A LOVELY BIT OF MEH AS THE FIREWORKS GO OFF

New Year’s Eve is kind of awful if you ask me. I’ve never been sure what you’re supposed to do, or how you’re supposed to feel. Thousands of people line up on the embankment and cheer the year in, watching fireworks and drone displays and all the rest of it, but still also knowing deep-down (I mean surely they know) that the coming year will at best be a mixed bag. What are you all so happy about?

Plus they’ve then got to get home on the tube, which is a nightmare at the best of times, let alone a cold January after-party morning. It’s never been for me, that.

For some reason though, today I was thinking about Edinburgh. Lovely Edinburgh. I’ve been there three times - it’s never let me down. And it feels like it should be the place for New Year’s, with all its bagpipery and whiskiness and castle and mountains of cool air and dark granite. If you’re going to sing Auld Lang Syne anywhere, it ought to be there surely?

Well no. It’s probably as crowded as anywhere else. And also, this year, it’s off, due to the terrible stormy weather that’s due to sweep the country tomorrow night. So no Edinburgh, even if we wanted to go all that way.

Which we don’t.

We’re staying in. I’d quite like to read a book, sip a hot chocolate, and look up as the clock ticks towards midnight. Then we’d wish each other a Happy New Year and go to bed. No fuss. No big deal. Wake up. 2025.

That seems to me the only sensible way to welcome what will inevitably be a year of great highs and lows - good old indifference. A lovely bit of meh as the fireworks go off down the street.

Mind you if it’s chucking it down and there are 70mph winds, it’s quite possible that weather will stop all that, like it might in Edinburgh. Fair enough. It’ll be cosy round here though I think.

LOW ON SOCIAL BATTERY

“Yeah. It’s okay,” she said, “He just doesn’t have a lot of social battery.”

That’s a nice way of thinking about it, I thought to myself. We all have different capacity when it comes to storing and using social energy, and so it’s quite possible that a person will need to just sit and recharge for a while, even if the rest of the party is in full swing. Some of us have small social batteries.

I smiled into my library book. In that world, William Tyndale was translating the New Testament into English, and Henry VIII (pre-reformation of course) was what some people might say was ‘disapproving’ of the idea. Some things are ahead of their time.

“I’d guess you’re in an introvert then Matt?” said someone else a little later. She was swilling something in a sparkly glass and twinkling along to the background jazz.

“It’s a good guess!” I joked.

To be honest, it was all a little awkward. She’d already asked me about our Christmas, and I’d basically said I had a low social battery and had been ‘peopled-out’. I said that. At a party - a situation that literally requires you to be the opposite of peopled-out. She was right. I’m basically an introvert, admitting that parties are designed for extroversion.

I get so awkward. It feels like I have to expend all my energy on aiming for witty, interesting or charming - which is exhausting all by itself. Plus, I feel as though I’m always perilously close to saying something super-weird or offensive, and navigating around that single-track mountain road is really difficult.

Someone else chipped in with a helpful thing at that point. They said it would be great if we could all wear badges with sliders, letting people know our social battery is at 10% or 50% or nearly full or whatever. Everyone laughed. I secretly thought it was genius.

Henry VIII changed his mind about the English Bible in the end. Too late for William Tyndale, but just in time to catch the sweeping reformation of Christianity in Europe. Not even the king can stop the tide, it turned out.

As it happens I don’t believe in fixed introverts or extroverts. I think we fluctuate in our lives and through our contexts, and it’s possible to show behaviours of both without being labelled as either - or, in other words, if you see me at a party, ask me about the sixteenth century and see if it might be a clue to helping me recharge my depleted social battery.

BOXING DAY SAINSBURY’S

I was suddenly in Sainsbury’s. Boxing Day Sainsbury’s. A man was dismantling the Christmas tree in the entrance, removing baubles on his step ladder.

“Aw that’s sad,” said Sammy.

“Yeah,” I agreed, dolefully. Completely expectable though. As soon as it stops making money from lovely old Christmas, the supermarket moves on to the next thing, without a care in the world for the cosy season left behind. Crackers give way to Prosecco and party balloons. It’s the way of things these days.

Inside, the light was too bright. Maybe it was the greyness of the sky over the car park, perhaps the contrast of gloomy clouds and supermarket-approved plasma lighting, but nevertheless Sainsbury’s was migraine-white today.

And gone was the Christmas music of last week. In its place a continuous beep, coupled with the sprinkle-sound of the handheld zappers being released from the bank of handsets. Trolley wheels rattled, Starbucks puffed and steamed, and above it all that high-pitched alarm, drilling annoyingly into everybody’s head, but just on the bearable side of annoyance. We were only there for a few bits. I was already on edge because Sammy had grabbed a basket, which, while more promising than a trolley, still indicated that we’d be there longer than I’d expected.

