2014 REVIEW OF THE YEAR: PART 2

... shell-shocked indeed. As the weeks rolled on, anger gave way to sadness which overwhelmed me like a flood that only forgiveness could dispel. I walked it through, prayed it around many hours around Hosehill Lake, scuffing the dirt while ducks and geese flapped across the sparkling waters.

In some sort of lyrical mood one day, I found myself writing about the cracked skin at the corner of my thumb, which I had pressed into a tiny ball of deep red blood.

"Do you think maybe that's how pain works? Slowly the wound begins to heal under the blood? I rather like that idea. My heart is rather broken at the moment. Stones in ponds. Maybe it will take a while, but perhaps that process has already started?"

- Weird Hope, 15/7/14

The summer also brought with it some long lazy days and the hope of a holiday in the Peak District. I put my tent up in the garden (the birds used it as a toilet), wrote about ice cream tumbling down my hands, watched Eastbourne Pier go up in smoke and went on a night walk.

As August dawned, we leaped into our camp, which was a lot of fun. Early morning chats with Winners watching the sun poke through the fog were a highlight. So was hanging out with Emmie and Sammy, and the adorable collection of small children roaming the campsite while their parents assembled picnic tables and barbecues. I think next year I will try to write more about The Gathering.

From there, it was straight up north to Buxton.

"Thunder rumbled above. The trees moaned. I doubled over, hands on my knees, catching my breath, soaked and now exhausted. It would be a short walk back from here, I supposed and I set off down the path into the tree tunnel."

- Solomon's Temple, 13/8/14

It did rain. But it was also glorious, walking through the silent hills. I did sketching, a bit of climbing, wrote some poems, thought I'd died, came back looking like Grizzly Adams... that kind of thing. Magnificent.

Returning to work though after those two weeks, wasn't quite so much fun. They'd knocked down walls and moved everything around. Then I spilt a whole bottle of milk and had to clear it up. August was also the month when the Vending Machine (I'm telling you this happened) said my name and persuaded me to buy a KitKat Chunky. I wrote about it in The Vending Machine Gains Sentience.

House-sitting followed in The Museum of Someone Else's Life and soon the weather carried a chill. The skies held more rain than sunshine. September had arrived. It did have its pleasant moments though - a work conference in Falmouth, mingling on the beach and avoiding going to London for a scrum masters training thing. It was also quite a relief to see Scotland wanting to stick together with the rest of the UK.

"I came to work humming Land of Hope and Glory this morning. The Scots have voted to preserve the 307-year-old union of Great Britain, this blest isle, this 'mother of the free' and the land made mighty and mightier yet by God himself; this United Kingdom of four great nations, beating together at the heart of the Queen's Commonwealth."

- Land of Hope and Glory, 19/9/14

Equally thrilled, the Intrepids decided to go on holiday (again) while having their bathroom refitted. That corresponded of course with me being ill and Gary Lineker messing around with pipes.

"We have tiles anyway. One wall is a checkerboard of smooth-finished, ungrouted bathroom tile; the other three, still plaster. There is no sign of a shower. There is no sign of a basin. The toilet remains but is off its hinges and now angled against the wall by the front door. I had to wait for Gary Lineker to nip off for his crisps before I could fly down the hall and relieve myself. You would be surprised how difficult it is to go to toilet without a bathroom door. I was ninja-speed."

- The Sick Day, 2/10/14

Gary Lineker did finish the job in the end, with a little help from Gazza the Sparky and Gary Lineker's Dad, who showed up at the end. The Intrepids returned to a fully-fitted bathroom complete with fully tiled walls, all the usual appliances and no knowledge at all of the horrid concrete floor, the crumbling plasterboard walls or the freezing ninja dashes of an off-colour technical author with man-flu.

My colleague Steve, left in October but not before a few games of table football. The weather went crispy, I wrote a kind of late-October ode to the season called Autumn Fair and pretty soon the Christmas machine was rolling into view, ready to spew out the first whispers of Santa's elves tinsellating the merry cash bells of the retail sector.

The Intrepids 'borrowed' an industrial tarmac compressor, I dressed up in a pac-man rain mac and discovered the reason why the Queen faces different ways on stamps and coins. By the time November came splurging out of the grey with its soggy leaves and damp air, I was just about ready for something different.

Handy then, that my friend Chris and I were able to go to Eastbourne for that conference. It has occurred to me that I was far happier drinking tea, overlooking the grey, choppy waves than I was in some of the meetings. I have yet to figure out what this means.

"My next favourite moment of today was a little stolen moment on the seafront. I was in a seminar room at first, when I suddenly had a deep longing to be on my own for a bit. So I got up, swung my rucksack over my shoulder and went down to the Promenade. I was there for ten minutes, drinking in the sea air, letting the coolness of the afternoon wash over me and chatting to God about stuff that's going on in my head and heart. It wasn't a long time, it was just enough."

- Music, Words and Cheesecake, 23/11/14

I wrote a story in November, The Unpredictable Machine which isn't very good but was better when I read it much later. Somehow, the longer distance there is between writing something and reading it, the better it seems. Future Me thinks that's probably because I don't have a very good memory. I say I should keep going.

Soon it was time for Secret Santa, The Christmas Question and pondering the insides of the Nestle 3000. The choir pushed through their festive pieces and proudly sang them out at the Calcot Carol Service. I turned the moment into a thought about the way events converge on a single point, how everything comes together at the right time. It led me to thinking about my friends, struggling to rebuild their marriages and I realised too that sometimes a detonation point can lead to a whole host of things diverging away and out of control.

"I'm actually feeling OK with the way things are converging at the moment. True, the angle of convergence is slight and the vanishing point is quite impossible to spot. I'm alright though, with ploughing along the tapering track, wondering how the great Designer will bring these lines together at just the right time..."

- Convergence & Divergence, 8/12/14

A whole bunch of carol events followed throughout December. Beer and Carols, The Christmas Do, thinking about Christmas Typos and the lyrics to Jingle Bells.

And then, just before Christmas Eve... my Mum falling ill in The Transient Attack

She's making a steady recovery. I went to see her today but she was being wheeled off for another MRI scan. I think we're going to take in some Appletiser and balloons tomorrow to help her celebrate New Year's Eve... at 8pm.

It's always a bit of an anti-climax, New Year's Eve.


So ends 2014. Some horrid things, some great things, some fun things and some thoughtful things. It's been a bit like a packet of Revels - dipping into a bag of unknowns, pulling out coffee, orange, hazelnut...

I know, I know, but what Forrest Gump was terrible at realising was that you can know what you're 'gunna' get with a box because you have a little book of words that tells you, not to mention the array of shapes spread out in a handy two-tiered plastic tray. Revels would have worked much better in my opinion.

The older I get, the more I realise that this life is so much more about the journey, the companions, the fun and the adventure. You have a little time to treasure the people around you, to see the best in them, the things that were sown into them from the beginning. You have time to treat them well, to honour and respect them, to look after them and show them a whole lot of love. What's more, you get all that back if you give it away. This hasn't been a great year, but it's not been terrible, not really. If you've been reading as I've been writing, then thank you for sticking it out, for reading between the lines and for peering through this window into my life. It's a bit like a series of snapshots of me have been framed by the contexts, the reactions, the ramblings, rantings and random rhymings I've chosen for myself.

Maybe it really has been the Year of the Selfie.

2014 REVIEW OF THE YEAR: PART 1

I've just been reading back through some of my old posts. Well, this is the time of year to do it I suppose - the planet has taken another spin around the sun and we're launching ourselves inexorably both into New Year's Eve and the gawping chasm beyond it. Why not look back before looking forward?

Well, one reason might be that it's very difficult to sum it all up. I like neatness, consistency, pithy ways of rounding things off to give the illusion of design. 2014 doesn't exactly feel like the tidiest of years, there's no buzzword or phrase that captures it, other than perhaps following everyone else and calling it the Year of the Selfie... but Future Historians can mull over the worth of that moniker. I only ever took one selfie and it wasn't in this year.

An untidy year then? Perhaps. It definitely started with a lot of uncertainty...

"Later, the rain lashed against my bedroom window and the wind howled and buffeted and whipped through the trees. The year was off to a stormy start. It's a scary place, the top of the year. I went to bed feeling as though I was precariously perched with the unknown stretching before me, vast and terrible, kind and wonderful and every other permutation of possibilities."

- New Year's Eve, 1/1/14

"It's the not-knowing that makes it terrifying. The uncertainty of this year is so vast and unpredictable, it's impossible to know where to begin to calculate it, or even whether I should. It is unknowable and unknown. And that gives me vertigo."

- Vertigo, 2/1/14

Thinking about it now, vertigo, a fear of falling, being 'precariously perched' ... it all seems quite apt. I didn't know at that stage that things were unfolding elsewhere. As January yawned open, I quietly got on with figuring out what I'm supposed to be doing, painting the conservatory, speculating about the artwork in the waiting room at the dentist's. Oh and figuring out that travel companies invented Blue Monday...

