Enter Owen

The Capacity for Love

It’s not an original experience, I know, but I did spend some time feeling bewildered about whether or not I would be able to love a second grandchild as much as the first. Bewilderment is now in the past, faded to nothing, evaporated into a faraway haze. Reader, it is a truth universally acknowledged that the chambers of the heart expand mightily when love comes a-knocking.

Hello there, Owen Thomas                                                      

Fortune has smiled upon this baby. He arrived and we learned his name, second son to Harriet & Chris, brother to Samuel Miles, nephew to Emily, grandchild to Sally & Tony. Plus he has another family of cousins, an auntie and a grandma in the Midlands. And there’ll be a whole tribe of neighbours and friends around to create “Owen’s village.”

The basics

It’s easy to forget how, for a good number of weeks, it’s all about the food, the poo, the wee, the comfort, the sleep. Oh, the sleep, please Grant Them Sleep! And this time around there’s a 2-year-old to care for, keep entertained, and integrate into the newly fresh routines.

The future – the hope and the promise

Eleanor Roosevelt said “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” I know I can be irrationally sentimental, but it is hard not to see Hope and Promise in the presence of a little baby – no cynicism, no worries, no knowledge of evil, no pressures from social media or society – just survival and growth. Potential.

Two brothers

Sam has already shown tenderness to his younger brother, talking to him, reading to him. What kind of relationship will Sam and Owen develop as they live together in the same house for at least sixteen more years? So much potential for silliness, skirmishes, support and love.

Reach for Shakespeare

Sam can already identify the image of Shakespeare and he has a couple of books with characters from the plays. So far he has enjoyed Extracts from The Sonnets, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Romeo and Juliet (minus the stabbings.) What came into my heart when I held Owen for the first time was Ophelia’s line from Hamlet:

"We know what we are but know not what we may be."

Three Households One Day

Three households….

…. All alike in dignity

In fair Saltaire where we lay our scene

In troubled times break to new jollity

Neath patio heaters, waiting for a vaccine….

Advent gives way to Christmas Eve.... Stocking One to Stocking TwentyFour…. Christmas is Go!

Tier Three Walks

Thankfully, walking in the open air is not yet prohibited so it is still a joy to tramp around the woods and dales and moors and fields of West Yorkshire on the days leading up to Christmas.

A mince pie in the forest, anyone?

I think, on average, I must have walked more miles in 2020 than in any previous year of my life. If I decide on any Resolutions in the New Year, I think it will be to Keep Walking amongst the local trees and alongside the canals and rivers and up and down the hills, mountains and dales of Yorkshire.

White Christmas Eve

A crisp and frosty (and at times blizzardy) walk on Christmas Eve above the town of Oxenhope brought Yorkshire horizons of every type: black pendulous clouds, misty snowscapes, bright blue expanses and boiling pink sunsets – the sky was as mad and varied as 2020 has been.

Al fresco

Although the latest rules allowed us to be inside on Christmas Day, bearing in mind Emily’s work in the NHS, we summoned our inner Carry On Campers with patio heaters and fairy lights to feast outside.

Penultimate post of 2020

My 50th post of the year will be on New Year’s Eve so between now and then I’ll scour my memory banks to see if there’s such a thing as a clear summary of the last year. I know we won’t be doing what we usually do on New Year’s Eve.…

Clear and simple

What’s true now – and it always has been and always will be – is that Connecting with loved ones is the most important human impulse of all…. whether that’s by card, letter, phone, text, a friendly wave, a doorstep chat, friendly small talk in the woods, WhatsApp, Email, Zoom, Skype, Teams – or, if you’re lucky, sitting down with others to share festive food and drink…. only connect.

Talking Shakespeare Yksi (One)

Outer images from last Christmas, inner images from 2020 prep

Member Benefits

Christmas is a-coming – a few purchases have now been made (mincemeat mixed, Christmas cake being “fed” monthly, a few gifts have been wrapped….) I’m allowing Christmas to infiltrate my life in November having, in the sixty previous years, banned all thoughts until December 1st but in this Covidacious year I take pleasure however and whenever I can. (Full disclosure: Sally still wears The Christmas Crown and is entirely responsible for the spicy aromas of fruity baking.) One advantage of having a Royal Shakespeare Company membership is being granted access to resources giving insights into the ongoing bottomless chasm of Shakespeare exploration. During both lockdowns a number of actors are giving interviews under the title Talking Shakespeare and that is just what they did. I’ll post about them all in due course, a few at a time….

Greg Doran intervewing Adjoa Andoh, Ray Fearon, Judi Dench and Alex Gilbreath

Adjoa Andoh and Ray Fearon

• Adjoa Andoh, known for Doctor Who and Casualty, is known to me especially for two stunning performances: as Ulysees in Troilus and Cressida and as an astonishing Richard II in an all-black, all-female production of Richard II at The Globe. Her interview ranged widely over all her Shakespearean roles but, most powerfully, about her personal life and commitment to community work.
• Ray Fearon revealed how he fell into acting by accident and started performing in amateur community projects. He was inspired when working as an extra in Caryl Churchill’s Serious Money to (successfully) apply for Rose Bruford drama school. He worked at Liverpool Everyman and Manchester’s Royal Exchange before rising through the ranks at both the RSC and the National Theatre. His big breaks at the RSC came in a touring production of Romeo and Juliet and then (his third) Othello with the frisson of his Desdemona being played by his Juliet, Zoe Waites. He gave a moving account of his experience playing Pericles, a magnificent performance that stuck in my own mind when I saw it, and then talked about the sensational all-black Julius Caesar when he played a scarily dangerous Mark Antony.