We were on our way home from my Mum and Dad’s house. For reasons I can’t explain at all, I’d started to cry when I said goodbye to them. In the middle of all that wrapping paper (wrappaging, as my niece hilariously calls it) I had been overwhelmed by tall sweary teenagers, little boys who don’t really know who I am, and the continuing despair of not really belonging. There was no way to launch into all that, hugging my Mum, as Sammy and I left though. She looked at my watery eyes and just said, “I do love you, you know,” and then, “Go on, get home,” and I swallowed a lump in my throat.

It’s hard to define this Christmas. In some ways it’s as though everything has happened as usual, but in a disconnected way. I’ve felt like a spectator, watching Christmas unfold but having no impact on or benefit to the pitch. That can’t be true.

My favourite thing was last night, after a long day. We got in, the tree lights went on, the hot Ribena came out and we simply sank into the sofa, laptop open, cosy and warm. It seems the older I get, the more doing nothing in particular appeals to me.

We left the blaring Sainsbury’s and made our way back to the car through the drizzle. As we unlocked, carrier bags digging into our fingers, a white car screamed around the tarmac and swung into a parking space. The music thundered out of its boot. Glass was rattling, the air was shaking, and that dreadful bass resonated from car to building to car like a sort of sonic weapon.

How can he not know how loud that is? I thought to myself. It was no use saying that out loud; I’d have needed an amplifier. The driver sat resolute inside, his car shuddering with sound. Next to him, two other car alarms were going off, no doubt triggered by the wave of noise emanating from the stadium-cranked speakers in his boot.

It’s tough to think of anything less Christmassy. I sighed as we climbed into the car and Sammy turned the ignition. The boy in the white car, switched his music off, climbed out, and beeped his car as he headed off to Sports Direct. Silence returned, like the falling of a beautiful twilight. Perhaps even the stars came out of hiding from the purplish grey clouds overhead. I like silence. I like a cosy, warm, Christmassy, silent night where indeed, all is calm, and all is bright. Just not as bright as the inside of Sainsbury’s please.

CHOICE IS A LUXURY

We had a bit more of a rest day yesterday and it certainly brightened my spirits, so that was nice. Scrooge standing invisibly in the corner as the Cratchits make the most of a splendid goose, the Ghost of Christmas Present sprinkling his torch over the scene, and me at the table with sellotape, scissors, and scraps of wrapping paper, the end of an assembly line that began on the floor with Sammy, cross-legged on a blanket, in a circle of unwrapped presents.

It was my job to write the labels too. It did feel a bit more like it - the business-end of the Christmas prep. Twinkly lights, Christmas tree, Cliff warbling for the hundredth year in a row. I was less grey than I have been recently.

There’s something lovely about not having much choice - at least, there should be. The Cratchits are presented as having an uproarious time on very little of it. Choice is a luxury, of course it is, but it occurs to me that not having it is also pretty great, if you’re prepared to make the most of it, and if you don’t compare yourself with others.

This is not easy. At some point over Christmas, someone will bring out a wheel of melted Camembert and I will need to put that secret of contentment into practice.

Speaking of contentment, my wrapping leaves a lot to be desired. The bits that made their way up to my table for folding and sellotaping left my table looking unusual. I’m not going to be featuring in any of those perfect instagram reels any time soon.

NOT A GUSTO PERSON

“Are you alright?” asked someone the other day, “Only, you look a little off-colour…”

This is someone I know well enough for this approach by the way; I really wasn’t offended. I felt fine, and I said so, though I admitted I was tired. I didn’t say I was gloomy. Perhaps I should have. You never know whether you’re going to get sympathy, indifference or someone trying to fix you when you say things like that. Though, thinking about it, I don’t know what the ‘right’ response would have been anyway.

I was still a bit ‘grey’ at family carols last night. Not even Good King Wenceslas could help, and that’s kind of his thing isn’t it? Wealth or rank possessing.

My colleague Andy thought it was the loveliest thing that we do family carols around the piano. I don’t know what he was picturing - possibly something a bit more Victorian. Don’t get me wrong, there’s something sweet about it but it’s essentially me plodding through Christmas carols with an attempt at gusto.

I don’t think I’m a gusto person. I want to be. But I don’t think I am. Also, somehow when I play those carols they don’t exactly sound like they should. They sound like me improvising something sacred. You should have heard O Holy Night! I had to sing falsetto to get through it, and I’m pretty sure I heard coughing somewhere in the room.