"It's supposed to be the most depressing day of the year, Blue Monday. It's a complicated calculation involving nebulous factors like Time Since Christmas, Debt Incurred, Weather and Motivation Level...
... I did a little research and guess what? Blue Monday was invented by a travel company! Yup, suddenly it all fits together. You've seen the ads: sandy white beaches, flowing cotton, impossibly blue skies and sunsets over wine glasses..."

- Blue Monday, 20/1/14

Of course it wasn't much longer after that that I fell into the trap myself and was dreaming about Sorrento at my desk. Plus then I kept getting job adverts for Gibraltar, Bulgaria and holiday emails from Thomas Cook trying to send me all over the place! They know what they're up to, these people.

By the time February rolled round, much of the country was underwater thanks to seasonal flooding. It meant that rather than my annual trip to a London museum, I had to make do with the Bayeux Tapestry copy that's hidden on the first floor of Reading Museum. Ukraine erupted into civil war, flumbook bought WhatsApp for $19bn  and I wrote poems about flying away. Oh, and I turned 36, which I definitely don't want to dwell on too much, but seemed to celebrate nonetheless by getting on the wrong side of a colleague at a lunchtime quiz.

"Ferdinand, I'm going to have to overrule you," I said, scratching out the word Verona on the answer sheet. Ferdinand was adamant that Vivaldi was born in Verona. He protested that he, a well-travelled German and connoisseur of European culture, had lived in Italy for eleven years and that Verona was a well known hot-spot for classical music."

- Two Gentlemen and Verona, 13/2/14

Future Me thinks I was a bit pompous. I did later become friends with Ferdinand. Unfortunately he was made redundant a few months later, presumably to resume his exotic travels across Europe. Was he right about Vivaldi? Well, no. Still, it's water under the bridge.

Oh, speaking of exotic travellers, in March, when the floods had subsided, I made it to London for an excellent trip to the National Gallery.

"There's something about fine art that resonates in a uniquely personal way when you see it. I stood inches from paintings by Cezanne, Constable, Monet, Van Gogh, Renoir, Pissaro, Canaletto, Suerat, Gainsborough, Stubbs, Holbein and many others. I really felt it. It was as though I was wandering through the richest, most sumptuous of grand halls, where old masters called out to me..."

- Exotic Travellers with Paintbrushes, 25/3/14

As April kicked in, the weather started to change and rainy wintry days turned into the rainbow season, and then the first buds of summer. I wrote a poem called Today, and then (partly inspired by the weather) another one called Cathedrals. April also brought the hay fever season with it, a plague that lasted until the beginning of July.

"My eyes are red, my throat is sore and my nose feels like it's some sort of burning beacon: a landing strip for any wayward pollen that might be circumnavigating the air conditioning system."

- Pollen Diaries: Part 1, 15/4/14

You know, so far I'm not sure it counts as an untidy year, or even an eventful one. There were other things going on at the time, which were hurtling towards me - but I didn't know about them. Apart from sneezing, May was about the fun day (it rained), insomnia (I didn't sleep) and holding the fort while the Intrepids toured their way around the Dorset coast...

"This, I imagine, is what life would be like if I did live on my own - a mixed bag of beautiful solitude and quiet boredom. It won't be long either, before I slip into doing zany things like wearing the oven gloves as slippers or singing Christmas carols into the tumble dryer..."

- Home Alone, 26/5/14

I didn't do either of those things. Honest. Then, as June began and hay fever made a mess of me in the mornings, the thrill and excitement of the World Cup gripped the nation. Four weeks of wall-to-wall footy-talk and pessimism about England. I remember I watched Nigeria v Iran and wanted to end it all.

"You tend to meet two types of people around this time of year. Broadly speaking, they are: people who love football, understand the nuances and tensions, the drama, the hope, the despair and sheer atmosphere of it, and then people who don't. This second group of people grab their remote-controls and zap the TV over to soap operas, history documentaries, the shopping channel, anything except the flipping football."

- A Game of Two Halves, 18/6/14 

Any antipathy towards the football though, was soon overtaken by something much more serious.

I remember thinking of it like stones in ponds, sending ripples across the flat smooth water like a tidal wave of trouble. It was a bit naive, that, as a simile. It turned out that one of my friends had been having an affair with someone for six months and it had all come to light. I was devastated, betrayed, afraid, paralysed with shock. At the time it did feel like the world had been sent into a topsy-turvy spin, as though gravity had been switched off, or as though a meteor had pounded the earth like a stone. It's not my business to talk about what's happened since, other than how it affected me, but I have to include it in 2014; it almost feels like a fulcrum around which the rest of the year revolves. The situation refuses to settle in my mind, churning and burning like a toxic cloud of woe. It was more a radioactive detonation than a stone in a pond, I think. There is always fallout.

The sadness was only exacerbated with the news that my sister had left my brother-in-law in early July to go and live with someone else. I wrote about that in Stones in Ponds. That's also a real mess, that one, still rumbling round and still very difficult, with lies and counter-lies and all sorts of acrimony. That family too, my family, won't be easily or quickly repaired.

You can imagine, I was feeling quite shell-shocked in July. But in every difficulty, there's always room for hope to sneak through. And I don't think either of those disasters have reached the end of the tale just yet.

Like all the best stories, I'm saving the second half of the 2014 review of the year for the next post, so as the curtains draw shut and the house lights are raised, make sure you charge your glasses, grab an ice-cream and if you can contain your excitement, don't forget to tune in after the break...

I DISTRACT MYSELF WITH A GAME OF FYWOOTH

You might think me a bit nonchalant for continuing to blog like this while my Mum's in hospital. The thing is though, I feel like I kind of need something to do, some way to get my feelings out there without um... breaking into tears, or worrying about helplessly rambling to people who might not know how to react. This is sort of distracting. And I need that.

"Just pick up the phone if you need to," said someone this morning. I do appreciate that. My Dad and I have been inundated with offers of support from all kinds of unexpected quarters, which is truly humbling and wonderful.

Thankfully Mum's looking better all the time. She seemed much brighter today, sipping tea and making a little foil trophy out of a Tunnocks wrapper. It's nice when the challenge is its own reward. We have to celebrate those little moments and champion them like big ones, I think.

That's how I feel playing my daily game of Find Your Way Out Of This Hospital. Today, the adventure took me through the Eye Block and almost (but thankfully not fully) into the Maternity Ward. It's like a warren of wide blue passages, identical staircases and lift-shafts and I am notoriously poor at orienteering. When I got to the entrance I gave a little whoop and then swung open the doors to the car park... before realising of course that I wasn't actually parked on that level, going down to the level containing my car, there discovering that the pay machine was on the other level, going back up, paying, and then finding my way back down again.

You'd think wouldn't you, someone who writes instructions for a living, thinks about logic and loves diagrams, would stop and read the map once in a while? You'd think that. Maybe that's cheating at FYWOOTH though? I might time myself tomorrow.

Another thing I did today (to distract myself) was to go back and sit in the corner of Starbucks with a cup of tea and a cinnamon swirl. Comfort food eh? It should probably be called a saccharine swirl or maybe a fat-loaded, sugar-soaked pastry with hints of cinnamon. I guess they might not sell it so well though with that kind of rebranding. I thought about that as I sliced into it with a plastic knife. What if all disgustingly unhealthy sweets and treats were all called things like Death Buns or Obesity Cakes? Anyone want a cup of caffe calorifico and an effluent-filled panini down at TaxDuckers? Anyone?

Half-way into the sugary fatloaf, I suddenly thought about the hospital, about being wheeled down those wide blue passages with an oxygen mask clamped to my face, surrounded by concerned doctors with clipboards. I don't really want that. That would be a much less enjoyable way to play Find Your Way Out Of This Hospital.

I left half a cinnamon swirl where it was.

THE TRANSIENT ATTACK

"Check you out with a window seat! Room with a view, eh Mumsy?"

She was smiling. That's a good sign, a really good sign. My Dad was slumped in the green armchair next to the bed, still wearing his coat and clutching a plastic punnet of mixed grapes. On the small table, an array of brightly-coloured cards stood sentry next to a pot of artificial flowers.

My sisters are calling it a TIA. That's a Transient something-or-other Attack which is effectively a mini-stroke. We're none of us sure exactly when it happened, or whether there has been more than one, but that is what it is - a clotting of blood resulting in reduced oxygen to the brain. Slurred speech, poor co-ordination, loss of balance, tiredness are all symptoms.

"Mind you," I said to her, "Those are all symptoms of too much cherry brandy as well, you know!" I winked and she laughed. This lady is classy enough to have never been drunk once.

It makes for a lousy Christmas, that's for sure, when your Mum's in hospital. I feel like I've been engaged in a game of distraction these last few days. Eat some Yule log, sing a carol, edit a keyboard patch, play Star Wars Lego Battle of Hoth, try on socks, watch YouTube videos about Star Trek, hum a harmony, distraction, distraction, distraction. Leap to the phone.

