Great British Secret Santa

Merry Christmas, Mr Scrooge

In the bottom left of the above collage is the RSC Christmas tree. In recent times, it has become a tradition to visit our second home in Badby in December (not to mention many other times in the year) for a “Secret Santa” weekend and include a visit to whatever the Royal Shakespeare Company are staging as their Christmas show.

Want and Ignorance

This year the RSC staged A Christmas Carol, a David Edgar adaptation of Charles Dickens’s novel. Aiden Gillet was a volatile, vulnerable Ebenezer Scrooge (played in the same production last year by the snarly and ultimately adorable Phil Davis.) Joseph Timms played an energetic, angry and moving Charles Dickens whose efforts to write a story about Want and Ignorance conflicted with his publishers’ desire to give the public a heartwarming comical tale.

Plenty and Enough

It seems perverse and hypocritical in some ways to delve into Dickens’s world of sympathy for the vulnerable and yet enjoy and celebrate my own wonderful Plenty – plenty presents, plenty treats, plenty food, plenty drink…. But that’s the Way of the World. Take action when you can; give where you feel able; have compassion always.

Blenheim Palace

The unusual thing we did this year was attend the Blenheim Palace Illuminated Lights Walk, a busy but magical experience. There were extraordinary colour-changing waterfalls of light, neon tunnels, fairy trails and aerial poppy-themed paths.

Bright Lights for Winter Nights 

Penguins, Snowmen, Bridges, Chalets, a Gingerbread House, a giant Lotus on the lake, tree trunks looking like pantomime stage sets and bulb after bulb flooding the winter night with colour sensations.

Great British Tony Christmas

This is me

What will I remember about Christmas 2018? Quite a bit of baking going on: fresh mince pies, chocolate cookies, apple crumbles to freeze. Quite a bit of quaffing of mulled wine, red wine, different gin flavours, cocktails, fizz and beer…. Table decorations to delight the eye…. groaning plates, Stilton bites, pigs in blankets, traditional films (White Christmas, some Disney, The Greatest Showman, you know the drill!)

Count your blessings (instead of sheep)

Of course it’s all about the people…. The family, the friends, the good will to most men…. Decking the halls and all that…. The pictures below include some personal memories from October that cement what the latter part of 2018 has been about in the emotional inner life of me: a Harvey Nichols’ cocktail meal-deal to cement Emily’s new abode… what changes will 2019 bring?

Glenbranter

St Ninian’s Chapel

A rugged walk along the St Ninian’s Bay coastline, across ankle-stretching shells, stones and tussocks, brought us to the ruin of St Ninian’s Chapel, open to the elements but inspiring as a location for contemplating your place in the universe. En route to get there we stumbled across (having noticed them on the map…) a mysterious group of standing stones (see top picture.)

Prehistory Beckoned

The final full day of our September 2018 holiday (yes, I know it was three months ago, so sue me….) can only be described as a journey into an antideluvian age….

Awestruck

The banter of the previous walks – memories, hopes, silly riffs, political debate, funny conversations – fell silent as we followed the Glenbranter route in the Argyll Forest Park. I don’t think we saw another human soul during our day as we strolled along, meandered up, sauntered down and twisted round undulating paths through dripping tree trunks spotting waterfalls small and large – babbling brooks, forceful spouts, giant cascades, raging torrents….

Pretending to be off the grid….

It was as if human civilisation had never existed, except it was obvious it had because the path was marked discretely and had been cleared for our boots to trudge safely. This was tourist-friendly prehistory…. But were there ancient creatures lurking in the undergrowth? Might we get lost forever? (Luckily, we had picnic supplies.)

Geography and Nature colliding

The Argyll Forest Park is at one end of the Highland Boundary Fault, the chasm you can see on maps of Scotland that demark the Lowland and Highland territories, so the jagged peaks, waterfalls, lochs, lush greenery and delicate groves have all developed to fill and compensate for that great crack in Britain’s surface crust.

Views over Loch Eck

Our high and final views over Loch Eck were memorable: overlooking the canopy of oak, birch and hazel trees and seeing Scottish wilderness at it finest.