LADYBIRD

There's a ladybird here, sitting very happily on top of an unopened bottle of mead. She's quite content. She just flicked her wings and tickled her back legs. I'm sitting here on New Year's Eve too, twizzling a corkscrew, watching her and waiting.

I can't bring myself to flick her off. It doesn't seem right somehow. I've rotated the bottle a few times but she hasn't moved. Neither is there any reason why she should. We're all entitled to enjoy New Year's Eve however we choose. And I'll be honest, the mead can wait.

I was going to do another grand old review of 2016. How the first few months were all paint and curtains, the Spring was hay fever, and the rest, a sort of sleepless whirlwind, right up until last week. But there are more than enough reviews of this year to go around. It may well be talked about for decades to come, and for a great many reasons. For me, the year 2016 has felt like two steps forward, two steps back, but where I've landed is not quite in the same universe as where I started.

I suppose a lot of us feel like that at the end of this unpredictable rollercoaster. Wandering round in circles on top of a cork.

So, tonight then.

I'm with family later. We'll almost certainly play Mexican Train Dominoes (like normal dominoes but with tiles that go up to twelve) and then see the New Year in with a bottle-pop and a clink of glasses. The telly will go on and London will once again be ablaze with fireworks while Big Ben chimes out across the exploding cityscape. Fast away the old year passes, will sing my heart, and hope will rise in me again for the new one.

Then we'll be off, hurtling into an even less foreseeable year. I sense change.

The ladybird is happy. She might just be loving the attention. It is possible, I suppose, that she's forgotten that she can fly, and that the world is greater and wider and braver and kinder than she knows, once she learns how to let go of it. I tap the bottle. She flicks open her wings. Come on, little ladybird, it's time. It is time.

THE VALLEY OF THE FOUR GIANTS: BOOT

I'm awake. The sunlight flickers through the leaves.

Instinctively I reach for my arm. My fingers strike a bulb of bandage which pushes into the wound. It hurts, but not as much as I think it should.

I sit up. The leaves fall away. The forest is quiet and once again there is no sign of the Photographer. She follows a pattern it seems - help me,  disappear, rescue me, and vanish.

There's no sign of any giants either. Two down. I smile as I remember how Loneliness evaporated in the firelight.

The fire over there is a pile of ash now. Tiny white wisps of smoke spiral into the daylight. Bits of splintered arrow lie charred nearby.

I scrabble to my feet, ready to make a plan. My bag is safe, my Hope is safe, I am safe, at least for now. But Hopelessness and Lustfulness know this place, and they will certainly be back.

I pace between the trees. One has a dark open wound, much like my own. Blood has stained the bark.

They will seek me out. They will certainly find me. They will... 

What's that?

Half buried in the earth, sticking vertically out of the ground I see a black disc glinting. I peer at it for a while and then tug it out from the soil. It is one half of a vinyl record; the vinyl record. And it has been snapped into two pieces - the other, flung somewhere else.

There's more. Shards of varnished wood lie just a short distance away and a bronze needle is twisted into the mud. Whatever it was that played the record last night has been splintered, smashed to pieces. By a giant.

They were here then. They came back, looking for me.

My heart beats a little faster. What happened? Had I been hidden by the Photographer? Had she fought them and disappeared? Or had they smashed the phonograph in anger when they couldn't find me?

The half-record slips into my bag. I look for more clues.

After a few minutes, I find something else hidden in the bracken. It's a box, a wooden crate with an iron clasp. It looks old - rough wood and rusty hinges. There's an outline of a cross and a skull on the lid but it's faded with age. I open it carefully.

Rows of tiny bottles. Each carrying the same emblem, the skull and a cross. There are sixteen of them - blue, green, translucent, and a sickly yellow colour.

Developing fluids? Do these belong to the Photographer? What are they for? Why would she leave them for me? What happened? The broken record? The smashed machine? I drop a blue bottle into the bag.

There's something else there in the bracken though. Something that makes my heart stop beating for a moment. I quietly close the lid and stare at it, unblinking. What does it mean?

It's a shoe. I pick it up. Well, a boot really; brown and laced with a slender heel; a lady's Victorian boot. Her boot.

They have her.

TOO FAST

I think the world moves too fast for me. I'm not talking about the ever-shifting global-political landscape or the macro-economics of east versus west. Neither do I mean the widening chasm between furious liberals and toe-curling conservatives, nor the pendulum of thought on isolationism, nationalism and protectionism. Crumbs, I don't even mean the managerial line-up at Swansea City.

I'm talking about Mario Kart.

I went round to The Carters to play video games (are they even still called video games?) today. I was left once again with the feeling that I am not that great at that kind of thing.

The problem is that everything happens so fast, so impossibly noisily, and quickly, that you almost need lightning-reactions not to slam into a mushroom, or tumble into a precipice. Coin! Mushroom! L2! Left! Fire! Brake! Switch! Zoom! Bam! Oh. I've hit the side again. It's quick. It's deliberately bright, and confusing too! All the primary colours are there, sucking you in as they flash by in this perfectly-rendered world of impossible racers. I regularly finished 11th and 12th, chugging over the line while everyone else watched.

I think I need to process the world, the whole world, much more slowly. This breakneck pace where there is no time to think about what to do next, is too quick for me. I can't view the whole screen at once and figure out what's going on from all the flashing images in front of me. The pixels are moving faster than my eyes. It's a wonder how anybody knows what to do.

It is super-foggy tonight. As I drove home, I could only see one lamppost ahead through the thick white mist that hid the world. My fog lamps beamed out in front of the car, like lasers, apexing to a point several metres into the cloud.

I started wondering whether life itself is like Mario Kart. I didn't know, for example, that unless you accelerate before the start, you'll always be behind. The start we get in life is everything. I hit the side, got spun out of the way, picked up some bonuses and got overtaken lots. That happens. I also did okay at some points too and felt like I was improving. Even by the end though, it did seem to all be zipping by at a pace I couldn't keep up with.

I always thought that life was more like chess. At chess, I pondered and calculated, predicted and reacted, defended and manoeuvred. But I had time to think it all through. My brain was able to dictate the pace of the game - often to my opponent's irritation, actually. It occurs to me now that Formula 1 racing drivers probably do exactly the same thing but at a ludicrous 200mph. A Grand Prix is surely just high-octane chess with super-fast engines. And somewhere between the two, is (probably) the colourful world of Mario Kart.

It's bound to be a combination, isn't it. Some things you can manoeuvre to change the pace, some things you just have to catch up on. The more I thought about that, driving home, the more I wished I'd worked it out years ago.

I slowed down for the traffic lights and gently pulled the car to a stop. The mist swirled through the beams over the glistening road, disappearing into the darkness in front of me. I gripped the steering wheel, blinked once, pursed my lips and then revved the engine, waiting for the lights to change. Three. Two. One...

UNFREEZING

I went outside today. The sun was twinkling through the frosted branches, casting long, cold shadows. The air was invisible ice, ripping through my clothes and burrowing deep into my bones. It has gone very wintry indeed.

I had to go to the shop to get milk and bread. I decided the best time to go was while my fridge was defrosting, which it has actually been doing all night and most of the day. Yep, while the world twinkles white in winter's frozen fingers, my fridge is going through a sort of un-freezing all of its own.

In hindsight, it was probably unwise to leave it until the ice burst out of the freezer-box and made it impossible to shut the door.

I haven't spoken to anybody today, not even digitally. That's something. I drank a whole bottle of Shloer for no reason at all (don't worry, it's non-alcoholic) and went dizzy on a sugar-high. Then I ate some cheese to stop it going off while the fridge was out-of-action. I read a book, downloaded some keyboard patches and researched MIDI controllers on Amazon. I also watched some demos of the Nord Stage 2 EX, which made me wonder whether I ought to get one next year. Don't let me get nerdy about that.

The shop was depressingly back-to-normal. Betwixtmas has a peculiar effect on retailers - it's as though they get to the end of Boxing Day and then suddenly they all switch on the house-lights, ending the mood-lighting and magical atmosphere they've spent the last six weeks creating, with the hum of plasma bulbs and the stark shadow of reality. That's your lot, they seem to say. Grab your stuff and off you go. The cashier was kind enough to wish me a Happy New Year, which I of course, reciprocated, though it does feel rather early. Okay, maybe I did speak to someone today. I said, "And to you."

Stars shimmered above me as I made my way to the front door. The sky was as black as ink and as smooth as velvet, its tiny holes beaming cheerfully to the icy world beneath. I'd left the lights on and the radiators creaking, which was very pleasant to come home to. I smiled as I kicked off my shoes, slipped the milk out of the carrier bag and went to put it in the fridge.

The fridge door of course, was wide open with two sopping towels mopping up the meltwater. I sighed to myself and put the kettle on for a very milky cup of tea.  

TONY, HILARY & NIBLING MAXIMUM

I've got Tony Bennett on.

How do you keep the music playing?

...he croons, thanking the audience while they applaud the song.

Betwixtmas is definitely the time of year for this kind of thing. There is red wine in the glass and a warm sense of well-being in me, at the end of the family festivities. All that's missing is the leather arm-chair by the flickering fire.

It's in contrast to the frenzied Boxing Day shenanigans of earlier. As you might recall, Boxing Day is when we hit Nibling-Maximum.

And we hit it alright.

Within ten minutes, ten minutes! there were explosions, tears and catastrophes. Two had remote-controlled drones, one charger was broken and the other was plugged into the last remaining plug socket. Meanwhile, another was exiled to the cold conservatory for misbehaviour (currently the home of Hilary the Penguin) and the rest of us engaged in exasperated pizza preparation and drama-avoidance.

Well, I did. The pizza was my jokey idea - deep pan, crisp and even, I'd suggested for the 'Feast of Stephen'... I don't know if anyone else found it funny, but they went with it.

