A major snort and sneeze into a handkerchief tells me all I need to know about how I will be bringing in the New Year. After doing well all week I started to feel dodgy last night and after a difficult night’s sleep (or otherwise) have felt duff for most of the day. I went out for some fresh air earlier which was fine but I’ve been knackered since.
And so my Hogmanay has been spent watching Battlestar Galactica Season 1 on DVD and feeling woolly. I have some red wine here for medicinal purposes though.
So 2010 comes to an end with a bit of a whimper which is a shame because on the whole it has been a good year. The two negatives, such as they are, are the continuing issues with my blood-pressure which remains higher than I would like and also a problem with me knee following a fall back in November. I thought I had bruised it but I rather suspect that I sprained it. Of course I worked this out after I had been walking to work through a foot and a half of snow for a couple of weeks. Duh!
But let’s leave the negatives behind. I have reason to believe that 2011 will be a good year and that is where my focus is now both for myself and for all of you. So that’s it for 2010: farewell to the old year and welcome the new.
A pocket full of money and a cellar full of beer
I wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year
For a while I affected not to like Christmas and even, for a while, used to install a jar of Christmas humbugs on my desk for all comers to munch, occasionally dislodging fillings as they did so. And there are aspects of Christmas which bug me no end and get me muttering and cursing misanthropically under my breath like I’d had too much turps in my milk.
And yet, and yet… I have grown into my own traditions which I like to observe and which have become unaccountably important to me. Some of these are a bit daft – I like to start Christmas morning with Leon Redbone and Dr. John singing Frosty the Snowman for example, but some also seem to me important to observe with the comforting regularity of the ticking of a clock. The primary one of these is one that I have taken directly from my mum which is the making of mince pies on Christmas Eve. My mum always does this with the carols from Kings College on the radio and for a while I used to use choral music as well but in recent years have moved away from that. This year it was Captain Beefheart and Frank Zappa who provided the accompaniment: Bongo Fury indeed.
I enjoy making the Christmas lunch as well. I am not bothered by turkey – the last couple of years we have had organic leg of lamb and it has been great and I luxuriated in chasing it with a decent New Zealand Pinot Noir . I quite like cooking generally and have spent most of today using up some of the leftovers making a batch of my version of Piroshki, which are Polish mini pastries made with yeast pastry and of which I first heard in the Colorblind James Experience’s wonderful “Considering a Move to Memphis” a couple of decades ago now. I daresay that they’ll suffer severe predations this evening.
And I have come to enjoy some carols. I first got started on a parallel carol track in the seventies when Steeleye Span put an interesting version of The Holly and the Ivy on the B side of Gaudete. The tune was not the one with which I was familiar at church and, perhaps because of that, I noticed the somewhat odd lyric. That tune is now the one which you tend to hear on occasions when folkies perform it and I like it although I have a soft spot for the more familiar choral arrangement too. As I got more interested in folk music I began to notice more some of the traditional carols which carried in their lyric or the mode of the tune some remnant, or echo of a remnant, of something more rustic and vaguely pagan.
The one I really like, though, and which provides the title for this post, is Shepherds Arise! as preserved by the Copper Family and which I first encountered when it was used by the National Theatre’s Cottesloe Company in The Nativity – the first part of their performance of Tony Harrison’s mystery plays. I can’t find a video of that so this is Maddy Prior and the Carnival Band (who unaccountably call it Sing, Sing):-
Way back when in the sunny long-ago I read an article which I thought was wonderful then and, if I could only find a copy, have no doubt would find just as wonderful today. It began:
“I sat down and wept when I remembered the lost pubs of Burslem, the demolished Star that stood where the Moonglow Ballroom stands now, on the corner of the street of the Preacher and the Tote office; it was a gaunt, dark building nicknamed the Star of Bethlehem, a grimey stuccoed star the colour of years of wet smoke. From outside it looked forbidding and empty, lit only by one or two naked electric light bulbs; its doors were difficult to find, its main door on the corner of the Square had been screwed down for some reason and on the inside covered with a piece of painted plywood. Only the side-doors would let you in and these were narrow and difficult to open. One was in Queen’s Street and the other in William Clowes Street, opposite the Dolphin… for all its dreary appearance, the Star was the highest drinking temple in the town; nothing has been the same since it was knocked down. No pub has been more lamented.”
The article was the “Lament for the Lost Pubs of Burslem” by Arthur Berry (1925-1994) and has always stood in my memory as the lodestone of elegiac writing.