"Hi Matt, how's your Mum?"

Oh dear, yes. Now I feel guilty about getting distracted. I don't even like Star Trek.

"She's in good spirits," I say, "Dad's there now. I think we'll all go in, a bit later on..."

Transient - that's what it's supposed to be. It floods in like a tidal wave of fear and anxiety, turns everything upside down then sweeps out just as quickly.

Things won't be the same though. I think we're all aware of it. The effects will be far from transient. When she recovers, we'll all have to reorganise the way we do things to lighten the load for her. Matriarch that she is, she herself will find that more frustrating than any of us. For now, we can only think about that as a bridge we've yet to cross.

I don't want to get preachy about it, but it's at times like this that I wonder how people with no faith, with no relationship with God, can cope at all. In our weakness, we find ourselves clinging to Jesus, who never promised us a life of continuous mountaintops and open skies (despite what those awful televangelists say) but does promise to walk with us through the deepest and darkest and most dangerous of valleys. What if you didn't know that he was there in it with you? The thought makes me shudder.

The good news is that the CT scan found the clot and maybe even the source of it, which might mean they can target it a bit more specifically with a better combination of treatments. As ever with medicine though, they're careful not to guarantee anything.

"Five minutes!" said the matron. That didn't seem like a lot of time, suddenly. I checked my watch. 4:55pm.

"I'm sorry it's been so short," I said eventually, clutching my Mum's hand.

"Oh it's what you do with your time that's most important," she whispered. Ain't that the truth.

"See you tomorrow, Mumsy," I said smiling. My Dad and I clumped out of the ward, back to the car and home.

REINDEER FOOD

I watched my sister and her boys hang up the stockings. They were thick red velvet, topped with white fur, gold names emblazoned on each one.

Liam had some 'reindeer food' in a little plastic bag with a special label.

"Read this, Uncle Matthew," he said, tipping the bag sideways so that I could see the label in the candlelight. He hadn't sealed it probably and sparkling porridge oats and glitter poured out all over me.

"Now, if I'm right, I think that means I should be able to fly!" I said. I've still got glitter stuck to me, I can see it glinting off my shoes.

"So the original Greek word," said Geoff, "was actually a word for a kind of reception room, not an inn - in fact, they'd have stayed in the lower basement, where the animals were, if the upper room was crowded with relatives."

My Dad nodded, half-asleep. My sister delicately lit more candles and the boys raced around in their pyjamas. I really like the thought that Joseph and Mary went home to be with family in Bethlehem. That seems kind of right to me, to be with family. 

With that in mind, I'm signing off for a while. Part of the magic of Christmas is not making it like every other day, which sounds like a good reason to get off social media, log out of Twitter and (if you still use it) faffbook. Plus, I'm still covered in sparkly reindeer food - and there are fewer ways to feel more festive, I suppose.

Merry Christmas to you all. 

THE ROUND-ROBIN

One thing that old flop-book has put a stop to it seems, are those round-robin catchup letters that get sent with Christmas cards. If you want to know Bob and Margaret's news, you can just scroll backwards on Bob or Margaret's timeline these days, rather than unfold a finely printed piece of paper. You'll soon see pictures of the grandkids or young Stewart, who's been backpacking round Thailand before starting his law degree.

I wondered whether we should have sent one from our house, just deliberately conveying some of the most boring things that have happened. I had a go at writing it. I should point out that what follows is only really loosely based in real events, and is written with the greatest level of respect to the Intrepids...

Dear________

Well, we can hardly believe it's been almost a whole year since we last sat down to write to you. So much has happened in our family this year. Alan completed an entire 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzle of Doctor Who and The Tardis, following a long search for missing pieces down the back of the sofa; young Matthew got himself a new monitor for his computer and Sheila finally got rid of her fifteen year old baking tray when it got warped in a hot oven!!! 

Way back last winter, we all had a very successful trip out to Portsmouth, where we saw HMS Victory, the Mary Rose and shared two jacket potatoes between the three of us! How we laughed when we realised they'd only brought out two sets of cutlery! It was good to see the harbour again though and Matthew always says he likes to see the sea at least once a year.

As a family, we've also taken to watching BBC One's 'Bargain Hunt' a show where ordinary people buy and sell antiques in an auction. We enjoy predicting how much money the teams will make on some of the daft things they've bought, and we always join in when Tim Wonnacot says "Join us soon for some more Bargain Hunting, yes? Yes!" and they all kick their legs up like they're in the can-can. So much fun!

The grandchildren are all well and continue to be a source of great joy for us! Sheila was 'less than amused' though when Ben (now 7! Can you believe it?) jumped off the sofa into the glass coffee table, pretending to be Batman. It's amazing what scrapes they get up to these days! Georgina is constantly online and watching videos on The Youtube. Young Liam is a bundle of fun too - he enjoys making guns out of Lego, Duplo, Playdough, Marzipan, bits of tree he finds in the park, an upturned game of Downfall and a candle holder.

The girls are fine. Rachel still enjoys music and this year upgraded clarinet reeds. Heather continues her work as a dental hygienist where she says she cares more about people's teeth than they do! Ha!

The summer of course, was a chance to get away from it all, which we both took with open arms on our trip to North Wales. We went by coach, which meant of course that we had lots of opportunities to chat to people. Plus, as an added bonus, we got there via Chester! We couldn't have been more thrilled.

Young Suzie continues her work in the depths of Surrey. We spent a day with her in the lovely town of Farnham, where a delicious food market caught our eye. We settled down that evening to a delightful meal at Pizza Express, lol! Matthew had a glass of red wine which made him a bit poorly. He was up at least seven times that night - into the bathroom, the little dear. We do love having him here, even though he's 36 and still single.

We're really very thankful that we've still got our health. Alan puts it down to all the quiz programmes he watches (Deal or No Deal, The Chase, Pointless, Eggheads, Countdown, old episodes of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, Tipping Point and Celebrity Mastermind), not to mention our favourites, Lewis and Foyle's War! It's a running joke though, because he sleeps through most of them. Nonetheless, we've made it to another Christmas and yes, more jigsaw puzzles!!! We're particularly looking forward to a nice bottle of elderflower cordial we got on special offer from Morrisons and a very nice leg of lamb we've procured from Sainsbury's with our accumulated Nectar points.

So ends another roller-coaster year! We do hope that you're well and that you'll come and see us up here sometime - it's like Piccadilly Circus sometimes, but we do love our guests and visitors to feel at home! Every blessing to you this Christmastide!!!!

Lots of love,

All of us.

-

Hmmm. Surprisingly easy to write, these things - though multiple exclamation marks aren't really my thing. Plus, it seems quite unnaturally easy to go off on tangents and talk about other people, deflecting what's really going on deep down in your own life where the rubber meets the road.

Good job I don't do that normally though, right.

Right?

Hmmm.

LASER BEANS

"Hey Uncle Matthew, I'm gonna shoot you with my gun. It's a laser gun."

"Nooo!"

"Yes. And then I'm going to fire you with a laser bean."

"Nooo!"

"Yes, and you will eat it and it will laser your heart."

Talk about never losing the wonder. Liam's 6 nearly 7 and he loves making guns out of Lego and shooting them at Uncle Matthew, who either ignores it completely or plays dead until jumped on. I really love that he'd misheard laser beams as laser beans and had created a whole new technological weapon out of a mondegreen. Laser beans would be a fearsome thing to find, busting their way out of a tin, or blowing up a coffee machine from the inside out.

My Mum said it reminded her of me racing round the house with a light sabre (an empty kitchen roll) claiming to be 'Daft Ada'. My Dad laughed, suggesting it was good that she could remember last Christmas so clearly. Funny man.

I went into town today to finish off the old Christmas shopping. It was packed. There were elbows and pushchairs, toddlers and teenagers, handbags and shopping bags and remonstrations and serious conversations... everywhere. I felt like I was floating like a bubble through a world of stress, hovering in queues and glinting down at the rows of shortbreads, Belgian chocolates and mint thins by the tills.

I wonder why we all clamber onto this treadmill so easily every year. Round and round we go, scratching our heads about what to get so-and-so, how to make it original and thoughtful, appropriate and well-valued. The television tells our children that this is what to expect, promoting Santa as the great benevolent demigod of the season who gives free gifts in return for just mince pies and milk. He, fat and bearded, winks knowingly into the camera of course, taking the credit while the parents pick up the bill. And we, like a great sea of saps, we go along with it all. Ho ho ho.

Christmas greetings came through today as well, from my good friend Carlos the Liberator. He asked how I was, gave me an update about his little boy who's now walking, and wished me well. He also couldn't resist including a link to a video about the American Government engineering international politics to protect the dollar from collapse, leading to an inevitable World War III. Merry Christmas, everybody. Now eat up your laser beans.

