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.