Tony's moved on to The Very Thought of You. He's 'living in a kind of daydream...' Good for you, Tony.

Hilary the Penguin, by the way, is a gigantic penguin who's taken up residence in my parents' conservatory. She's about four feet tall and has the habit of continually getting in the way of chairs and tables being shifted about the house. She just sits there with a silly knitted smile on her face while we do all the work.

This year's secret-santa went down well. I got a blender, which I explained was a way to get myself eating more fruit and vegetables. I got my Dad a jumper. Then my sisters each individually asked me whether I'm alright, to which I replied sleepily that I was just a little overwhelmed.

I don't cope with a lot of noise happening all at the same time. Unless it's music of course... like Tony Bennett's band who are currently soloing freestyle over eight bars each.

No, it's the cross-conversational parenting and disorganised discussing that I can't stand.

The children definitely don't need lots of people explaining why they shouldn't wave walking sticks like light-sabres. The parents don't need to play detective on who knocked the plate of pizzas onto the carpet while simultaneously being bombarded with loud and little voices all proclaiming that it 'wasn't them'.

I sit and observe this deterioration of moods, the explosions and the very predictable outcomes in those situations. I feel pretty helpless and hopeless. My voice doesn't need to be added to the white noise... which leaves me wondering what my actual role as the 'weird uncle' might mean.

Tony's left his heart in San Francisco again. Careless.

"You do have a lot to be thankful for," said my sister, kindly in response to me sitting there silently.

"I'm not ungrateful," I smiled. And I'm not, really. I just wish there were a better way to look after my Mum and my Dad who want to celebrate Christmas without their house being turned into a noisy kind of wrapping-papery playroom.

"Uncle Matthew," shouted someone at me, "Someone's disabled your iPad. But it definitely wasn't me."

I just hope that one day, when they're all grown up, these boisterous niblings will come and see me by my log fire at Christmas, and help me cook toast, set up my model trains and finish a bottle of red while we remember how things used to be.

Maybe we'll put Tony on and laugh about whatever became of Hilary the Penguin.

MIDNIGHT MASS

Navigating through Christmas as a person who lives alone is tricky. Thankfully, I have the Intrepids, who have managed to leave the Harvey's Bristol Cream alone for long enough to let me come and stay with them until Boxing Day.

So I stuffed some clothes into my rucksack, swooped up the bag of presents, dropped a Christmas card through my neighbour's letterbox (wishing her a Happy New Year of course, and betting that she'd be glad not to hear me practising Christmas carols for the next eleven months) and did a full Chris Rea by literally driving home for Christmas.

Why it's tricky, is that my brain is now wired-up to absolutely love my own space. Here, I can't mutter to myself in the darkness or drain the milk bottle in the middle of the night. There are conversations to be had, traditions to be upheld and debates that must be allowed to rage on, lest time forgets that these things are done in our family at this time of year.

Does a duck float or swim? Which Scrooge movie is the best? Can you see the Northern Lights from the back door? Is it sacrilegious to thump-thump-clap in the middle of The Rocking Carol where the lyric is "We will rock you, rock you, rock you..."? 

It wouldn't be Christmas without those kind of discussions.

I'm here for two days. Tomorrow, Christmas Day will be hectic but will fly past in the usual wrapping-paper, turkey, games, port and cheese type way. The next, Boxing Day will be more challenging. We will be at Nibling-Maximum, a crescendo of hyperactive excitement, sugar and noise. And I won't have a natural escape from that.

So, what I am about to do, is to gain a bit of serenity by attending Midnight Mass at the local village church. We went before, and I remember it being quite good - a full-scale choiry sing-song. While I won't be annoying my neighbour with carols any more, I could definitely go to a thing where some well-trained voices remind me what it's all about.

And what is it all about?

Not whether ducks float or swim; not the difference in quality of Aldi and Waitrose mince pies. It's not even about the sugar-induced Lego-Star-Wars adrenaline buzz of the wide-eyed niblings. It's something much deeper and more profound than all of that  - it's about love expressed to the world through family, hope bursting into the dark in unexpected kindness. It's about showing grace when it's least deserved and remembering the joy that comes to us when we receive it. And it's about being together. Thick and thin, storm and tempest, sunshine and snowfall - nothing is strong enough to keep us apart when God's love binds us together.

And I'd like to remember that. So, if you're still with me, Merry Christmas to you.

And, if you're wondering... it's The Muppets Christmas Carol by a long, long way.

OUT OF TUNE

Well here we are then, last working day (working *ahem*) before the holidays begin.

I um. I don't feel very Christmassy. I think it's because I don't have a television. No wait, I think it's because I haven't been into the town centre this year and heard the Salvation Army. No wait, it's because I haven't been massively stressed in a shop that has turned the heating up despite the fact that everyone is wearing a coat and a scarf.

Actually, I think it's because I worked right through to today, instead of disappearing straight after last week's Christmas Party. Only the stragglers remain, clicking away in an empty office between the Engineering Christmas Tree and the ropey-looking gold-coloured tinsel draped half-heartedly over the whiteboards.

Gosh. It might be because I haven't heard all the usual Christmas music I can't stand. This year, Mariah Carey Day wasn't until December the 16th, which is remarkably late.

And I've still yet to hear McCartney simply having a 'wonderful Christmastime' for the forty-somethingth year in a row.

There's been no sound of Noddy Holder shouting, or that guy in the dark glasses trailing off with "Merry Christmas darling, wherever you are."

John and Yoko have been absent (though war is definitely not over). So are Wizzard and their annoying gaggle of children from the 70s wishing it could be Christmas every day. Thankfully, no Chris de Burgh has warbled about a spaceman this year, and even Johnny Mathis hasn't been seen crooning from the boughs of his enormous plastic Christmas tree.

None of that. Lots of carols - which is, how I like it. Although, having said that I did find myself pulling a few faces in Sainsbury's last night, listening to the Samaritans Orchestra playing in the foyer. The conductor (Santa hat) was sitting down, bouncing her baton up and down as though slowly remonstrating an invisible toddler. It's quite possible that the invisible toddler had been playing with a lot of the tuning pegs.

I don't mean to be rude about the Samaritans Orchestra. They were actually alright, and they were doing a great thing! I have missed whinging about all that other tacky music though. There's always next year, I suppose.

I think as well, there's a lingering kind of dampness in the air at the moment. My guess is that a lot of people are struggling to feel hopeful or joyful, rather than slightly alarmed and cynical at the end of 2016. I get the sense that Christmas is slightly out of tune with the zeitgeist.

I might be wrong. After all, I don't use flumpbook and I don't have a telly. Twitter is a curious window on the world, and beyond that all I've got is my overactive sensitivity.

So, anyway, this season is of course, what you make it. And right now, I intend to make it ... home for a warm glass of something and a bit of cheery old Classic FM. Then later I'm off to a Christmas do - carols round the piano, mulled wine and some festive fun.

And hopefully, no invisible toddlers.

REDDENS LAUDES DOMINO

I did some research into a few more unusual Christmas carols yesterday.

Some are quite peculiar. The Cherry Tree Carol for example tells the story of Joseph flying off the handle when Mary tells him she's pregnant, in the middle of a cherry orchard.

It all works out okay though because the unborn Jesus makes the cherry tree bend down to Mary, and this (I don't know how) convinces Joseph that everything will be alright.

It has the line:

Then Joseph flew in anger, in anger he flew:
"O let the father of the baby gather cherries for you."

... which (although totally contradictory to the Bible account) is probably a more real exposition of human nature than the likelihood of a newborn baby sleeping in heavenly peace in the middle of a farmyard.

Then there are the slightly macabre and surreal additions to the carol book, like Down in Yon Forest, which (I think) describes Mary's waters breaking. Past Three O'Clock meanwhile asserts that the wise men brought with them...

cheese from the dairy, given unto Mary.

I was always told they came from the East Country, not the West! Cheese indeed. Though, let's be honest, cheese is awesome, and I have to admit, a bit more useful than gold, frankincense or myrrh.

In The Friendly Beasts, some talking animals natter about what they gave the baby as gifts of their own expense, and in Adam Lay Bounden, the carol-writer takes the extraordinary theological step of actually thanking God for the Fall... so that Mary (in this case the 'Queen of Heaven') could bring redemption in the form of carrying Jesus.

Another less well-known carol from the Fifteenth Century encourages something which most people will not need help with, in its final verse:

Drink you all right heartily,
Make good cheer and be right merry,
And sing with us now joyfully...

- Sir Christmas, Rev. Richard Smart (or Smerte), Rector (1435-1477)

I don't think that's one for the Methodists' annual Carols Round the Piano evening.

Honourable mentions go to Thy Dear Cheeks  My Child are Rosy Red... which talks about the baby Jesus's dimples and 'heavenly blue eyes' (seems unlikely doesn't it). Oh and of course, The Weather Carol which introduces a wife of one of the shepherds with the quite charming description...

Now the wife is shaking
Like a coughing cow
Crying disappointed
Tears to rust a plow

We're far away from O Come All Ye Faithful, here, folks. In fact, we're beyond the suburbs of 'It Came Upon a Midnight Clear' and 'See Amid the Winter's Snow'. We're out through the cold country lanes of The Coventry Carol where frost bedecks the hedgerows and robins dart from brittle branches. We're way past In the Bleak Midwinter and As with Gladness. We're in the realm of forgotten carols that most of us have never heard of. That's where these old folk songs live - flickering out here in the sticks.

There are a few delightful ones though. The Boar's Head Carol is a bit more well-known, and I rather like how it sort of combines the idea of celebration, a piping hot dish on a winter's night, all served in song, 'in honour of the King of Bliss'. Or rather more succinctly put:

Caput apri defero (The boar's head I offer)
Reddens laudes Domino (Giving praises to the Lord)

That's more like it.