WIDE-EYED WONDER

My nephew's going to one of those noisy nativities. He is seven. The idea I think is that children just turn up, dressed as whatever they like: shepherd, king, the angel Gabriel, Spider-Man, a penguin or Elsa from Frozen... and the organisers just sort of fit everybody in and make it work, hoping that they'll get at least one of everything required to make a nativity. It sounds like chaos to me.

"Who are you going as, Ben?" asked his Mum.

"Jesus," he said with a perfectly straight face.

Personally, I think the organisers of such events are living on a plane of reality somewhere between brave, brilliant and barmy. A roomful of hyper-active, dressed-up children, screaming and wailing into their cotton-wool beards and itchy tea-towel costumes, sounds like a kind of explosive stress-bomb. Shepherding them into a carefully arranged nativity tableau would not only be a complex matter of logistical politics, but it would require a skill-set summoned from another dimension. Or perhaps a whistle and a loud-hailer.

Imagine my own paralysis then, when the practice for our church's Christmas celebration was a melee of stressed adults, flying children and costumes. It was a cacophonous mix of tears and shouting, stuff being moved around, microphones being tested and twisted into place with a crackling thud. I stood by the wall, clutching my music folder, just observing - unable to do anything.

"I saw you," said a small voice.

"Hello!" I said bending down. "I'm Matt, and who are you?"

"Oscar," he said, proudly. He was standing with his hands clasped behind his back, beaming up at me in the way that only children can. His little dark eyes sparkled and his smile was wide and innocent. He had a mop of curly dark hair.

"I saw you," he said again, "Playing the piano."

"Oh yes!" I said, "I do like to play the piano. Do you like to play music, Oscar?"

He nodded. Then he ran away, perhaps a bit shy.

I wondered suddenly, what I would have been like at that age - perhaps I had that same innocent smile and sparkling eyes. Perhaps I would have found a giant I'd seen playing the piano and I would have stared up at him in awe. Perhaps maybe that giant would have been a very friendly giant and would have asked my name. Perhaps I would have resolved to learn how to play that complicated looking instrument one day, just like the man I saw standing by the wall next to the piano.

At what point do we lose the ability to be wide-eyed in wonder? I'm serious - when does it happen? Do we get to our teenage years and suddenly imagine we've seen it all, that we're un-shockable or unimpressed by anything? Well you don't have to get too far out of the other side of your teenage years to realise that that was all nonsense. So what happens, why do we grow up without the wonder? What's wrong with Ben wanting to turn up to a nativity dressed as the central character? (though I don't know whether he'd had a costume in mind). Why shouldn't Oscar's eyes glint at the thought of playing the piano with great style and elegance?

I think it's a good question to ask: what makes you wonder, what causes you to feel like you've been pulled out of reality into something you'd never even considered before? Fine art? Great music? Scenery? Landscapes? A stirring theme from a great orator or speechwriter? What inspires you? What makes you breathe it in on the top of the mountain top? These are the things we should look for, I reckon. Not only do they make us feel alive but they make everyone else feel it too when they see it in us.

Then, I would say that. At the heart of inspiration, I say, is the Creator himself, the source of wonder, the designer of awe, the great author of everything that is good. Not only does he make us feel alive, I repeat to myself, but he makes everyone else feel it too when they see him in us.

Never lose the wonder.

THE ROYAL ALBERT HALL

"It's like doing a gig round your nan's house," the comic Phill Jupitus once said. I can see what he means. Though plush and accommodating, the Royal Albert Hall does carry a kind of old-fashioned atmosphere with it. There's a sort of prestige that you can't really escape as you wander around the circular corridor, or sit between those grand old pillars beneath that extraordinary roof.

The interior is so famous, I need hardly describe it - the enormous organ, the choir seats either side of its gigantic pipes, the stage where the orchestra sits, the tiny arena and the stacked boxes which curve so delicately around the building, the velvet curtains and the Victorian arches, rising under those acoustic booms that hang mushroom-like from the ceiling. It's one of the most famous concert venues in the world.

Today, there were two sparkling Christmas trees behind the fancy red chairs of the London Concert Chorus. Blue floodlights illuminated the stage, catching a jet-black Steinway, a golden harp and an assortment of stringed instruments and music stands. A silver glitter ball hung delicately above, just catching the light like a disco moon. This was the scene which greeted us for the annual Christmas Carol Singalong.

"It really gets you in the mood, this," said my sister, clutching her champagne flute. She was talking about the atmosphere rather than the inch of sparkling Moët in her glass, but I was left with little doubt that the two things were connected.

They come every year. Her husband used to work at Buckingham Palace (put that eyebrow down - he was a junior health and safety officer) and as a perk he managed to swing tickets to this event some years ago... in the royal box. You have to admit, that is quite a perk: champers and carols in the royal box. While no longer eligible, ever since, he's hired a less prestigious 8-seater box at the Royal Albert Hall and invited his family along for a festive sing song.

That's how we ended up there today, drinking Moët and Chandon. It all felt rather grand, rather posh for the likes of me, anyway.

I've started to wonder whether I've become a bit de-sensitized to Christmas carols. Last year I cycled through twelve different events throughout December, playing and singing the old favourites; this year I've done four with maybe two to go. Is it possible that I'm a bit, well, fed up with them?

"How do you store them all in your head?" asked the Vicar last night at Beer and Carols. Today, as I sat clutching an A4 booklet of things we've all been singing forever, I wondered whether the answer to that question should have been, "Well actually, they're like house guests who turn up every year and refuse to leave." I don't think I could forget the chord shapes if I tried now. They're embedded.

So much so that I saw the music flash past me today as the London Concert Orchestra played their splendid arrangements. F, Gm, Bb, modulation, rallentando... lines and notes flew by, each progression shaping itself into a pattern that made my fingers twitch into position with inescapable muscle-memory.

It's not really a problem. I do actually like these grand old tunes, and some of the words are like gold drops from heaven - even if we sing them glibly without thinking sometimes. I love the descants and I love the bass-lines and I love the volume and joy that these things bring (though I admit, this is the third time I've rambled on about it). Yep, some of them probably do seem old-fashioned. Let's face it, the notion of 5,000 people gathering to sing together is in itself, quite an antiquated thing, isn't it?

Somehow though, in that grand old hall, between the velvet and the marble and the furniture and the fun, it all seemed to fit really nicely together and it was entirely appropriate.

BEER & CAROLS 2

You might remember (you might not) that last year I helped out some people from a different church with a 'Beer & Carols' evening at their local pub. In a rowdy bar, the locals sang happily along to Ding Dong Merrily on High and gave Hark the Herald a good old bit of gusto.

It was so much fun, I agreed to do it again. This time though, rather than lugging the Yamaha CP300 into a place where it could be mistaken for a suitable resting place for pint glasses, I took the smaller Roland XP-80 with me, hoping that it wouldn't sound too much like a Fisher Price My First Piano.

It didn't let me down. In fact it did really rather well. I played 16 different carols tonight (which must be something of a record) two of which I'd never really played before. It was interesting to me that these were also the two which met with the quietest response from the noisy crowd. Infant Holy, Infant Lowly (learnt off YouTube about ten minutes before we started) and See Amid the Winter's Snow. I probably played all the wrong notes but I don't think anyone would have noticed.

"Beer and carols?" said my Dad when I told him where I was going. In his world, those two things don't mix. Carols are sung by pristine choirboys in neat rows of cavernous churches, not rambunctious drinkers at the local boozer accompanied by a scruffy pianist on an old keyboard. It's an unusual combination, I agree, beer and carols, but I don't think it's as odd as all that really. After all, and as obviously as I pointed it out the other day, Christmas is all about the wonderfulness of being together; if a community has any kind of central togetherness point, it's almost certainly the pub.

Not the church then, Matt? Well, it used to be. You'd bring your harvest and you'd marry your beloved; you'd christen your children and sing your weekly hymns along with everyone else, once upon a time. One of the things I love about these guys, who faithfully set up for a sing-song at their local every Christmas, is that they've realised that they've actually got to get out there rather than waiting inside their cold stone walls on their hand-knitted prayer cushions. See, it's never really been about buildings, venues, locations, or the awful politics of who's in charge of what. Being church is about being people. Bravo to them!

The other reason why it's not such an odd combination is that actually carolling should be fun. I mean it literally should be fun, like a dance that fills your heart with joy or a madrigal that just makes you want to burst into song! We're back to old Fezziwig aren't we? Alright, no-one's too sure what a 'matin chime' is and words like 'thither' and 'swungen' aren't exactly in common use any more, but still, the joy ought to remain. Early methodists I understand, even borrowed some of the tunes being sung at alehouses for their greatest hymns. Saturday night favourites round the old piano became Sunday morning classics with the pipe organ - some of which, we still sing today. In some ways, beer and carols, ale and hymns go back a long way together.