It also stands as a fine description of the type of pubs that I love, particularly as it depicts a world before anyone had the foolish idea that it would be a good thing to install a TV in a pub and tune it to the bastard spawn of hell that is Sky Sports.
Portrait: Berry
Berry was many things, amongst other things a painter of some skill who took a load of his works to the dump (I think because he wasn’t sure what to do with them) and hence few survive. The Lament for the Lost Pubs of Burslem was originally a piece for radio for which it won a Sony Award in 1979 and it must have been in that year that I came across the text in print – I think (having spent a while googling) in the 20-27 December edition of The Listener for that year although I have a persistent memory of seeing it in a local CAMRA magazine.
In any event I do not have a copy anymore and am on the hunt for either the text or a recording of the broadcast (I believe BBC Radio Stoke issued it with some other material on cassette but I can’t track this down) and I’d love to get hold of one.
I have just ordered a copy of his autobiography – Three and Sevenpence Halfpenny Man – which also took a while to track down at a sensible price although AbeBooks came to my rescue.
Portrait 2 : Berry
Much of this information I have only found out today as I tried to track down more on the lament (and try in vain to find a copy). The next step has to be to try and find a catalogue or similar of his art if I can.
Meanwhile the days before christmas drag a little. The plan, such as it is, is that Amy and I take her laptop along to PC World to get it booked in for some maintenance and in the passing I get the last of the groceries from the supermarket.
That’s the theory. In practice Amy is still in the shower having not long got up (it is only 13.30 after all) and for the first time in a very long time I seem to have an incipient migraine for reasons which I can’t discern. It could just be that I’m feeling stuffed up and vaguely like the beginnings of a winter cold. Time will tell.
Today was/is the first day of my festive holiday and, as the photo (taken from our bedroom window) to the right shows, it has been a cold one. I was out in it for a while doing a wee bit shopping and as seems to be the norm now I was dressed as though for a winter hillwalk. We haven’t had any fresh snow for a few days but the temperatures have never got anywhere near being above zero so it remains deepish, crisp and increasingly uneven.
On the other hand I have more or less had the house to myself today so I’ve been able to read the paper, catnap and pick some geetar to my heart’s content. As I type there is a chicken roasting in the oven and I’ll wander through soonish and get the rest of the meal sorted. The chicken will feed us for a couple of days and the stock, which I’ll prepare tonight, will be used on Christmas day to keep a leg of lamb moist while it is roasting.
I have no idea what I’ll do tomorrow but Friday will include a trip to the shops for last minute groceries and then the important ritual of making the mince pies while sipping rum and dry ginger. I usually have a festive musical accompaniment for this but this year I’m tempted by a Frank Zappa/Captain Beefheart bootleg which I’ve just downloaded. If nothing else it will guarantee that I have the kitchen to myself.
Have you heard the rumour that’s going around? The Captain has gone. It’s the same old blues, the same old news again.
John Peel once said that popular music is like a giant lemon meringue pie which contains far too much sugar and has been baked in an oven which is too hot. The result is a confection which is a tooth-rottingly sticky mess in the centre and burnt crusty and black on the outside.
The Captain was undoubtedly out on the crusty edge (and certainly too crusty to have any significant commercial success) and yet he also was part of that odd phenomena whereby more “mainstream” acts develop a reputation for spiky creativity by way of absorbing the influences of the crusties (and sometimes having the decency to acknowledge them). His critical highwater mark is undoubtedly Trout Mask Replica which is one of those things that you either get or you don’t. Ego itches me to say that I first heard Trout Mask Replica as a teenager in the seventies courtesy of my pal Alan Nicol’s big sister Jane and kind of got it (it took a few listens).
For those who didn’t get Trout, the lovely Bluejeans and Moonbeams (to which I am listening as I type this) will come as a surprise. Aficionados of Beefheart weirdness have a serious downer on this album (and Unconditionally Guaranteed) but for those not seeking to maintain an outsider vibe, it is a fine introduction to a creative giant in bluesy, mellow mood.
RIP
Meanwhile I have managed to offend the sensibilities of my household companions by making a batch of mint sauce. We will be having roast leg of lamb for Christmas lunch and lamb demands mint sauce so I made it today, a week ahead, to give it time to mature. Mint sauce is very simple – make a syrup of vinegar and sugar, add chopped mint, bring to boil, leave to cool and then bottle. I think it is the boiling vinegar bit which has caused the difficulty – although they won’t complain when they eat it!
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