THE VALLEY OF THE FOUR GIANTS: APOTHECARY

He's fainted. He hangs limply from the tree as she pulls gently at the arrow jutting out of his right arm.

There's no safe way to return. She knows that the Maker won't allow it this time. This will hurt. She un-gloves her fingers and wraps two hands firmly around the arrow. Then with one Victorian boot digging into the tree trunk, she takes a deep breath and she pulls.

--

I heard it!
Back there.
Yes. Quick. Let's go.
Let's end this.

--

The forest settles back into silence. The last two giants will have heard the scream. The pain has left him unconscious again, but free at least. She takes the bottle, tips it into a large folded handkerchief and starts to wrap it around the loose, free arm.

The ground shakes.

--

It didn't sound like Loneliness. Maybe she's torturing him.
Maybe. But pain is not her style. She works from the inside-out, remember.
You think something has happened?
I do, Lustfulness, I do. Look. Is that the place?
Yes, yes, I think it is. Let's go.
No, wait. Look.
What?
The fire.
It's low.
It's almost out. Stop. Think.
Loneliness wouldn't let it burn out this quickly?
Something has happened.
Wait. What do we do?
Exactly that. Wait. Then we plan.

--

Silence. Well, back to the rustling of the trees anyway. She shivers as she drags the leaves over his shuddering body. His face is barely visible in the flickering firelight. There's a peace about him that she hasn't seen before. No more loneliness, she supposes as she smiles to herself.

Firewood. She pokes the smouldering ash-pile with a splinter of one of Loneliness's arrows. Orange sparks flick upwards in a cloud of smoke. Soon, the broken arrows are piled on to the fire and yellow flames are licking around them, hungrily.

--

So she's been helping him all along?
No wonder.
No wonder indeed. She's one of them.
Hmm.

--

Can't go back - it's not in the Maker's instructions. And this fight isn't over. She's there for a reason. But what? Will he wake up? Will the laudanum work? Two giants down but two left - and she knows how difficult they will be to defeat. For the first time in a long time, she wonders whether he will ever really make it against the twin foes of Hopelessness and Lustfulness.

Hopelessness and hope. In his bag he still carries the Photograph. Surely, it must show the full picture now? Surely it was what the Maker intended? Yet he clings to it as though his life depends on it. She almost wishes she could take it back, so that he could see...

What was that?

A twig snapping? She is alert, gripping a piece of broken arrow and on her feet.

Silence.

Her eyes dart to the pile of leaves and branches. Nothing. It must have been an animal of some sort.

She settles back to her tree stump and pokes the fire once again, turning the ash and shuffling the woodpile as it burns. Her face tightens with the heat. She is tired. Perhaps the giants will wait for daylight. Perhaps she ought to sleep.

"Hullo," says a voice in the darkness. She jumps and spins.

There, standing three feet away is a bob-haired woman dressed in velvet and crinoline, carrying a parasol and a small wooden box. She is smiling, prettily.

"How is he doing?" asks the stranger. "Oh, it's okay, I'm er, I'm on your side. I've been sent to help... by the Maker."

The Photographer breathes a sigh of relief and lowers the splinter of wood back to the fire.

"I am the Photographer," she says, lightly. I've been looking out for Matt for a while now, and he's... well... he's... I am sorry, what did you say your name was?"

"I'm the Apothecary," says the young woman, happily, "But you must call me Ivy."

THE BOND VILLAIN

He stood at the front, tall, suited, and neatly turned-out. He looked at us thoughtfully through his delicate spectacles and then he began.

He's Swiss. Long vowels and glottal consonants tumble awkwardly in his speech, delivered in a kind of drawn-out English, interspersed with quick adjustments of the tie.

And what a tie! It was made of silk, but the kind of silk that shimmered under the lights: scarlet-red, soft, expensive. It was the tie of affluence, strikingly brilliant against a classic white shirt.

He continued, explaining his plan, explaining the ... acquisition.

Every word was carefully chosen to help us feel as comfortable as possible with the minimum of real information. We make 'defence equipment' and 'military solutions'. We are a 'valuable asset' in this brave new world of the takeover.

I don't think anyone was fooled. What we are is replaceable cogs in an unfortunate machine.

"And at the back, as a little gift," he gestured as we turned our heads, "We have some chocolate. Lindt, I believe, is a great Swiss manufacturer."

There were hundreds of boxes of Lindor stacked in neat rows on a table. In all respects, we were being sugar-coated.

He smiled, warmly. Not cheese, not watches, not pen knives, and not discount vouchers for cuckoo clocks. Lovely warm, richly-crafted chocolate that smooths its way down your throat on a cold, wintry afternoon and makes things alright.

Everything had been calculated to perfection.

We have been bought.

DISTURBANCE

It's kind of late and I'm kind of tired, so what follows might be the ramblings of a misty-eyed loon. There's also a world of uncertainty out there, beyond my laptop perched on the window sill, through the net curtain and into the flashing blue darkness. More about that, Swiss chocolate and Bond villains some other time. This will be a very different kind of blog post.

For now, I've come home with a distinctly uneasy feeling. Something is not right somewhere. I can't tell you what, or even how I know, or whether I'm right at all, but I feel it in the air somehow. It's all very vague. However, I don't want to miss this opportunity, so let me help, if I can.

If it's you, if you're doing something you shouldn't and you don't want anybody to know, for the sake of everyone who loves you, please, please tell somebody and then stop it. Just stop it! Trust me, the sooner you do, the easier this whole thing will be to end. I know how frightening a thought this is. It happened to me seven years ago. I know very well, how trapped, miserable and isolating it can feel. And I would give a thousand worlds to rewire history, change my cowardice and to never have known that feeling at all.

But I also know that I would never have felt like myself, ever again, had I not seen it unfold into the open. I didn't fully appreciate that every private decision has a public consequence, and I wasn't brave enough to do anything about it. I just limped along, pretending, until it all fell apart. It took me seven years to recover. I can't get those years back.

But that doesn't have to be you. Seriously, do something, put a stop to it and tell somebody, and you'll start the journey of feeling like yourself again. That's how God has designed us - forgiveness works like the wind and repentance works like the sail. Unless you hoist it into the air, the wind will blow but you'll miss it. And rowing is horrible. You don't have to row.

Of course, if this is not you, please forgive me, preaching. I'll return to the quirky world of uncertainty tomorrow, when hopefully I'll feel a bit less finely-tuned. 

THE NIBLINGS LOVE A QUIZ

So the niblings love a quiz. It generally leads to trouble though.

"Uncle Matthew, Uncle Matthew, can we have a quiz?"

"OK, choose your subjects."

Ben  (9): Star Wars
Sam  (7): Maths but easy questions!
Gina (14): Entertainment

Right. Ben's question first. Who runs Cloud City?

Oh I know, I know!

It's not your question. Any ideas, Ben?

Is it Donald Trump?

No. It's not Donald Trump. Anyone else?

Lionel Richie?

Nope, though that is a funny answer. Okay, no points. It was Lando Calrissian.

Oh! I was thinking that!

Were you indeed? Okay, Sam's question on easy maths. How many buns are there in two bakers' dozens?

Um... twenty six.

Yes! Did you guess that?

Yes.

Oh that's not fair, Uncle Matthew, he guessed it. He shouldn't be allowed points for guessing. It's not fair!

Well, that's how a quiz goes. You still get the point, even if you guess the right answer. So, Gina's question. Who won 2016's I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here?

I don't know. I don't watch that rubbish. Um...

Donald Trump!

Sssh. It's not your question. And no.

Um... pass.

Okay. Anyone else know?

Was it... Hillary Clinton?

No, it wasn't Hillary Clinton. It was Scarlett Moffatt. Okay, round two. Ben, can you name a character who appears in all the Star Wars movies?

Anakin Skywalker.

Oh, well, um, I suppose so, actually...

No, no, he's Darth Vader!

Well yes, but he's sort of...

Oh that's not fair! That's cheating! He's cheating!

Well, I think you can have that anyway, Ben. You two, ssh. Okay Sam, your next question on easy maths... What is the probability...

I don't know what that is.

... listen to the question. What is the probability of rolling a 1 on any dice?

Um... 6.

Oh boy. Do you mean 1 in 6?

Yes.

That's the right answer!

Whoo!

No, that's not fair! He got it wrong. It's not fair. It's not fair!

At this point, tears erupt from little faces and a volcano of frustration erupts which eclipses all the joy of the quiz. One nibling storms off into the next room, the other sits at the table, arms folded in indignation, fuming at the window. The third checks her phone, googling Scarlett Moffatt and Lando Calrissian.

The really funny thing is that next time, it'll be exactly the same all over again.

"Uncle Matthew, Uncle Matthew, can we have a quiz; can we have a quiz?"

THE THREE-HOUR WEEKEND

I keep going on about the weekend, how I only got three free hours in between carolling, playing, travelling, arranging and sleeping, and how I barely ate anything because I didn't have time.

It is all my own fault.

After Beer and Carols on Friday, I woke up late and had an hour to get ready for the next thing - a trip to Chandlers Ford for a 2pm rehearsal and subsequent ceilidh.

That turned out to be a surprising break from playing Christmas tunes! Under the twinkling blue light of a glitter ball, a collection of spry folksters hopped and stepped, wove the basket and right-hand-starred to the familiar old tunes of Half Hannikin and the Morgan Rattler. There was no tinsel in sight.

I stopped off on the way home for a late-night cup of tea at the Sutton Scotney roadside McDonalds. There are few bleaker places; I'd have had a better time lost on a Scottish moor with a broken compass.

I sat in the car.

Then of course there's Sunday. But not any Sunday - the Sunday before Christmas, when everything happens. I woke up late and raced to church, looking for all the world as though I'd put my clothes on in the wrong order.