There was one odd thing about tonight though and that was the meat raffle. I made a fool of myself by turning to the vicar in the interval and asking:

"So, what actually happens in a meat raffle?"

He looked at me with an Anglican smile and carefully explained that it was a raffle in which you could win some meat. Of course it is, I thought to myself. What else could it possibly have been? I didn't dwell on that question.

It was oddly hi-tech, the meat raffle. The lady running it plugged in an electronic tombola which flashed up enormous orange digits. It was a bit like an oversized alarm clock. She hit the button and the numbers slowly span into place. The first was 545692.

How many people are here? I wondered. She was obviously proud of her machine though. She gave it a pat as she read out the highly visible numbers.

"Five Four Five... Six Nine Two!" she proclaimed into the microphone. An old lady hobbled up to the table to choose her cut of whatever it was on the meat table.

I must admit, I did enjoy Beer & Carols & The Meat Raffle. I reflected last year about whether Jesus would prefer it to the polished sound of the Thames Vale Singers' shrill performance of Hark The Herald in the barn next door. I actually think he'd want to be together with people who know how to have fun.

Whether or not he'd enter a raffle where he could win some meat, well that's a whole other theological debate.

PEOPLE-WATCHING

I'm in the corner of Starbucks being illuminated by artificial light. It's weirdly uncomfortable and cold.

I have a large cup of tea. Tiny bubbles line the surface where the tea meets the cup. It looks like washing up liquid.

There's a loud Australian chatting away next to me. The quiet man she's with is using hand gestures to indicate that he wants to talk but is struggling to find the space. It's like he's been muted.

A middle-aged dad sups from an espresso cup, elbows on the table. His son, school-uniform, spiky blond hair and scuffed shoes, munches on a panini, reminding me of a hamster in a school jumper. They don't speak. The father checks his phone.

Opposite me is a large man, older, with fleece jacket, corduroy trousers, cloth cap, white socks, black shoes. There's a wooden walking stick propped against the wall next to him. He accidentally knocks some receipts onto the floor and curses under his breath.

"Excuse me," he coughs, looking over. "Could you pick those up for me?"

I oblige politely and stoop to one knee, scooping up the papers from the dusty floor.

"Thank you so much," he says politely.

"Not a problem," I reply, making sure I sound all my consonants.

A barista appears and scrubs a table. The Australian lady looks at her and pauses her monologue. The barista looks weary but she smiles as she swipes the cloth in furious circles.

"All day breakfast!" cries a voice from the kitchen. He emerges with a plate of something wrapped up in paper and slides it onto the table of a young man in a gilet. He raises his eyes from his Samsung phone as a kind of thank you. The plate, complete with plastic knife, remains untouched for a while as he types out a text message.

It's all very normal, I suppose. I think about the Australian lady who's comparing ages, holiday choices and insurance woes with her quiet friend. It occurs to me that this is not really any different at all to the Lindt Cafe in Sydney. Not really. That makes me feel a bit sad for a while.

My friend Emmie arrives, back from Canada and cheerily ready for a catchup. She brings a happiness with her that switches me back into the real world. I click close on my phone and stop blogging... 

Until I'm waiting at the counter for a toffee nut latte. The contraptions behind the bar are puffing and chugging like an old steam engine while the three aproned baristas buzz around each other to the tune of Let it Snow. I flick up from tapping this out on my phone with my clumsy old fingers, and I spy the young man in the gilet who seems to be watching me and taking notes. Unbelievable, I think to myself ... and I slip my phone into my pocket, ready to finish this sentence later. A mug of cream-topped coffee waits for me on the bar.

THE CHRISTMAS DO

I had forgotten how much of an anti-climax it is.

The marquee was a mess. At the back, the neatly dressed staff were milling around the white-draped bar, waiting for us to finish packing away our instruments. In between us and them were fourteen round tables, bedecked with empty glasses, bottles, rumpled napkins, unused cutlery, screwed-up wrapping paper, party hats and the remains of silver cardboard crackers. The carpeted floor was strewn with paper aeroplanes.

Paper aeroplanes. I'd forgotten that too. When the dessert plates were whisked away and the staff circled the table with pots of coffee, the paper aeroplane war began. The pages of carol booklets and personalised place settings were suddenly being folded into streamlined flyers, zipping through the air and criss-crossing above the tables to great amusement.

I watched all this at the time, suddenly remembering that it had happened this way last year too. In the absence of anything better to do, engineers, sales people, renewals executives and finance guys had resorted to all the fun of makeshift origami wars. It seemed like lo-fi fun, but I wasn't sure then, why I couldn't seem to join in.

I wasn't sure again today. Actually, I wasn't sure about a lot of things. I folded up the keyboard stand and snapped the locks shut on the Roland XP-80 case. That was it then. Everyone had just sort of dispersed, clambered drunkenly back onto the coach or back to their vehicles and had gone on to the next thing without really thinking about it. Nobody had said anything. It all felt really anti-climactic.

It has occurred to me though, that there might be something deeper going on. For years now, I think I've been expecting the Christmas Do to be rather like Fezziwig's Christmas Ball in A Christmas Carol. Fezziwig of course, is a character designed to be the opposite of Ebenezer Scrooge - gregarious, generous, frivolous and fun - a picture of the last remaining small tradesmen at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, on the cusp of the capitalist awakening. He throws an annual ball for his employees in which he himself is the soul of merriment, the life of the party and the magnanimous host of a splendid occasion. This, says the subtext, is how to keep Christmas - with a party, with each other, celebrating together.

What's deeper is that it's that feeling of togetherness that seems to be missing, despite actually being, well, together. Again, that's part of the reason why some of these winter wonderlands feel so empty I think - they ultimately exist to fill the pockets of their shareholders, their owners, their investors, rather than the old-fashioned idea of good will and benevolence. The Christmas 'Do' seems exactly that, a Do, something you have to 'do' because it's expected. I think the likes of Fezziwig just wanted to celebrate Christmas together and wanted to do it with style. Where are they, the Fezziwigs in our century? The motives of our hearts are sometimes much more obvious than we realise when we do things out of duty.

I could go on about that togetherness thing. I think it stretches all the way through the ages, through the carols and the songs, from the warbling Mariah Carey to the dashing Pierpont, from Wham to Wesley, from FX Gruber to Noddy Holder. I think the theme aches at the heart of the story, the point in time when God decided to become one of us, with us, together, with us. And his name shall be... Emmanuel, God. With. Us. This is the ultimate 'togetherness' at the irreplaceable core of Christmas, whether you realise it or not. And I think we all notice when it's taken out.

I carried my stuff to the car. Perhaps I should have joined in, made an effort, folded up an aeroplane or two of my own. Maybe I'm more Scrooge than Fezziwig and I don't even know it. Maybe, I'm just too sensible, too... boring. Or maybe I just want to be together with my family and my friends.

The air was cold and the sky was slipping into the dark blue dusk of a December day. A slender moon hung motionless above the brittle trees and a gust of wind kicked up my scarf. That's it then - another year of work. I don't have to go back in now until January 5th. I breathed a sigh of relief and switched on the ignition.

"Driving home for Christmas, yeah," sang Chris Rea through the radio. I laughed.

KEEP CALM, AND CARRY ON IN THE WRONG KEY

Well, I've lost my voice again. That's carols for you. Last night I zipped down to Winchester to help the Vineyard church with their carol service.

It was all going really well until I started a song in the wrong key.

A man in a Christmas jumper was reading...

"And there were shepherds  living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them..."

I looked down at the synth in front of me, a Roland Juno, glowing in the dark like a set of fairy lights. As soon as the reading was over, I was supposed to play a D using a soft pad, a kind of heavenly, smooth stringy sound which would give the note for the lead singer to start It Came Upon The Midnight Clear. Seamlessly, we'd then flow straight into Phil Wickham's You're Beautiful.

The digital display was flashing. Jazz Scat Voice 01.

That, I thought, panicking, is going to sound about as ethereal as Timmy Mallet. How has that happened!? I quickly span through the dial, looking for the other pad.

"Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel..." continued the man in the Christmas jumper.

Aaaagh. Should have found a way to save a preset. Where is this? Strings, orchestra hit, accordion, starburst, albion, vector... should have... found something...

"Glory to God in the highest heaven..."

Warm Pad! That'll do!

"...and on earth, peace to those on whom his favour rests."

Go!

I played a G.

A G!

The singer launched into the song. I suddenly realised. I was supposed to have played a D! We were about to sing something about 4 notes higher than it should have been!

I gulped. I looked around at the band - they'd all realised.

"I'm really sorry," I mouthed.

The singer looked worried. Rightly so. He'd be fine with It Came Upon the Midnight Clear, but You're Beautiful was probably about to sound like a herd of straining cats in a room with the lights switched off. I felt the sweat beading beneath my shirt.

There are three options in this situation. 1) Stop and start again - nobody likes that one. 2) Change the key - tough unless you're all practiced and ready to change together. It takes consummate skill to pull that one off without it sounding clunky, cheesy or just plain awful... or 3) Keep going and hope for the best.