Am I off-colour then? I don’t know. Gloomy still? Probably. The right response to me stating that would probably have been to make sure I knew I was loved, to check that I had people around me, and that I’m eating well. I really ought to trust people to ask me those things. After all it seems like the kind of thing Good King Wenceslas would have done.

THE GHOST OF CHRISTMAS PRESENT

I’m glum. Yeah, I know. Shouldn’t be gloomy at Christmas. And yeah, I know, no-one wants to hear from a humbug, let alone the dreary wafflings of such a down-beat Scrooge. Well, you don’t have to read it. But then, maybe I don’t have to write it either.

Speaking of Scrooges and humbugs, he’s just met the Ghost of Christmas Present. I’m continuing to read it, two pages at a time through December. There’s a beautiful piece of writing about how the berries on the greenery suddenly hanging from the walls of Scrooge’s room are catching the firelight. Dickens tells us they looked like a thousand little mirrors, which is lovely. Then there’s the gigantic spirit himself, throned on a mountain of turkeys, pies, hams, apples, fruit and flowers, green mantle and cornucopia of plenty in hand.

I’ve always loved that image - a great presence in the room, filling every corner with joy and good cheer. That seems like a pretty good approximation of the feeling of Christmas, if not the reality. I absolutely love it.

Yet here I am, feeling more like the quivering Scrooge in his nightgown and slippers than the embodiment of Christmas Present. Why am I gloomy today? What’s actually going on?

I liked reading about the Ghost of Christmas Past. You could see Ebenezer’s backstory, understand perhaps how he defaulted to be the eponymous skinflint, alone in the meagre light of his counting house. But his coldness to his fellow man is probably more the point that Dickens is getting across here - and all of that lies in the contrast between an opulent giant and a wrinkled old miser.

Maybe I’ll pick up as the season goes on. I tell you what though, I reckon that mountain of food is telling a story - I reckon it’s pretty important to eat well.

LAST TRAIN OF THE YEAR

Last train of the year for me today. It was dark until Didcot on the way in, and it’s dark all the way home on the way back. That’s the worst thing - knowing that beyond that hazy reflection of me and the inside of the carriage, there’s beautiful countryside out there, lost in the winter night.

Smooth sparkling river, tall dark trees, silvery grass and distant hills over silent fields. They’re all hidden. And inside it’s a different story.

The man opposite is reading a book called ‘Indecent Theology’. It looks like a thin volume, probably some textbook on gender and the Bible, which, I would love to be able to ask him about. But we don’t live in that kind of world.

On the other side, a girl is typing on a laptop that’s balanced on her knees. She types fast. A pair of purple headphones hang around her neck and she’s wearing a smart blue coat. A novel perhaps? The coat has anchor-embossed buttons. Perhaps she’s in the navy. Her fingers fly across the keys, pink nails tapping firmly as she writes. Email, I reckon.

A man in a face mask looks up at me. Is he on to me? Does he know what I’m doing? Our eyes meet for a fraction of a second before he realises that eye contact is against the basic rules of train travel in this country - of course. Who knows whether he smiles. Perhaps he has Covid.

Another guy is buttoned up in a thick blue coat. He’s dark-bearded and has a long face, peering down at his phone. Russian agent? Is he typing in code on his way to a safe house? Probably not.

Theology guy shifts and lifts his book up.

“Theological perversions in sex, gender, and politics” is the subtitle. Perhaps I don’t want to talk about it. What’s wrong with an Agatha Christie? I wonder.

Out there, I suppose, the trees are waving. You know, the world is so utterly beautiful. In happier times the sun sets over the fields and the whole train is bathed in golden light. You can almost breathe it in.

I look out at the darkness of the last train of the year. My grey reflection peers back. I’m holding a phone, fingers poised to type. What will that grey man say next, I wonder? What will he write?

Sigh. I’m old. The next stop is approaching through the black of night, and the train begins its slow, squeal of deceleration. But of course.

BETTER IN PERSON

Apparently the 45th and 47th United States President said this about our future king after a meeting the other day:

"He looked really, very handsome last night. Some people look better in person. He looked great. He looked really nice, and I told him that.”

“It sounds like a twelve year old wrote that,” said Sammy, chuckling when I read it out loud to her from the BBC website. I don’t think she meant to disparage the previous and future leader of the free world, but it was quite funny. Mind you, I don’t think he meant to disparage Prince William either.

In fact, it wouldn’t be a surprise at all if he’s incapable of seeing what he said as anything but a massive compliment - because it probably is, in his mind.

“I’m saying he’s handsome,” I imagine him protesting in some back room surrounded by advisors, “What’s wrong with that?”

What indeed, Mr President. Welcome to the nuance of British subtext. You just have to assume that everything is backwards.