I've overloaded this season. That's why it's my fault - there's no way I should be racing around like this, feeling exhausted. My second free hour happened between 1 and 2pm, when I stuffed my face with a cornish-pastie, ironed a shirt and then collapsed into bed for an hour's catchup-sleep before getting back to church for 3pm.

I've decided that 'power-napping' is not for me.

I was so tired that I made loads of mistakes at the evening Christmas Celebration - some obvious, some not so, but equally annoying. I went away feeling as though I had done everyone a disservice by spreading myself so thinly.

Thankfully, these things are not about me and I believe everyone there had a great time.

I went home, flicked on my Christmas lights and slumped into the sofa with a Peroni and a chicken slice from the BP garage. On went Classic FM for some relaxing company.

"This is John Suchet here, hoping you're managing to get all your Christmas shopping done in between the day-to-day..." said John Suchet.

"Thanks John Suchet," I groaned, out loud.

I switched off the radio at that point and went to bed.

BEER AND CAROLS 4

"Isn't this usually a meat raffle?" I said, turning to the vicar. 

"You must be a regular!" he joked. 

I don't know whether or not going to the same place once every year and doing the same thing, counts as 'regular' but there I was, once again watching a raffle unfold at this year's Beer and Carols.

"Oh I don't believe it!" said the caller, waving his winning ticket. He'd won the prize turkey. Cries of 'fix' resounded around the sports-and-social-club. Fix or not, he slipped the ticket into his back pocket and checked with 'Chunky' that he could bring the van round and pick it up.

Beer and Carols is one of those things that a local church is trying to do, and for four years in a row now, I've helped them out by playing the keyboard for them. It's always a rowdy giggle, as patrons sing along and I try to guess which verse is the last in this particular version.

For reasons I never understood, the club members also use the evening to raffle off some meat. Or this year, wine, chocolates, vouchers-for-a-cut-and-blow-dry (won by a man with no hair of course), a turkey that needed to be taken home in Chunky's van, oh, and the big prize of £250 in an A5 white envelope.

"The big one then," said the caller, his voice distorting in the microphone. "Three, four... nine, two. Three four nine two, who is that?"

A crackled silence. It turned out to be him.

ATMOSPHERE

Okay, there is definitely an atmosphere here today. I'd forgotten that it's always like this on the morning after the Christmas Party.

While I doubt that it's ever been the wild morality fling people assume office Christmas parties to be, I am starting to wonder whether more goes on at these things than ever sees the light of day.

I've never stuck around to find out.

In previous years, I've taken a keyboard in and Peter and I have played carols between pudding and coffee. I said I wouldn't do it this time. I wanted to enjoy it, I said, without having to lug a keyboard back to the office while they all wobble off to the after-party-pub.

In the end I had to catch a train at 4pm, so I was unable to watch my colleagues slide from merry to hammered, as undoubtedly they did en-route to the Oakford.

And now I have arrived to an atmosphere. I asked my manager a cheery question and he mumbled his reply, locked his computer and darted off to talk to someone else. There are others too, giving me sheepish looks in the kitchen, and there's a general hush... just like last year... when it later emerged that someone's wife had turned up and had almost got into a slog with a member of staff for flirting with her husband. Messy.

What's interesting to me is that this morning, those who stayed out partying are either sick, hungover or just-about here and munching through cold bacon rolls, and those who didn't are in a relatively good mood... in a terrible atmosphere.

I'm determined to carry my own atmosphere today though, rather than kowtow to the prevailing winds. Well, why not? Hey, if I couldn't go out and 'enjoy myself in a noisy pub with inebriated santa-hats with baubles clipped to their beards...' then I'm not going to also mirror them by being miserable this morning.

There's a certain irony there.

CHRISTMAS FAYRE

And, well, faster than you can pack away a bilge pump, I'm back to my old self and I've bounced back into the office.

The sun was shining at a weird angle this morning, shearing in through the window and sparkling over the lake. For a while I was side-lit, as though Nature wanted to show off my flaky skin. Thanks a lot, Nature.

In other news, I made a greasy fingerprint on my laptop where I tried to open Microsoft Outlook with my finger. Also, it looks like I missed a couple of ding-dongs, which is always a bonus, not least for avoiding the feeling that I might have created a few of them.

Apart from that, everyone here is suddenly in the Christmas Spirit this week. The Engineering Tree is up again, complete with compact discs, ether-net cables, ripped-out motherboards and a retired mouse, dangling from one of the branches. Meanwhile, support have re-created the whole of Narnia.

Ever eager to please, the people who run the business park (remember the wheelbarrow olympics in the summer) have put on a Christmas Fayre today. I wandered over to see what it was all about.

What it was 'all about' was a tinsellated car-boot sale. A thin looking Santa sat patiently in an inflatable igloo while hundreds of people milled around the fudge and nik-nak stalls. Perfume, wooden jewellery, old-fashioned postcards, make-up, and gifts you'd find every day on the market were displayed between the ropey Christmas trees.

Not that they hadn't gone to a lot of trouble to make it Christmassy! Outside, where the queue for the fish'n'chip van snaked round the path, there were two animal pens made out of picket fences, attracting their own crowds. I poked my nose between the onlookers.

In the first one, three reindeer (antlers, females) were slumped unhappily on a thin layer of straw. A gaggle of sales-types were enthusiastically snapping selfies over the fencing.

In the other pen, some penguins were wobbling about in their natural habitat of... plastic grass and miniature pop-up tents, you know the kind of plastic grass and miniature tents you find all over Antarctica. I walked back deciding I don't really know how to feel about that. Not quite as Christmassy as the organisers were hoping for, I'd wager.

In fact, I'm not really sure how to feel about any of it. Various people are disappearing this week and going on their Christmas holidays, tomorrow is our work's Christmas do, and then beyond that we'll be here working in a gradually decelerating office, counting down the straggling hours until next Friday when the whole thing grinds to a halt and we can all go home and have a glass or two of vino. Well, those of us who aren't on sleeping pills, I suppose.

"I like to think those reindeer are set free in the summer," said Debbie thoughtfully approaching the office, "You know, as though they only have to suffer just a little bit of pain, being cooped-up for the benefit of people in suits."

I raised my eyebrows and smiled pointedly as I held the door open for her and we shuffled back to our respective desks.

THE VALLEY OF THE FOUR GIANTS: MUSIC

The disc spins and crackles as the needle falls gently into place. It wobbles over the vinyl.

She listens. She smiles. She knows what to do.

--

I can't move. I cannot move. I can not move. The arrow has pinned me to the tree through the shivering muscles in my right arm. In front of me, gigantic and hideous, is Loneliness. Some distance behind her, Lustfulness watches, pensively. Her enormous frame blocks the sun.

"Trapped!" laughs the former, "Tiny tiny spider, trapped by his own web of thoughts."

She bends and leans in closer.

"You won't escape this time," she whispers. I feel her hot breath.

"What shall we do with him?" asks Lustfulness. "Hopelessness will want to finish him."

"He isn't going anywhere. Look at him."

"Aw he's... bleeding. Poor little thing..."

Their laughter crackles through the air.

"Oh let's crush him!" cries Lustfulness. "It will be so much fun! After all, he's led us a merry dance around this horrid forest. Look, I'm soaking! It's his fault, the little rat. Let's ram him and pulverise his bones into the mud he came from, "

"Oho yes! And for what he did to Uselessness too!"

"Uselessness! Dead! Yes, by this miserable skeleton. Well there's nothing he can do about us... is there?"

"Not while he's like this... anyway!"

The pain is coursing through my arm. The world is spinning.

"Pinned, pegged, nailed to a tree! What can anyone do while nailed to a tree?"

"As good as dead."

"As good as... Shall we?"

"No."

"No?"

"We must let Hopelessness end this."

"Why?"

"You know why."

"Ach, he'll be way dead before then. Look at him. It's only a matter of time!"

"Hopelessness has to end it."

"He needs to get here quickly then."

The giantesses talk. They discuss which of them should go to find their leader and which should stay.

"Perhaps you should send me," I interject. Lustfulness jabs a finger into my forehead and pushes my skull into the tree. Concussion rings inside my head.

Before long, they draw straws and decide. Loneliness will stay; Lustfulness will go.

The sun arcs through the sky, the evening falls and Loneliness, in the light of a small fire, sits waiting and whispering on a broken tree trunk. I close my eyes. I don't have long left.

--

She turns the handle. It glimmers in the twilight as the mechanism ratchets and clicks. Carefully, she slips the disc from its old-fashioned sheath and places it on the turntable. With one fluid motion, she lifts the needle and lets it drop on to the spinning record.

--

"All alone, with only me," says Loneliness through the dark. I can't see her now. Only shapes, hidden by the failing light and dying embers. I can hear her though. Her voice is somehow singing outside and inside my head all at once. It's hard to describe it - like stale cream, sickly and sweet as it pours through my head. She won't stop.

"No friends, no family, no joy, no sun, no laughter, no hope, no life, no future. Ha. Dead you are, with nothing and no-one but me..."

I close my eyes. There must be something I can do. But the pain is real, surging through my arm, the arrow still projecting hideously out in front of me. I am failing.

"I don't believe you," I say, desperately, gasping for air. It's all I can think of. "I don't believe... any of it."
"Oh but you must, little spider. Look around you. Who in the world do you have but me? Everyone... everyone has left you here to die... alone... with me..."

But something vague is stirring in my memory.

"It is not good..." I can barely breathe, but the words are forming in my mind.

"What is not good?" she laughs.

"It is not good for man..." I puff. Everything is spinning. "To be... alone."

I breathe in as the pain throbs. I'm about to die. Tears run down my cheeks and I hang my head.