Keep calm and carry on in G Major. 3 it was.

It was uncomfortable. I pushed my voice up to back up the lead singer from the second verse - and strained the top of my voice as high as it has ever gone. He dropped down an octave, the band jammed along with the new chords and the whole thing gasped across the finish line like a fancy-dress santa claus in need of some oxygen.

Funny thing is, I'm not sure anyone out there in the dark would have noticed all of that.

By the time we got to the extended Hark the Herald and the full-on ska sound of Ding Dong Merrily on High, I could barely sing a note.

What's more, those arrangements were the ones we've used at the famous Christmas Eve Barn Service for the last few years - so that made it feel like we should have been in a freezing livestock barn, wrapped up in coats and scarves, rather than a warm church with the smell of mulled wine percolating from the back. That all added to the little sadness (I know I'm not alone in feeling) that the barn service has been discontinued.

Plus, it's not Christmas Day today, more the pity. And I've still got three more carolling events to go!

I guess someone's got to keep the people who make strepsils in business.

SIXTY SECONDS

My phone rings, shaking my desk with shock. I glance at the number. 020 something something something. London. I normally ignore these but I'm feeling different today. PPI, mobile phone sales, insurance, surveys? The grubby wheel of possibility spins as I slide the touch screen and lift the phone to my ear.

"Hello?" I say, realising that I've naturally decanted a mixture of cheeriness and caution into two syllables. The phone line crackles. Nothing.

"Hello?" I repeat.

"Hello," says a voice from another continent. His 'hello' is racing as though he's on some sort of deadline. Sure enough, he launches into words he could recite in his sleep, words that no longer carry any value or meaning to him nor me but still trip off the tongue like times-tables. I worked at Yell. I know the tone. He asks me if he can have 'just one minute' of  my time.

"Alright," I say, "You've got sixty seconds. Go!"

He fumbles on.

Step 1 - is this your address?

"Yep."

"OK sir, and can you tell me please, do you regularly read a newspaper?"

I don't, no. 50, 49, 48...

"You don't know?"

"I don't, no."

"OK sir. Do you drive?"

Yep.

"Is your car over three years old?"

No. He pauses here, apparently surprised by this. Perhaps he's selling MOTs? My head ticks down through the low 40s and into the 30s. He continues.

"Do you have medical insurance?" he asks next. This is an odd line of questioning, I think to myself. Address, newspaper, car, medical insurance. Is someone trying to bump me off? Poisoned paper? Tampered brakes? All seems very elaborate. The silent clock blips under 20 and we're approaching the end. He asks me if I own my own home. I tell him I do not.

He wonders what kind of phone I've got. 10, 9, 8, 7... I tell him it's an iPhone and that he has 5 seconds left. He panics.

"Oh sir," he pleads, "just one final question!" I imagine him sweating at his desk as he thinks of his targets and the manager who sets them.

"I'm really sorry, your time is up!" I say as politely as I can. I feel sorry for him, but I hang up in any case.

GAZILLIONS

Winding down? Pffft. I should have known, as soon as I said that, that the whole world would go crazy and that a gazillion documentation issues would flood through the catflap!

Now, at the narrowing end of the day, my legs are throbbing and my eyes are heavy, my brain is slowing time down with its own gravitational pull, and my throat is tight like guitar strings. It doesn't bode well for the 7am start tomorrow.

How much is a gazillion? It's bigger than a trillion isn't it? It must be ten zillions? And a zillion is ten trillions? That makes a gazillion, 100 trillion. 100 million billion.

Have a little whistle if you like. I bet there aren't that many open documentation issues in the known world! I feel I might have used a hyperbolic power of ten there that was vastly inaccurate and doesn't really exist except for the comedic purposes of exaggeration. I should really know this stuff from my physics days. What I really meant to say was six.

But they're six not very nice issues - they're complicated and horrible, and to do with a product I don't understand. I wished I was at home, writing a jazz arrangement of Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, which would have required a lot less stress.

Deep breath, Mubbsy. Four days to go.

Feels like about a gazillion.

PIERPONT ADDS A FOURTH VERSE

Things are winding down at last. I've drawn an enormous number 5 on my notepad, counting down the days until Tuesday.

Really though, it's only three and a half, as Tuesday afternoon is the Christmas bash and there's a lovely old weekend in-between now and then.

"These look like fun arrangements," said Peter, scanning over my cobbled-together versions of Rudolph and Jingle Bells. I smiled with relief. Peter's a very good musician, much better than me technically, and if anyone can spot a dodgy harmony from the dots, it's him. Hopefully, when we play them on Tuesday afternoon, they'll sound half-decent; though by that time I suspect people will be too inebriated to appreciate the counterpoint melodies of trumpet, alto sax and clarinet with piano.

People start wandering about with large parcels at this time of year too. Desks get stacked up with Amazon boxes and tubes of wrapping paper. My friend next to me just pulled out an enormous roll of industrial strength bubble wrap, glistening with shiny unpopped bubbles. My eyes lit up with a chidlish temptation, but you'll be pleased to know I did manage to control myself.

Meanwhile, the character of Pierpont is taking shape in my head. Would you believe he wrote a fourth verse to Jingle Bells? It contains some rather prurient advice...

Now the ground is white
Go it while you’re young,
Take the girls to night
And sing this sleighing song;
Just get a bob tailed bay
Two forty as his speed.
Hitch him to an open sleigh
And crack, you’ll take the lead.

Now in 1850 I'm sure that was all a bit of a laugh, but you've got to admit, way out here in the 21st Century...

I picture Pierpont as a tall, young bounder, bright-eyed and bushy bearded with a villainous tophat and dark winter coat, flapping about him. I hear the wooden wheels of his one-horse open sleigh, grinding across the slush and snow, I hear the bob-tailed bay whinnying and the evil crack of Pierpont's whip pushing it faster and faster. He laughs into the wind as he flies by, drunk on life, power and speed while the girls giggle and shriek with the delight and danger. He's a boy racer, isn't he?

It's no wonder we only sing the first verse.

CHRISTMAS TYPOS

We had a network outage today so I amused myself by thinking up some Christmas Typos. It started some time ago when I found a carol sheet with those immortal lyrics:

The stars in the bright sky, looked down where he lay
The little Lord Jesus, asleep on the hat.

I'm afraid I lost it, picturing the traditional nativity scene - misty-eyed Mary and Joseph, reverent kings on bended knee, awestruck shepherds... and baby Jesus curled up in an upturned sombrero.

I got through Angles from the Realms of Glory and God Test Ye Merry Gentlemen. But my colleague was giving me strange looks by the time I imagined Hank The Herald Angel Sings and Frosty the Now Man. I think one or two of the ones that popped into my head might actually have been a little too close to the mark for some people. All I'll say is that I'm very grateful that the son of the father was begotten, not cremated.

Then, taken with curiosity about Jungle B... I mean Jingle Bells... I looked up the lyrics. Do you know, I think the whole thing might be a bit of a sarcastic rant about one-horse open sleighs?....

A day or two ago
I thought I'd took a ride
And soon Miss Fannie Bright
Seated by my side
The horse was lean and lank
Misfortune was his lot
He got into a drifted bank
And we got upsot

Oh what fun? Sounds awful, especially for Miss Fannie Bright, who could easily have been kidnapped by whichever horse-driving maniac it was who wrote this - oh, Pierpont wasn't it? (I just remember from the top right hand corner of the music) - kidnapped and left in a snow drift. Well, Monsieur Pierpont, it's probably your fault for hiring an unlucky old horse.

The third verse seems to switch the narrative to a lady, I assume. Perhaps even the fabled Fannie Bright. She recounts:

A day or two ago
The story I must tell
I went out on the snow
And on my back I fell;
A gent was riding by
In a one-horse open sleigh
He laughed as there I sprawling lie
But quickly drove away

Yes, there's a name for people like you, Pierpont, thought Fannie to herself. "Jingle bells, jingle bells, yeah really? I'm walking home," she said, hitching up her skirts and climbing down the bank of snow. I might write a song about this, one day, thought Pierpont to himself, chuckling while Fannie hobbled off into the blizzard.

Network outages are not much fun. Nothing was working, especially us. When I'd finished with glock-watching shepherds and Little Monkey, I started making a spreadsheet of all the things I needed to do while my email was down. It's no secret that I don't like emails at all, but somehow not being able to see any of them was vaguely disempowering - as though someone has sealed your catflap despite the fact that you don't have a cat.

Eventually, when Outlook did come back on line and my inbox was a flurry of activity, I kind of wished it wasn't. Humming merrily to myself, I went back to my unfunny Christmas Typos to cheer myself up.

A rat of hope flickers in the dark...

I am so weird sometimes.

