Internet and the generosity of the National Theatre, Ross and I enjoyed their pantomime with a socially distanced and London-skewed version of Dick Whittington.
In different circumstances, I might have wished for better: in the present circumstances, I was glad for what it was. I wondered about some of the jokes and younger children in the audience but then I'm sure there was stuff went right over my head back in the day.
I guess that a larger audience may have helped to decide in the early shows what worked and what didn't. But then you've got to have something for everyone these days.
I'm told that Mary settled down with Grandma No2 to watch Kiss me Kate on the TV during the holidays and was absolutely horrified by the sexist content of the 1950s. I guess we have moved on.
My Boxing Day was, in fact, very nearly wrecked as I happened by mischance upon this photograph. It is so wrong in so many ways and on so many levels. It feels like hiding evil in plain sight.
I am ineluctably reminded of the final scene in Chinatown with Faye Dunaway lying dead in her car and John Houston reaching out for his (grand)daughter to protect and comfort her. Probably one of the nastiest endings to any film ever.
To cleanse the palate, I happened upon this and liked it.
If you have been brutally broken
but still have the courage to be gentle to other living beings,
then you're a badass with the heart of an angel.
Keanu Reeves
Nice one, Keanu.