I must admit, I got a bit steamed up by all this. Coming over here, insulting our royals! I mean I’d wager it‘s not the worst thing he’ll do in his time… but it’s rude isn’t it? I mean he’s not exactly Robert Redford himself is he? And he’s a lot of things, but he’s not thick-skinned about himself.

Maybe he looks better in person.

THE AWKWARD FOOD GUY

I’m struggling with the social aspects of having a food intolerance. It’s one thing knowing that dairy products are like TNT for my system (sorry), but it’s another having to face that with every mouthful and every menu - especially with people you don’t know very well; especially at Christmas.

I looked along the table at my colleagues, each staring politely at the hot food in front of them.  Side plates of chips were steaming next to burgers and buns, and pasta glistened in the downward glow of the restaurant lamps. A fork in a hand, a knife on a napkin. A glass of pink bubbles and the gurgle of water being poured from a carafe. The space in front of me was depressingly empty - wooden table bounded by cutlery, napkin and wine glass.

“Sir,” appeared the waiter behind me, “I am so sorry but we’ve had to change the grill to avoid cross-contamination. Your food’s on the way.”

My eyes flicked. Thank you. He vanished.

“Guys,” I gulped, addressing the awkward table, “Feel free to crack on without me.”

That’s what you say in that situation, isn’t it? I mean that’s the etiquette? I blinked. It felt as though I’d just offered to say grace in front of eleven atheists. And the worst part was… nothing happened.

Oh God, I prayed (silently), please bring out my food, please bring out my food…

In the cold light of hindsight, I can say it’s your own daft fault if you don’t eat your burger at this point. The power’s all with you, and not me if I’ve just told you you can eat. Why wait for me? Why wait for that one annoying guy who can’t eat cheese? Eat! Get on with it! But some things don’t feel so clear in the moment.

Later, in the Oxford Christmas market (four wooden huts in a shopping centre) they were all munching churros, and I was making conversation. One of the students was wolfing down a huge pile of pancakes buried in Nutella. He must be about 21 - thin as a rake, and good-looking, with the youthful airiness of a man who can eat anything he likes. I toyed with the idea of telling him about metabolisms and middle-age and what might be coming … but I decided against it. You’ve got to live haven’t you?

It’s awkward being the problem. I’m a fitter-inner at those kind of things, not a stander-outer. Yet my body’s inability to process certain chemicals plus the fact that those chemicals are in the tastiest and most widely-available foods, makes life embarrassing sometimes.

I wonder what would have happened if I had said grace? Clasping my hands together suddenly, squeezing my eyes shut and going for it? Ahhhh-men. HR violation? Puzzled, angry eyes up and down the table? Weird atmosphere? Probably. But then, maybe they should have all just got on with eating while I was waiting anyway.

A few moments later, the waiter brought my plate of vegan food and the tension evaporated into the air like steam from a hot burger. Just as well really.

NO MUPPETS TO LIGHTEN THE MOOD

This year, I’m reading A Christmas Carol throughout December.

I just got to the bit where Scrooge sits by the fire and the bells start ringing. Dickens is great; you can almost see the long shadows - the chair, the wall, Scrooge himself - cast from the weak light of a meagre fire, flickering in the grate. Then the sound…

Look at this for writing though:

“The bells ceased as they had begun; together. They were succeeded by a clanking noise, deep down below; as if some person were dragging a heavy chain over the casks in the wine merchant’s cellar.”

Now you and I know what comes next, but this is still terrifying. Imagine if all the alarms and phones in your house started ringing at once and then suddenly stopped after thirty seconds. That moment of silence, that pause would be dreadful. And Scrooge is alert by this point, having already seen Marley’s face in the door knocker and the horse and carriages barrelling up the stairs. The distant clanking he hears is almost audible to us, and I think, properly scary.

What I don’t seem to be able to do though is separate out the book from The Muppets Christmas Carol. In truth, I don’t really want to, but it’s intriguing how the source material keeps prompting me. As Scrooge was growling home through the thick London fog, for example, my brain resounded with a chorus of:

“There goes Mr Humbug, there goes Mr Grim.”

You’ve got to love the Muppets.

It’s not always obvious I suppose, that A Christmas Carol is a ghost story. I mean it is obvious when you think about it, but the story somehow reminds me much more of a cosy time wrapping presents, or of family watching a mean man find redemption - those things are Christmassy. Being scared out of your wits by spirits and time-travelling apparitions? Not so much. And yet there in the original book, are all the jump scares and shivers, the terrifying and the terrible, satirising the materialism of the age. And not a singing rat or ice-skating penguin in sight.

It’s a short book so I think it needs only a couple of pages a day. Just as well really; I don’t want to have nightmares.