HOW TO MAKE A WINTER WONDERLAND

I just read a BBC article about those disappointing Winter Wonderland things people go to. It seems almost every year, there's a 'magical experience' which turns out to be a muddy walk on a building site.

Professor Martyn Bennet from Nottingham Trent University suggests that we just don't have the kind of weather to make it work. Instead of the soft snowfall of central Germany, we get the drizzle and dampness of South Ruislip. Throw in a corner-cutting entrepreneur who sees pound signs in every plastic bauble, and you end up with polyvinyl sheets for an ice rink, a threadbare Santa in a grotty tent and dishevelled elves on a fag break.

The article points out that we do have a longing, sort of woven into our fabric, for a magical, white and wonderful Christmas, and we're determined to import it from snowier climes. In fact, if you think about it, that's pretty much what we've always done.

It goes on to speculate that this longing is a yearning for something much less commercial than elbowing each other in the high street; something a bit more cultured, different, communal and friendly perhaps. Something that perhaps we've lost...

"In the past, there have been traditions that brought us together," says Professor Bennet, "Things like church services, family gatherings - even the Queen's speech or television shows."

Hmmm. I wonder if Professor Bennet is aware that all four of those things still exist. Call me old-fashioned but I think if you've lost something, it's much better to start by actually looking for it rather than leaping to a replacement. Where did those traditions go, exactly?

I'm not knocking the German Christmas Markets or the winters wonderland or even Santa's (many) Grottoes! These are all ways to help children capture that magical feeling we all remember and some of them are actually really good at it.

But the truth is, if you want to make Christmas magical - for everyone, not just the kids - it's best not to rely on a construction site in a damp forest or an imported experience in a busy high street... you can do it. And the reason you know this to be true is because the things that really work, the things we all remember, are always the homemade things - tiny traditions and little family gatherings, the sofa and the tree, the sparkles, the food, the decorations and the tinsel along the picture rail.

Actually, I'm not sure people still have picture rails - we drill holes in walls nowadays for some reason. Just goes to show how old-fashioned I am (whether you say so or not). I remember standing on a stool in my Grandma's hallway, pushing a drawing pin through a piece of decorated string and right into the stiff wood that ran along the top of the wall. The house would be full of the smell of cinnamon rock cakes and the strings of the Monteverdi Orchestra playing God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen and I'd be as happy as any little boy has ever been.

See, it's the little things! They're not lost! They were in us all along. Let's get on with it and make it a wonderland.

THE VISUALLY-IMPAIRED-FATHER-CHRISTMAS MACHINE

So, the Office Secret Santa is on. Oh joy, oh rapture...

"SECRET SANTA!! - Will be slightly different as it is all going to be ANONYMOUS so you will have no idea who you are buying for and the presents will be chosen at random. If you would like to be included in the Secret Santa please use the voting buttons attached. The cost will be £5.00 per person and will be given out on the 16th December"

Anonymous, eh? More of a Blind Santa than a secret one then. It occurred to me at first that we'd end up with a pile of generic boxes of chocolates, mini-stationery sets and those tiny bottles of wine people use for cooking. We may as well pass round a bowl of five pound notes on the 16th of December, I thought, rather than exchange generic gifts at the inevitably disappointing pudding stage of the Christmas Meal.

It never occurred to me that some people might see this as more of an imaginative chance to erm... up the ante. Today's scrum meeting ended with one person adding this little addendum to proceedings:

"So we had that email about the anonymous Secret Santa. Can I encourage everyone to join in please, because it will be a lot funnier if there are more of us in it. People tend to push the boundaries of HR when it's completely anonymous."

Anonymity seems to bring out the deviants. Wear a mask and you can get away with anything, it seems. What a metaphor that is.

"I'm not sure you're really selling it to me," said our Team Leader. Me neither, I thought.

-

Now, it's at this point I have to make an apology. Yesterday, in my pompous waffling about convergence and divergence, I gave an example of a 'convergent' function which turned out to be a load of old baloney.

I said that a machine which halves an input and then adds that half to the input to give you a result would converge on a limit if you fed the output into the input - which is nonsense, of course! The machine would keep multiplying your money until the cows came home. In fact, if you put £100 in, you'd only have to run it 23 times and you would be a millionaire. I was trying to find a simple mathematical function which converged but they were all a little difficult to explain in a simple way.

However, if you had a machine which doubles the input, takes away a value of £1 and then divides the result by the original amount you fed into it, you would have a convergent machine I think, with a limit of £1. But it would be a nightmare to run. Plus if you start with £1 the best you can hope for is £1 back, which won't impress the cows at all when they do amble back to the cow shed.

-

I guess I have a fiver rather than just £1, to multiply in this corporate Visually Impaired Father Christmas Machine then.

I'll think of something. And who knows what might come back?

THE HALF-FROZEN KINDLE

Well, my Kindle has frozen. Right in the middle of The Adventure of the Empty Hearse, the classic Sherlock Holmes caper. Half the page is stuck on the splash-screen.

I'm disproportionately annoyed. By that I mean I'm quietly fuming in the corner. I've had that Kindle for about fifteen months: fifteen months of loving the ability to take a whole library of books on the train, in the garden, at the bus stop, on holiday, wherever. It came with me to Italy, where, in the heat of the Mediterranean sun, I pored through the history of the build-up to World War II in Winston Churchill's The Gathering Storm. Even in Eastbourne I raced through pages of a cheap thriller by the dingy light of a hotel lamp. And The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes has been a constant delight and travelling companion.

I went online. It turns out, quite a few people have had the same problem. One or two were sardonically suggesting that Amazon might have done this on purpose.

I used to suspect this about printers. I went through a phase of buying cheap printers - the kind where the cartridges cost more than the machine. Almost exactly one month after the warranty ran out, the printer would jam, it would lose contact with the computer, or tiny wisps of smoke would seep out of the back of it. In the end I got rather fed up of yanking bits of concertinaed paper from the feed tray. It was all very suspicious.

You can't transfer Amazon books. Neither will they repair the fault (not cost effective). So, like those faulty old Epsons and Hewlett Packards in the loft, it means a replacement - which is... annoying.

One help video featured a kind of hipster guy, looking uncomfortable in a blazer and a t-shirt. His right wrist was a maze of tattoos and he carried the traditional light stubble and single stud earring. It was an eHow video, so I stuck with it.

"I'm here to show you how to fix a broken... or frozen... screen..." he said without smiling. "It's a very common problem."

Cheers for that.

"On the base of your Kindle there's a power button..."

I closed my eyes and shook my head.

"... Press the power button for fifteen seconds."

There was still half a minute left so I hoped maybe there was something further than a buffoon pointing out the obvious.

"If that doesn't work, just let the battery... drain out..."

Who's this video for? Chimps? Chimpanzees who've somehow learned to read but haven't worked out that you can reset an electrical device by turning it OFF AND THEN ON AGAIN?

"Hopefully that should fix it. Thank you for watching, don't forget to..."

I switched it off.

Maybe I'll go back to reading actual books. It's nicer anyway in some ways - the vellum curling beneath your fingers, the smell of the paper and the weight of the spine. Certainly, I've already gone back to reading the Bible that way.

Speaking of which, I probably ought not to get too angry about the half-frozen Amazon Kindle on my bedside table or the unhelpful hipster on YouTube. There's something about not letting anger bubble away inside you until sunset - it doesn't do you any good.

Besides, it's only stuff.

Still, I'd quite like to find out how Holmes escaped the Reichenbach Falls.

CONVERGENCE & DIVERGENCE

I stood behind the piano, watching the choir sitting in neat rows, chatting before the carol service started. There was an unspoken thank you in my heart. The Recipient heard it. It was as though all that we'd been working towards since October was converging on a single moment, timed expertly to combine in a uniquely defined point in time.

I say expertly, not to celebrate myself, but really to celebrate the timing. I love this idea of convergence and divergence. In maths, convergence happens when a particular function is zoning in on an exact value. That value is said to be the 'limit' of the function. In geometry, the same kind of thing happens with two straight lines which aren't parallel. Eventually, like the vanishing point of a picture drawn in perspective, there is a moment when those two lines meet. Light rays shining through a lens also converge on a single point - the focal point, where everything becomes clear.

My life feels a little like that sometimes - as though things are slowly but surely converging on a particular focal point. You can look around you and see the trends, the things that point in a particular direction, the combining, twisting forces which are hastily speeding towards each other. At some point, the lines will meet.

It's better this way round than feeling like the things in your life are diverging. Divergent functions are angled away from each other and fan out forever, never destined to meet or reach a conclusion. They were together at one point, but that point is of course, in the past.

The more astute among you will have worked out where I'm going with this idea. Where, or rather, when - because convergence and divergence are all a matter of time. Don't worry though, we'll get there. There is a third case first, balanced perfectly between convergence and divergence. It happens when things are parallel.