Loneliness laughs.

--

Suddenly, and from nowhere real, I can hear music. It sounds at first as though it's coming from inside me, a gentle sort of... piano, high and twinkling. I lift my head.

"What is that?" says Loneliness, raising her voice. She can hear it too then. So, I'm not imagining it.

It grows louder. I can hear more now, a kind of skiffling drum pattern and the gentle padding of.. a double bass, I think. It's crackling through the woods - piano and bass, playing out an old-fashioned sort of rhythm, like a train.

"What is that sound?" Loneliness seems worried. I recognise it.

"It's um... It's jazz," I say.

"Shut up. Shut up," she panics. "It... it can't be..."

"It is," I'm smiling now. My face feels tight. The rhythm is building into a swing time pattern. "It very much is."

The melody crinkles through the trees. Soon there are crackling old voices singing along - a kind of harmony trio. I can't quite make out the words but... some how...I know...who...

Loneliness is standing now. I can see her silhouette block out the stars and her eyes flash yellow. The music gets louder and louder still.

Then, all of a sudden, I remember!

I know these voices. I know who they are. I remember them!

Loneliness looks down at me.

"Stop it!" she screams. "How are you playing that? Stop it. Stop that music!"

She clutches her head with both grubby hands. Her bow clatters to the ground.

My friends, long ago and far away keep singing. They can't be stopped.

A trumpet solo suddenly echoes through the trees. Then a clarinet and a sliding trombone. I laugh at how ridiculous it sounds, given the circumstances. Loneliness falls to her knees.

The music soars to a crescendo, tight vocal harmonies and jazz guitar and piano filling the forest as those voices sing cheerily through the darkness. These are my friends! And suddenly, we're singing together, even me with my final breath, and for them, for me, for all of us, nothing else matters. Especially not Loneliness.

She shouts but her awful voice is drowned by the music, as loud as it is. She is no match for us. She clutches her ears in agony as she cries in terror. I laugh.

"Stop! Stop! Stop it!"

I'm not listening.

Then, with one terrifed, painful cry, she charges towards me, her lips curled with rage and dread.

I sing. We sing, undeterred and unafraid. My friends and I, together.

She thunders toward me, scooping up another arrow, ready to plunge into my heart. Thumping footsteps, her terrible face flickering in the firelight. The song swoops into the final few bars as she comes. But with every step closer, something strange is happening and happening quickly: Loneliness is shrinking. Smaller and smaller she gets, and angrier and angrier she looks. The size of a tree, then a tall bush, then a furious child, brandishing an arrow like a pencil. Then, as those musicians play their wonderful ending and the track slams to a stop, Loneliness, in a simple cloud of fury, looks once at me with a glowering hatred in those tiny yellow eyes, and pops out of existence.

She is vanished, gone, as though she was never there. A giantess who never was. Loneliness is defeated.

--

Gentle applause crackles through the empty forest. The Photographer lifts the needle and smiles to herself as she carefully slips the disc back into its pocket.

RUN INTO THE GROUND

My stomach creaks like an old ship. It's been doing that all night. I don't want to get into unpleasant descriptions but every now and then it's also been emptying itself like an antiquated bilge pump.

I don't like being ill. It's horrible. First of all I have a kind of hard-wired feeling that I'm skiving, bunking off, not pulling my weight. It's hard to shake that feeling, a feeling which also serves as a keen reminder that I'm always a thousand times harsher on myself than I would be with anyone else. I'm not stupid; I know it's pride in reverse, but there we go. I can give myself a break I think.

It's also very boring. The radio presenters are twittering on about the state of the world, the strikes on the railways and the dangers of kickboxing. I've read a few articles about nothing of any great consequence, and I've done a bit of research for my trip to Cardiff. That leaves sleeping, and entertaining myself in the world of my dreams, which are a mixed bag.

So much for hibernating. My body is giving me daily reminders now, that I have run myself into the ground this year. I don't like it, but it seems to be true. And this season of advent bells and hope and busyness and carols and expectation... is too heavy for me. I haven't even started buying presents yet and I have no idea when I'll get to do that. It'll work out.

I'm feeling a little brighter now. At some points through the night, my stomach was cramped with pain and I couldn't straighten out. My throat was dry and my insides felt like they'd been arranged upside-down. I wondered whether I would ever want to eat anything ever again.

It turns out I could, I think. I've got just enough to make a bacon sandwich or scrambled egg on toast.

BEAR WITH SORE HEAD

I'm having a little tea and toast to finish this awful day.

I suppose when the dentist told me to take it easy after my operation this morning, she probably would have included running a stressful choir rehearsal in the list of things I shouldn't be doing. On top of that I'm still taking the mirtazapine.

"Why don't you just take it earlier?" says... well, pretty much everyone, when I outline the symptoms experienced by taking this little sleeping pill at the end of the day. It's not insensible - after all, I can't carry on waking up at 9am every day. However, the flip side of taking it earlier in the evening is that I seem to slide headlong into Bear with Sore Head much earlier too.

I just burnt the toast. I had to scrape it into the sink. Oh and my gums hurt. Oh and I'm living in a filthy hovel that I never have time to clean, oh and I've forgotten to put the bins out, again, oh and the Pontipines have arranged their fleet of cars so I can never park outside my house again. I should be asleep really. In fact, I could do with hibernating, right the way up to Christmas.

If you don't hear from me, that might be where I am. Bear with Sore Head Asleep in Hovel.

FAMILY PARTY

It was our annual family party yesterday. I've only just had the chance to write about it.

At the end, we stood out in the rain, watching the drizzly afternoon turn into a damp evening over the streetlamps. Then, with one accord we waved off those from Bristol and Weston-Super-Mare, and wherever else it is they came from.

"Well the neighbours have probably worked it all out by now anyway," said someone as the remainers traipsed in for one final cup of tea. I had a smile to myself as I thought about how English it is to be proud of your eccentric family. Up and down the land, there are probably thousands of families with their own traditions and quirks who probably think of themselves as uniquely mad.

Anyway. There it was. The Christmas Family Party. I had got there some hours before, and had been greeted by a relative proclaiming that 'his lordship has arrived'. I played along and told them that the chauffeur had dropped me off as it was raining.

My Dad (slow to cotton on) instantly (and a little too excitedly) leapt to the conclusion that I had been  accompanied by a 'young lady' and before I'd even taken my coat and scarf off...

"...Well it might not have been a young lady..." said someone, pointedly from the other room. I rolled my eyes at a coat hanger. I hadn't even entered the lounge yet...

It was my Grandma's idea, this. Years ago. She had a peculiar gift for drawing people together, and her own massive family gatherings were always the place to be. As children, we'd crowd up the stairs, making sculptures out of mini-sausages and cocktail sticks on paper plates. The adults would laugh around the piano and shuffle out to the food table in my Grandma's dining room, with plastic glasses and tinsel wrapped into their hair. Uncle Arthur would tell his recycled jokes and laugh uproariously before getting to the punchline. Then my Grandma would play carols on the piano and we'd all sing along, heartily racing her to the end of 'The Twelve Days of Christmas' at about two hundred beats per minute.

The games, the jokes and the music are all gone. The children are mostly grown into parents themselves now, too busy to come, and too involved in making family Christmases of their own. And my Grandma is... Somewhere Else. Yesterday, my cousin Walty and I (both thirty eight) were the youngest there. 

However, we do keep some things alive from the old days. The 'firkling' present swap. Obviously the white-hankie send off, and yes, Uncle Arthur's unfinished jokes. It was also fascinating to me to listen in on a few conversations happening around me...

"The Fiat? Sure. You could drive over a fifty pence piece and tell whether it's heads or tails."

"He's suing the BBC I think. Well, quite right too, I mean he was falsely accused after all..."

"And he came in and he said, 'Do you know, the Bath Road goes all the way to Bath, isn't that incredible?' Well we just stared..."

"Goodness knows what we'd all do if someone set one of those electromagnetic pulses off..."

"No, I kept my tax discs up to date, every year for fifty years!"

"Yes. I call him Septimus and he lives in the corner, and only ever comes out at twilight when he knows the flies will have been attracted by the sunlight. I've grown quite fond of him."

"I don't really understand email. I've still got one of those phones with push buttons..."

"Well I think you've got to fill your life with hope, not worry."

I liked that last one so much, I wrote it down straightaway. The more I think about it, it occurs to me that that might have been part of my Grandma's secret too - hope, not worry. Hopeful people have a habit of collecting hopeful people around them. I could do with being a bit more like that.

I came home to a quiet flat. I switched on the lights in the spare room, sat down gently at the piano and played the whole of 'The Twelve Days of Christmas' at two hundred beats per minute.

BECOMING AN UNFLAPPABLE

I feel very tense. How does it happen, tension? It's as though my insides are being pulled tight with elastic bands or springs. Not physically, you understand, although I think maybe it does actually make my heart pulse faster.

Perhaps that's what it is - high blood pressure? When I'm tense I can feel it pounding round my system, coursing through my veins in a kind of automatic survival rerouting, so that every part of me can be prepared for the worst.

How do you get to be one of those ultra-chilled out people who just let go of everything? They get through it all, relaxed and casual, swatting away concerns and worries, eyeing the bigger picture and not the detail, and not being overly bothered about any of it, it seems.

I think I absorb tension from around me and then reflect it out. I'm a kind of tension-storage-heater. If everyone around me is worried and stressed and panicking and fumbling, I am too. I pick up the emotions of others a little too easily. Then I project those worries into the future and over-analyse it all.

If that's true, there's an obvious solution isn't there? Hang around with the Unflappables.

Where are they, those Unflappables? They can't all be playing ukulele with Jack Johnson on the beach.

I also think I can manage the tension a bit better from the outside. I think I can turn the input valve down and stop bottling up the energy. That's what an Unflappable would do.

So, inside my heart might be pumping with worry and anger (at least at first) like an old volcano, outside my body language would be laid-back, calm and confident.

If I can pull that off, it'll be the greatest performance! Generally speaking my face reveals my heart in the same way that a clock tells you what time it is. I am utterly readable.

Or, do I attempt to change myself from the inside-out? There ought to be some techniques, like not-replying-to-emails-straightaway or taking-yourself-into-a-different-room-when-you-get-asked-a-difficult-question.

I feel sure the answer is in there somewhere, and might be a combination of both - leading the way with a choice to be different while hoping the rest of me catches up, and changing my environment so that I can respond and react as calmly and coolly as an Unflappable would.

I'll be pleased if I can crack it and graduate as an Unflappable. And my hope is, that even if I don't, you won't be able to tell the difference.

PIZZA AND IMPERFECTION

The whole world seems to be enveloped in a cloud today. A dank mist hangs over the lake and rain droplets shimmy from the bare branches.

It's grey and cold out there - the kind of day when you're glad to be indoors under warm lighting, clutching a cup of tea and writing about spam.

I'm actually busily avoiding a technical lunch on C++ 11. I'm not a developer; this foreign world of coding and classes and objects is not for me.

"There's pizza," said Marie, trying to convince me to go. I quickly remembered that for software developers, the promise of pizza is motivation enough for attending almost anything. That of course is why 'there's pizza' in the first place at these things.

You can see the reason it's popular: pizza is super-efficient. You phone up (or click online), order it, it arrives, you open a box, pick it up slice by slice, and eat it. It's a tasty combination of vegetables, meat and cheese, providing enough variety in each hand-held wedge. No cutlery, no fuss, no plates, no washing up - quick and delicious. To people who write code, pizza is an awesome solution to the age-old time-stretched, hunger-problem.

It also has that other delightful quality of being a handy reminder of how to calculate the volume of a cylinder. I've said this before, while waffling about the efficiency of mugs in the kitchen, but the volume of a pizza is of course = Pi x z^2 x a, where z is the pizza's radius and a is its thickness. Or, comedically, V = Pi.z.z.a.

If that doesn't appeal to neatly minded developers, I'm not sure what will.

Anyway, I'm avoiding all that today.

-

The Christmas tree has arrived in the lobby. It's real and enormous. I reckon it's 12 feet high.

Again, it's far from conical and the branches taper unevenly to the top, where a gigantic five-pointed star glitters above the blue lights. There's a significant difference in branch-density between the bottom and the top of the tree.

Having surveyed pretty much all the artificial trees in Tesco, Dunelm, Sainsbury's and Stockholmhaven, I can confirm that a real tree rarely has the standard 6-6-5-5-4-3 pattern of branch distribution perfected by these plastic imposters.

This one's huge and imperfect.

Maybe, I wondered, gazing up at it, it's the imperfections that matter with a real tree. After all, Christmas is sort of about the nature of perfection and imperfection. In a peculiar way, real trees, the genuine articles, are recognisable for their lack of symmetry, their unevenness and their flimsy branches. Real trees are unique and imperfect.

Meanwhile, artificial trees probably reflect our desire for Christmas to be wonderfully symmetrical, perfectly complete, and the fairy-tale which we secretly long for and remember from our own childhoods. The perfectly conical tree with full evergreen branches is a shadow of the 'perfection' that we've actually created for ourselves, fashioned out of hope and ignoring the rather wonky reality.

It's possible that we need them both.

-

Hmm. I think I might go get a slice of pizza.

HOW TO MAKE A WREATH

There was a spare slot in the Christmas wreath-making activity today, so I volunteered to go along and get my hands grubby. It's a nice thing, organised by the people who run the business park - mince pies, a cup of mulled wine and a gardening expert in an elf-jumper to show you how to turn a pile of ferns and some old pine cones into a lovely festive ring of joy.

So along I went. And a wreath I made.

You start off with a sort of hedge that's been bent into a circle for you. It has a flat side and a domed side.

You cut fern branches and use some tightly wrapped garden wire to attach them. Or alternatively, you can spend five minutes trying to find the end of the garden wire, which has been mysteriously tied back into the reel by the last devious person to have used it. The next step is to break your fingernail trying to pull it open and cut a loop with the secateurs, which of course, were not designed for that job at all.

Then, while everyone else is already halfway around the ring, layering fern branches and tying them on, you pick up the leftover ferns and snip to what you believe will be approximately the same length. Later, you will discover that your definition of approximately varied mid-snip of course. Do check that your ferns are facing the right way and are not being strapped to the wrong side.

Once layered, your wreath will look roughly like spruce woven into a circular pattern with a perfectly clockwise or anticlockwise weave of course. You'll have an annoyingly short length of twine left over, which the instructor will tell you to loop through the ring and tie off. You'll try this but it will be the fiddliest thing you've done since... well, trying to find the end of the gardening twine on the reel. As you shuffle the thing about, you'll dislodge all the bits of dried fruit that have been laid out for you, and watch as crusty old oranges and dried apple peel gets scattered.

At this point, your colleagues will pick up their exquisitely symmetrical wreaths and twirl them round their delicate hands, tightening their loops while you look on admiringly nursing your sore and bleeding fingers.

The instructor tells you to loop some stabwire around a pine cone. This strikes you as an unusual sentence but you go along with it. Your pine cones will be closed of course, so any attempts to do this, will result in pine cones flying off into the middle of the room.

"Oh by golly have a happy holiday this year!" warbles Michael Bublé from the stereo in the corner. You quietly wish him well as you pick them up.

When you've collected your cinnamon sticks, orange peel and pine cones from various points on the carpet, stab them through the middle and jab them into your wreath. (This activity will give you a kind of curious relief. Be careful not to make sound effects though. It will be tempting.)

The instructor will probably show you how to tie a lovely festive bow, once you're ready to attach it. He'll cut a length of glittery fabric and then, with all the competent fluency of a Blue Peter presenter, he will fold it like origami into the kind of Christmassy bow you'd see on a golden box in the window of Harrods.

Ignore this impossibly fluent demonstration. Yours will look like a bandage caught in the arms of a sagging fir tree. Take some more stabwire, wrap it round the damaged bow and then wedge the whole thing somewhere just beneath the tiny loop that you made earlier.

It's more than likely that your colleagues will want to take photographs of the Christmas wreaths you all made together, ready for the company newsletter. You'll all lay them carefully against the wall as though it were Remembrance Sunday.

Make sure yours is on the end. Then, turn to the girl with the camera and ask her if she knows how to crop photographs in Photoshop. She almost certainly will - she more than likely works in marketing.

It's probably best to have a few handy stock phrases for use while you all walk back to the office. You know, things like, "Well, it's only going on my front door anyway," and "Hey well, we can't all be good at everything." Maybe even, "Well, perhaps the mulled wine had something to do with it," or some such, you can be creative.

Or perhaps not.

Anyway, I did make it back to the office without dried out oranges rolling all over the road and fern branches trailing behind me. I've left it on my desk for the glowing envy of my team to admire.

Yep, it looks like it fell out of the local garden centre's 'discarded' pile. Sure, it's wonky, top heavy and protruding unsightly ferns in all the wrong places. It was quite good fun making it though - a very Christmassy afternoon indeed. And it'll be the best wreath to go on my front door this year.

THE CHRISTMAS TREE CONSPIRACY

I hadn't really noticed it before, but it is there. It definitely is a thing.

I spotted it first in an article on The Telegraph website.

It said that 'it isn't necessarily a social faux pas these days to put up an artificial Christmas tree'.

We'll get back to that.

The truth is that nobody is sure how this whole thing started. The Romans decorated their temples with fir trees during Saturnalia, Pagans hung up evergreen branches in their homes to remind them of the Spring to come. Then in Scandinavia, people used to hang fir trees upside-down from the ceiling, and bring in plants from the outside in the hope that they would flower at Christmastime.

What we have now is probably a conglomeration of all these lingering traditions, popularised by the Germans, by Queen Victoria, the British Empire, and by extension, half the Western world.

Anyway, essentially, we put up and decorate trees in our houses to celebrate Christmas.

But... real or artificial? It is a decision I have had to face, myself this year for the first time. And it has illuminated something remarkable.

The Telegraph implied a kind of snobbery, didn't it? As though (up to now) you'd have had to be a social loser even to consider a plastic one! I've encountered this. It presents itself as a class distinction all over the place, if you look for it.

It seems as though real trees are found in the homes of people who go for a classic Christmas, in town houses with Georgian windows and fireplaces, or in neat homes with modern minimalist design.

By contrast, on council estates, or in roads like mine, the street is almost blinded by an array of coloured lights and glowing snowmen - and peeking through the flashing frosted windows are the colourful PVC branches of plastic trees.

I'm not knocking either, by the way. I'm just observing.

What I've also noticed, keenly among people I know, is that there is also a kind of reverse snobbery that actually flows in the opposite direction. I had this conversation the other day, with three ladies:

Me: Do you all have Christmas trees? I'm trying to decide where to get one.

Them: Oh yes!

Me: Artificial ones?

Them: Of course!

They looked a little sheepish at the suggestion that anything else would be acceptable. I was intrigued but I didn't push it.

One of them went on to recommend a flashing fibre-optic variety that revolved on a stand.

I am just observing, certainly, but I did say that that probably wasn't for me, thank you.

I also had another long conversation with someone who went over the maths with me and argued, quite sensibly, that if you pack it away properly, a plastic Christmas tree could easily cost you less than a pound per year.

I hadn't decided at that point. But I was intrigued at how different the approach was among people I know. There are others who (privately) scoff at the idea of anything other than a real tree. If you're going to do it, they argue, do it properly.