In the parallel world, things don't ever change - like railway tracks, the lines stay equally spaced away from each other and snake around the corner in perfect synchronicity until the end of the line. There is no vanishing point in the past or the future, there are just straight lines, each stretching to infinity and beyond with their congruent tangents and perfectly aligned normals all at an eternal 90 degree angle to each other. How very dull. I don't think any of us could live like that.

The subtle point I was getting to is that convergence or divergence is all about your perspective, where you've come from and where you're going. Live time in reverse and the convergence of events becomes a great divergence away from that final (or first) focal point - the sunday roast becomes uncooked vegetables, a clucking chicken, plates in the cupboard and a handful of grapes in a sun-drenched vineyard. The further back you go, the more spread out the components are.

Conversely, a broken marriage, a hurting family and a life filled with endless arguing in the unanticipated fallout of a single terrible event... well, that's a clear example of things diverging. Trace it backwards though, as though you've pushed a rewind button on the video recorder, and the chain of events snaps carefully back into focus, converging at the single moment of detonation. It should be said though, that in the example I've used, it's much more likely that there have been several detonations, some of them quietly unseen and unheard but long before the flashpoint.

So really, this idea of convergence and divergence has everything to do with how we perceive time, how we measure it and how we calculate what happened, what won't happen, and what will.

I'm actually feeling OK with the way things are converging at the moment. True, the angle of convergence is slight and the vanishing point is quite impossible to spot. I'm alright though, with ploughing along the tapering track, wondering how the great Designer will bring these lines together at just the right time. What excites me even more is that there are other lines, probably all over the place - things I just can't see, which are also converging on focal points of their own, some of them maybe even inside my own future experience and heading inexorably towards my point of convergence. I get a little thrill that there are invisible plans out there, plans which give me a hope, and yes, a future.

I smiled as Paul, my friend and pastor, welcomed everyone and sat down, ready for the first carol. I saw rows of expectant faces in the choir, looking at me, waiting for the signal. I lifted my hands. As one, they stood up, beaming with anticipation. I held up a conducting finger and sounded an A on the piano. We were off and it had all come together, just about perfectly in time.

HOW I CHEERED MYSELF UP

Well... I am most excited today; I bought an AKAI LPD8. Oh yes.

Now I know what you're thinking: you're wondering whether this choice of 8-pad ultra-portable USB-powered MIDI controller with flexible Q-link faders and backlit multi-channel functionality could be signalling a diversion from my previous predilection towards the 88-key, fully weighted all-round superpower of the Nord Stage 2.

And who could blame you? Clearly, the Nord is an instrument of spectacular quality and unmatched style, combining some of the most delicious samples and organ-synths ever modelled by a machine. I'm just not quite sure I'm ready for it yet (plus it costs a small fortune) - especially when I'm still loving the feel of the Yamaha CP300, even after 7 years of lugging it round like a coffin.

No, what I need is something which combines flexibility with strength. And I think the AKAI LPD8 is part of the solution. I reckon I can do everything I need using the Roland XP-80, a neat bit of software and the AKAI LPD8, controlling the flow of MIDI data between the two. If I take out the normal XLR audio from the back of the Yamaha, I can even keep my piano sound as fresh as it's always been - just working together with some incredible pads, delays and effects.

What's more, it only needs a MIDI keyboard to run. My portable kit might be about to slim down to a laptop, some cables, a lightweight MIDI keyboard, the LPD8 and a couple of pedals. Kerboom! Goodbye awkward wheeling of the 32kg stage piano which might blow up a PA system; hello to a quick set up... and a pack-down so simple that it doesn't actually leave you wishing you'd chosen the ukulele instead, while your tired fingers push a back-breaking lump of plastic and metal into the boot of your car and the rest of the band are already tucked up in their cosy beds.

Funny how things cheer you up, isn't it?

THE INTROVERT'S UTOPIA

"I feel like I'd like to disappear today, to kind of pop out of reality like a soap bubble," I texted my friend, "I'd pop back of course, after an hour or two, or maybe a day or two..."

I rather like this thought. It's the introvert's utopia I suppose - not necessarily being away from everyone for your own sake, but more to just restore a bit of balance to the universe by not being around inside it.

Now that we live in a more digital age of course, everybody is everywhere. You log into flappybook - everyone is there, milling around, updating their status, showing you their dinner plates or their children, or commenting on how terrible the government is. Swipe open Twitter on your smartphone - oh there's everyone again look, but celebrities as well this time, tweeting pithy reactions to TV programs, sports teams and how terrible the government is.

I like the constant stream of chatter sometimes, but then there are other times when I'd quite like the old-fashioned silence back. And the bit of my brain that says I can choose to be part of the solution rather than the problem, tells me to leave social media unopened, to keep my new phone in my pocket and to stop blogging about it. Hmmm.

What then, another chunk of radio silence? Perhaps. It does seem a bit... well, self-indulgent. Do you remember when mobile phones were taking off and people who weren't really used to them kept them switched off except for emergencies? They seem like lovely days now. Those people's friends and family, enamoured with the idea of being able to contact anybody anytime, and mystified by anyone who didn't want that, used to say things like:

"What is the point in having a phone if you're going to keep it switched off, where I can't reach you?"

At some stage, it became expected that we're ubiquitously connected - the internet merged itself with the smartphone; buzzing bricks became tiny computers and consequently, it became socially reprehensible not to be available. If you take longer than two days to answer a personal email, for example, it's quite likely that the sender will feel that awkward knot of rejection tangling up on the inside. How very dare you be so rude; get plugged back into the Matrix at once, you old hermit.

It did occur to me half-way through the year, that abandoning fleecebook without really telling anyone, might cause a few people to be upset with me. If that's you, I can only apologise - though the very thing I'm talking about here is the fact that I don't think I should have to. I am sorry nonetheless. And anyway, how did we all get chained up to a website?

The introvert's utopia though, goes much deeper than just the digital adventure playground. Today I almost feel like I want to actually be somewhere else, to vanish in a puff of smoke like an old-fashioned magician - well, actually, forget the smoke; I'm not sure I really want anyone to notice. Perhaps it's more like slipping away at a party where everyone seems engaged in superficial conversation. Nobody will see, I think to myself, nobody will care.

They will though. They very much will. Plus, first in the queue would be my manager, and I don't really want to get on the wrong side of him by going AWOL. Second would be my Mum and if anything, she is much more formidable.

Where am I going with all this? Well that's the point, I guess. I'm going nowhere. There's no introvert's utopia to disapparate off to, no wardrobe and no Narnia. We have to make the most of the time we have here, bumbling along with the extroverts while they whoop and holler at the party.

And in a strange way, I think there might come a time when they really need us to stick around.

ONE ANCIENT FAT MAN

I'm a little happier today - though according to the news, we're all going to get taken over by robots. That's what Stephen Hawking thinks anyway. I say, take it with a pinch of salt. It wasn't that long ago he was claiming England could win the World Cup with a 4-4-2 formation. Besides, I thought his field of expertise was black holes and not in fact, all of popular science (as some people seem to think). Bless him.

The Christmas feeling continues. Some burly men with tape measures came in to work today and put up a fifteen-foot-tall Christmas tree. It is enormous, covered with silver and blue sparkly stuff and baubles. A giant five pointed star sits at the top, poking up above the lobby like an ironic communist salute. I chuckled as that thought brought me right back to the tune of O Tannenbaum, O Tannenbaum or if you prefer, Keep the Red Flag Flying.

"Aw, how old is yours?" asked one of the receptionists in the kitchen.

"He's eight," said Gemma, the other one.

"That's a nice age. And does he still believe?"

"Oh yes, he still believes."

"Well, I remember mine... you know, years ago, asking me all sorts of questions about how he could be real, visiting all those people in one night, eating all those mince pies. What about eskimos? They haven't got no chim-e-ny, he asked once. Can you imagine?"

I skirted round them to the fridge, clutching my cup in one hand and the milk in the other.

It's a funny old religion, this. It seems to depend on faith in one ancient fat man who breaks into your home on an annual basis using what can only be described as the least practical, most dangerous and silliest point of entry. Meanwhile, you dutifully present him with his ritual offering (an unusual sacrifice of nibbles, milk and sherry) and he, the ancient fat man, in return, leaves a small selection of gifts in one of the oddest places imaginable - inside one of your socks. Then presumably, covered in soot and bruises, with his belly swishing and curdling like an old butter churn, he rides off in a getaway vehicle that could almost have been designed with the specific purpose of drawing attention to itself.

I remember being pleased and relieved that the lovely things I'd been given had come from people who actually loved me and not some magical bearded stranger who swigged Coca-Cola and winked through the telly. I think in a way, that early understanding taught me a lot about the difference between religion and relationship. My Mum (as did her Mum before her) used to call that feeling The Spirit of Christmas, which is of course a far more ancient and beautiful Spirit than a conglomerated cultural elf who's only bothered about you once a year at best, when you stuff him full of sugary snacks and milk. Now the real Spirit of Christmas, that is a flag that I'll keep flying.