This brings me on to my quest then - and this is where it gets remarkable; remarkable mostly that I hadn't noticed it before.

You cannot buy an artificial tree that looks like a real one.

Well, you can, but for silly money, but that isn't really what I mean. What I'm talking about is the shape and texture of the thing.

The top-of-the-range, feel-real artificial trees are marvellously conical. In fact, they look exactly like you'd imagine a Christmas tree to look - tall, symmetrical, handsome and fully green, as though they had been freshly plucked from a Norwegian pine forest - like a child's drawing of a Christmas tree.

But real Christmas trees don't look like that, do they? I've seen them, we've all seen them! They're sort of wide and squat. They're sparse of useful upper branches and the trunk sticks out like a needly pole at the top.

None of the artificial trees I've seen look anything like that.

So what's going on? Has the class distinction had an effect on the people who make artificial trees? Is there a bit of a conspiracy? After all, if you could get an artificial tree that looked exactly like (and I mean identical to) a real one, why would anyone go out and buy a live tree at all? The industry would collapse.

And that's why I think the class distinction exists. It keeps the distance between the two encampments wide enough so that people buy real trees rather than fake it. What's more, I found out that it takes three years to grow a fir tree! That means that Christmas 2019 is already sorted in the minds of those tweedy landowners who know they're on to a good thing.

So, what to do. I'd like to exist in the middle of that class gap, if a gap it is.

Unlike my neighbours, I don't think the multi-coloured, fibre-optic, revolving winter-wonderland is my cup of tea. Unlike readers  of The Telegraph, I disagree that artificial is a social faux pas. After all, I grew up with artificial trees, and my parents, who have been married for 48 years, have only ever owned three of them!

Well, I've already decided. And I'm not going to tell you yet. After all, in my opinion it is still far too early to put up my decorations! There is time yet. But that's a whole other debate, isn't it?

THE SELFISH GIANT

When I was about seven or eight, I read a story at school about a giant who builds a wall around his garden. You might have heard it. There was something charming about it, as I remember. It moved me beyond my years in a way that I only remember as a sea of confusing feelings now.

Music does that sometimes too. It evokes and calls, through a language and a vocabulary all of its own, such strange imaginings and wonderful adventures that your own heart couldn't ever dare to dream up. That, if anything, is why I wanted to be a musician and a writer.

I thought about that old story today. I'm not wholly sure why. The sun was setting over the lake, through the broken Venetian blinds of the meeting room. I saw it turn pink and gold, and I remembered a girl who... well, it doesn't matter now.

Then, there in all its fulness was the giant's garden, swirling with winter as he sat inside it; a spindly cartoon ogre in a long-forgotten book. My manager was talking about holiday allocations and projects and HR and morale. I was half-listening, like a seven year old who had somehow ended up in the wrong room and was still pretending to fit in with the grown-ups.

In the story, the giant builds the wall to keep the children out. But without the children, there isn't any spring and he lives in perpetual winter. That is what these walls do. They disconnect us from childhood and make us live in offices with clocks and computers and pot plants. I don't think any of us like it this way, but we all find it difficult to dismantle the walls and let the sunlight in.

We should though. You'll have to read the book to find out how the story ends.

INTERRUPTED SLEEP AND A ROGUE EGG

Up. Dark. Groan. Cold. Grumble. Walk into the door handle. Too tired to yelp about it. A foot in the recycling bag crushes an empty can. Better than a bottle, says my dizzying head.

Moments later, the bathroom door clicks as the toilet flushes noisily behind it. Stumble back through the dark. The recycling bag crinkles loudly as I breeze by. Shoulder hits the door frame. I fall into bed like a toppled tree.

Repeat.

So much for uninterrupted sleep then. For the first time in a while, I've seen the early hours of the morning steadily brightening the room, with the glimmer of dawn through the curtains.

I think I ate something I shouldn't have, yesterday. My guess is that it was a rogue egg which smuggled its way to the bottom of the egg pile some months ago. I probably ought to start checking the date-stamp before I crack them open.

I was lulled into a false sense of security by eggs though, as a student. I split an egg and had to immediately evacuate the kitchen.

With a peg pinching my nose, and rubber gloves on, I eventually braved it and cleared up the mess. It still stands as the second vilest thing I've had to deal with in a pair of marigolds.

Ever since, (Sarah, you might want to skip this paragraph) I've applied a rather lenient egg-test: if it doesn't smell like the corpse of an irradiated skunk in the waste pipe of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor, it's probably okay. Generally speaking, I'd say I get through eggs much faster than they have a chance to decay beyond edibility, and it's never been a problem I've thought about. Perhaps not this week. You probably think I'm a twit for not checking the dates in the first place. Sigh. You're right. Or maybe I should just stop eating them altogether (that one's for you Sarah, if you're still reading).

And so it was I woke to the cold morning and wearily threw myself into the day. Threw is the right word: I  threw myself out of the house and I threw myself into the frozen-wheeled-icicle that is my car.

Maybe, I thought to myself, I should start using it as en extra refrigerator.

THE VALLEY OF THE FOUR GIANTS: ARROWS

He is the strongest of the giants. He knows it. And he knows much more. Lightning would not be enough to stop him. He is Hopelessness. He is strong in the weakness of others. He laughs to himself.

The plan had been simple. Lustfulness would spring the trap, Loneliness would whisper through the trees and then he, Hopelessness, would strike - through the forest, like a raging, unquenchable fire. And he had. The photograph had been in his hand. He had won.

He rubs his elbow as he stands between the trees. This battle is not over.

--

Hopelessness!
Hey!
Hopelessness!
Hoooopelessness!

Where would he go?
I don't know.
This is the place.
Yes. That is the rock. And look at these broken trunks!

He's abandoned us.

Shut up, Loneliness.
No, he has. He's left us. It's the only explanation.
I said 'shut up.' Of course he hasn't!
Well where is he?
He's around somewhere.
And what about that little idiot? Where is he? what happens if he figures it out? Still no-one's thinking about that.
For the last time, he won't, he just won't. He's nowhere near figuring it out. He still thinks it's about the ph...
Sssh. Did you hear something?

--

I hold my breath for what seems like forever. My heart is beating, pulsing like a drum. Twigs rattle through the branches beneath me as they fall. Did they hear?

--

It's just rain.
Hmm. Didn't sound like rain.
Come on, there are tracks this way. We'll find him.

--

"He still thinks it's about the ph.." ...otograph. What does it mean? What if it's ... not? What is this about? What is this all for?

I wait for the thumping footsteps to disappear until I'm left with the rain dribbling from the leaves above my head. Then I open my bag and pull the crumpled photograph into the open air. My Hope.

It's astonishing. The cracks it once had are mending slowly and rather than fading, the picture seems to grow clearer by the moment. It had survived the hands of two giants, the rain of a terrible thunderstorm, and me, desperately tugging it from Hopelessness's gigantic fist as he woke. Yet this old hope, this photograph, is newer than ever.

Weird. I don't understand it. It has not defended me against Hopelessness. If anything, it gave itself away. No, something else had had to protect me, and I am getting used to the idea that the Photographer is somehow doing it all to show me something important - something I have missed.

But if not the photograph, then what?

I peer up through the leaves. There is a patch of blue sky above. A chilly breeze ripples over my sopping muddy clothes, and for the first time in a long time, I realise how cold I am. And how alone.

Why has she sent me back here? How am I supposed to do this? There's one of me and three of them. The forest is silent as though searching for an answer that won't arrive.

It was never a fair fight. Luck brought Uselessness down, a chance encounter with an old machine. But even the Maker couldn't destroy the others. Out there, beyond the whispering trees, three giants are still trying to kill me.

And I am alone.

Alone.

Alone.

Alone.

---

Alone...
Is it working?
Shhh. I'm trying to whisper. This isn't easy.
Well? Is it?
Alone... you have no friends here... here... here...

---

... Here. It's true. Where are my friends? Where are my family? Where is the Maker? Why can't he just end this himself? He could do it, he could topple all three in an instant, and let me go home! The thought seems to echo from the trees: a warm fire, a soft bed, and the smell of something cooking on the stove...

---

Home.

Home.

Home.

Is he falling for it?
Yes, I think so. Here. Hold this.
Got it.
Now then. Just a little to the left. Where are those people who promised they'd be with you, little spider?

---

That's a good question, I think. Where are they? Through thick and thin, they said. Well this is pretty thick and they are thin on the ground. Where are they now?

---

They've left you. They've... abandoned you. They think you're not worth... helping... not worth saving... not worth it... at all...

Lustfulness, dip that arrow in your bottle. We've nearly got him.

---

...at all.

A tear starts forming in my eye and the world turns misty for a while. Quickly though, sadness is already changing. It's changing to some other emotion - anger. How dare they abandon me! How dare they treat me so badly. How dare they...

---

Yes, how could they?...

---

Everything in me wants to shout. I mustn't. I fling myself out of the tree and curl my fists into balls of rage. I shouldn't. It feels good and not good all at the same time. How has this happened? How? Why am I so alone? I'm losing control. Frustration explodes as my feet pulse heavily into the earth and I walk out into the open, under the sky.

---

Yes!
Do it. Do it now!

---

I fling my head back to the sky and with everything I've got within me I let loose a single agonising shout into the forest.

The trees seem to quake with fear at this new type of thunder. I have let go of everything and I'm bellowing angrily.

But I don't feel any better. Not really.

Then, out of nowhere and all at once, I'm pushed invisibly backwards by something. It feels like the wind, rushing at a hundred miles an hour out of the trees. A trunk slams into my back and my head jolts against it. I can't move.

There, pinning me to the wood, like a hideous javelin, is a single spear, a gigantic arrow quivering into my arm.

COLD CALLER

I had another of those cold-callers ring me today, asking about the 'accident' I had in '2015 or 2016'. I always picture these people standing by the side of the motorway with clipboards, ready to fleece the victims of the next collision. As I keep telling them, I have had no such thing, but I decided to play along today.

"Well which is it?" I asked.

"Sir, I can't tell you that."

"You can't tell me when it was reported?"

"I can't tell you that."

"Or when it actually happened?"

"No sir, because of DPA."

"Because of what?"

"DPA."

"What's DPA?"

"You don't know what DPA is?"

"No. What is DPA?"

"DPA is Data Protection Act."

"Wait, so you're telling me that you have confidential information about something that happened... to me... that you can't tell... me...about because of data protection?"

"That's right."

"I see."

"So, you may be due compensation for the accident which occurred in 2015 or 2016, but we just need you to confirm a few details for us. Okay?"

"Okay, shoot."

"Can I confirm that your full name is..."

"I can't remember."

"You can't remember."

"Nope, 'fraid not. Amnesia."

"Amnesia?"

"Yes. From a car accident I might have had in 2015 or 2016."

Click.

FIVE NOTES TO SELF

Yesterday turned out to be one of those days when I ended up feeling utterly defeated.

You'd be bored with the detail, so I'll just leave it at that. I'll say this though: I made a whole load of decisions which turned out to be the wrong thing, at the wrong time, and involved the wrong people. It led to a chain reaction of tangling explosives.

"Take it as learning," said my manager, smiling at the end of the day. I suddenly recognised the coiled snake as it wriggled uncomfortably within. Pride doesn't want me to learn; it wants me to the best at everything, all the time, respected and praised wherever I go for being unbelievably brilliant.

So, I think that rather than play its laughable tune on the Pride Pungi Pipes, I'm going to do the opposite of what that curling old snake would like, and make some notes on what I've learned from all this.

Here then (in a ludicrously public example of the precise opposite of their name) are my 'Five Notes to Self':

(1) Less Detail, More Destination. This is a really useful way of staying focused - concentrate on where you're going rather than what you're doing right now. It seems like odd advice, until you remember that when learning to drive, there must have been a moment when you stopped looking down at the gear stick or the pedals, and kept your eyes on the road.

I quite quickly get drawn into tangents, getting lost in trying to solve the detail of a problem which doesn't matter all that much. I don't have to fix everything, and not everything is my immediate all-important time-consuming problem. Sometimes the sales people can figure out their own solution.

Eyes on the road.

(2) Eat Lunch. This is crazy, but part of my problem yesterday was that I was really hungry.

Hunger leads to tetchiness, tetchiness leads to poor communication, poor communication leads to a dysfunctional team... says Regional Manager Yoda. Strong he is in the (sales) force. I've made a careful note about this one. Less crocodile, more koala.

(3) Admit What You Don't Know. There are a lot of unknowns but often the best response to a question is, "I don't know but I'll get back to you," rather than trying to configure your rapidly calculated assumptions into a guess. Sometimes a research spike is better than a stab in the dark. Oh and don't try to be Einstein. You're not.

(4) Smile in a Room Full of Egos. Egos are everywhere, stressing out and pushing their own agendas. The biggest ones are bullish, and due to the nature of work, they often belong to the type of people who have been promoted into the Big Ego Bullring. But you don't have to be a matador to disarm someone with a pleasant smile. Just don't overdo the smiling.

(5) Take Notes. This is a useful way of sucking the heat out of a situation. In fact, you don't even need to take notes, just doodle something in your notebook. Not only does it look like you're taking things seriously (while actually you're drawing a cartoon of a product manager getting eaten by lions) but it means you can also avoid being influenced by someone else's attempts to intimidate you with eye-contact or facial expressions. You can use those few seconds to compose yourself. Don't start colouring-in though - that's not a good look.


So that's it: five things I learned yesterday through everything going disastrously wrong.

In the end, I went home and watched Apollo 13, just for some light relief. Tom Hanks is awesome; Jim Lovell (the real astronaut) is awesome! If I could add a number 6, it'd probably be "Never drive a toaster through a carwash... but if you have to, bring it home."

ENERGY AND SHORTBREAD

"It's that time of year," said my colleague, Paul as I gazed forlornly into the vending machine.

"Sorry?" I asked.

"Oh, the time of year when we all need a bit more sugar."

I'd not heard of this, but I reasoned that I could quite happily go along with it. It is, after all, freezing. And for me at least, the colder it gets the more I feel like stuffing my face with energising snacks.

The world was white this morning - deadly beautiful, sparkling and cold. Cars, windscreens, windows and wheelie bins were painted with frost and the bright sun cast icy shadows over the street.

I slung my rucksack over my back and pulled the front door to with a click. My stomach rumbled as I crunched across the grass to my car. Too late for breakfast again. I have to fix that.

"I'd say it's alright then," said Paul, "You know, for a bit more energy."

I pushed the buttons and selected #62: All Butter Shortbread. The machine whirred round and hooked the shortbread half-on the spiral and half-dangling over the precipice above the out-tray. Credit 00.00 said the machine.

"Brilliant." I said. Paul had already gone. I didn't have the energy to thump the machine, so I left it.

FLOWERS AND CHAMPERS

I had to buy flowers and champagne today.

I felt really odd carrying them through Sainsbury's on my way to the exit. A lady looked at me with a kind of knowing smile and I smiled meekly back, looking for all the world like a man on an elaborate mission to say sorry for something awful.

That wasn't why I was carrying a massive bunch of colourful flowers and a bottle of bubbly, by the way; just to make it absolutely clear - I haven't upset any ladies, as far as I know! At least, not this week. 

No, this was my attempt to do something nice for Louise, who became engaged-to-be-married, over the weekend.

Ah love, that most excellent of things, striking at the heartstrings and shimmering through the air as Cupid plies his softened bow with delicate arrows. How sweet. I scanned the aisles and checkouts for anyone I know from church, just to make sure no-one saw me clutching a massive bunch of flowers and an expensive bottle of champagne and accidentally got the wrong idea.

"I didn't really expect it to be such a nice feeling, thinking about getting married," said Louise, later. It turned out that she had orchestrated the entire engagement process, leaving her boyfriend little room for imaginative romance or surprising creativity in the procedure. I got the feeling that her excellent organisational skills suited both of them in that regard. Nonetheless, it was interesting to me that she hadn't planned on feeling quite so warm and fuzzy once it had happened.

"I think that's how it's supposed to be," I said, doing my best to offer what must have been strange appreciation from an ageing singleton. And I do mean it. While it might not quite have worked itself out for me, I believe wholeheartedly in marriage and I will continue to champion it wherever I can. And that is the real reason I bought flowers and champers today.

The event did also mean though that I was forced into sending round The Card of Many Signatures. You might have heard me lament this thing before - cards go round the office sometimes, requiring signatures and witty remarks on big birthdays, house-moves or most commonly, people leaving. I don't like the Card of Many Signatures, but I knew it had to be done, and so a little reluctantly, I printed out the list of names, crossed off my own (I normally forget to do this), stapled it onto an A4 envelope and slotted Louise's card inside, ready for sending round the room like a hot potato.

She was pleased to see all the names I think. A few people had (predictably) sent in their deepest condolences to her fiancé, and there was a scattering of all-the-bests and fabulous-newses, as you might expect. I had written congratulations in massive letters. I think that's how you celebrate things like this: massive letters. Oh, and with flowers and champagne of course.

THE VALLEY OF THE FOUR GIANTS: THUNDER

He's breathing. At least, his enormous chest is slowly moving up and down. Rain is pouring across his gigantic body and pooling beneath him. I don't have long.

It was in his right hand. I carefully make my way around his enormous fallen head. His eyes are closed but his eyelids are flickering. I don't have long. His breath rattles through his beard and steam twirls from his mouth.

Thunder still rumbles above.

His right hand is a fist, thumped into the mud where he landed. I move around it. It's like a cage of fingers, locked by a huge, hairy thumb. But there, white and tiny between those massive fingers is the corner of something I recognise.

---

The sunlight flickers through the French windows. She looks up from a canvas and smiles. An old-fashioned telephone rings. She carefully sets down her paint brush and moves to the writing desk. She picks up the receiver and holds it to her ear.

---

The giant's fingers are slippery with rainwater. I pull at the corner of the photograph but it's still wedged tightly in his fist. I'm conscious that I could easily rip the corner if I pull too hard. Meanwhile, the rain continues to tumble through the leaves and trickle across his enormous knuckles. I am soaked. And Hopelessness is stirring.

---

The telephone clicks neatly as she replaces the shiny black receiver. She knows what she has to do next, but how? She raps her fingers on the writing desk. How will she make it happen? She pulls back the wooden chair and picks up a quill. There may be a way. There must be a way to help him, otherwise... She looks up to the window. Something is catching the light.

---

Thunder. Breathing. Hopelessness moves. His body shudders noisily and his eyes flick open. I freeze. The fingers move. I grab the photograph again. It slips between his fingers, easily this time! But he is awake. His head moves. His knee rises into the air and his boots scrape the earth. Quickly I slip the photograph into my bag. He flattens his palms into the soil with a squelch and for the first time since being struck by lightning, the giant sits up and looks around him.

I'm already into the trees.

---

It's a phonograph, a gramophone if you will! It has been in the corner of the room for a long time, but she hasn't ever really paid it any attention. Now she does. She knows what it means when a thing catches the light.

A curling golden tube spirals from the wooden box, expanding into an open-mouthed trumpet. On top of the ornate box, a circular turntable gathers dust beneath a single bronze-coloured arm and needle.

She looks at it thoughtfully.

---

Hopelessness roars with anger. I watch from the tree. Rain patters from the leaves. He shouts into the sky. My heart pulses and I breathe long and heavy with relief. The giant stomps noisily into the forest in the opposite direction.