Adjoa Andoh in Richard II and Troilus and Cressida, Ray Fearon in Antony and Cleopatra, Romeo and Juliet and Othello

Judi Dench and Alexandra Gilbreath

• Judi Dench revealed herself to be the trooper she is and went the furthest back in time to her childhood in York and her early appearances at the Old Vic before marking off virtually all of Shakespeare’s heroines in her 70-year career. She talked about some of her legendary performances with typical humility – and plenty of funny anecdotes – but came up to date with her recent stage work that I’ve been lucky enough to witness live, in Macbeth, The Comedy of Errors, Antony and Cleopatra, Hamlet, All’s Well That Ends Well, The Merry Wives (musical) of Windsor, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Winter’s Tale.
• Alexandra Gilbreath’s throaty tones have always drawn me in to her performances and she was enthusiastic and insightful about her major roles, all of which I saw in Stratford: Hermione (The Winter’s Tale), Juliet, Rosalind (As You Like It) Kate (The Taming of the Shrew), Olivia (Twelfth Night) and, alongside Judi Dench, in the musical version of Merry Wives.

Judi Dench in Macbeth, Merry Wives, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Alex Gilbreath in As You Like It, Romeo and Juliet, Taming of the Shrew, The Winter's Tale

Lockdown Spring

Two households, both Locked Down in dignity....

Seasons come and seasons go
One of the luckiest privileges of My Life In Lockdown is having a panoramic meadow and woods within walking distance of the house.  When Spring 2020 started bursting, as the reality of Lockdown began, it became an endless fascination on the same walk to see how colours, shapes and textures changed as Nature resurrected its glorious self, free for the most part from a significant volume of traffic fumes. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one to notice the ecstatic increase in the sounds of birds. Was that illusory? Could the insane variety and volume of chirruping have always been there?  I’ve always delberately walked down (and driven, I admit) roads where I knew blossom trees were exploding in colour; this year my eyes seemed to bathe in blossom more intensely.

Brighter traces of her steps….
Spring reminds me of my Mum (her birthday, her in the garden, her love of flowers – see Nothing is so beautiful as Spring) and every year I think of the ancient Greek proverb A society grows great when old people plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in – a proverb brought to life in 2020 by charity fundraiser, (Captain) Tom Moore. As usual, Chaucer, Shakespeare, the Brontës and Dickens are easy to mine for quotations about Spring but, this year, it feels to me that Charlotte Brontë in Jane Eyre wrote a sentence which is worth clinging onto as Covid-19 continues to spread its fatal droplets:

“Spring drew on…and a greenness grew over those brown beds, which, freshening daily, suggested the thought that Hope traversed them at night, and left each morning brighter traces of her steps.”

Time to stand and stare
I’ll finish this Lockdown Spring riff with a poem I’ve quoted before (here). The “SuperTramp” poet, WH Davies, has had a revival during Lockdown since his words require you to slow down the pace, step away from the rat race, and breathe calmly.

Leisure by W H Davies

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.

No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.

No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.

A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

Lockdown Shakespeare

Clockwise from top left: Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, The Merchant of Venice, Othello, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Macbeth, Much Ado About Nothing, The Tempest - all currently on BBC iPlayer

April 23rd
Every year (from 23rd March which is my Mum’s birthday) I start to anticipate 23rd April – yes, St George’s day, but more profoundly for me, the day when Shakespeare died and the day when he was likely born (given that he was baptised on 26th April 1564 and the common practice in Elizabethan times was to baptise three days after the birth.) In the front room in my childhood home there was the family Bible, a set of encyclopedias and a Complete Works of William Shakespeare, complete with Fuseli plates. I never thought to ask my parents (and it is now too late) how Shakespeare got into our house. But the book proved, for me, a doorway to a surprising, inspiring, mind-bending landscape of love, friendship, murder, passion, betrayal, pride, violence, jealousy, redemption, tenderness and magic. Every story was told with memorable language, sometimes exquisite poetry, sometimes impenetrable jokes or confusing grammar; but, despite some difficult bits, on every page, certain words and phrases bounced out and tickled my fancy….  What a pleasure it has been to revisit some of the productions I’ve seen on the BBC iPlayer (Shakespeare in Quarantine) or as part of the NTLive YouTube broadcasts.

NT Live screenings of: Twelfth Night and Antony and Cleopatra

What's in a name?

Me, cousin Ann, Sally, Dan, Ellisa, Logan. god-daughter, Lisa

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet
A recent Christening in Ossett saw Ellisa Anna Clara christened in the magnificent but freezing Trinity Church, Ossett. An early question about each new life on Earth is what to call the new baby. Ellisa Anna Clara was blessed with a trio of names paying tribute to important members of her ancestral tribe. Celebrities often make the news with their decisions, like Gwyneth Paltrow’s Apple and Angie Bowie’s Zowie – I’m assuming the Mums had more say than Chris Martin and David Bowie in those cases – but they have to take a bow before the choices of Adelaide Zappa (and her husband Frank) with their offspring’s names: Moon Unit, Dweezil and Diva Thin Muffin.

Ellisa's family and godparents, Mum and daughter, niece Jess and Chris. "How far that little candle throws its beams - So shines a good deed in a naughty world." (Shakespeare in Merchant of Venice)

What’s in a name?
It’s strange that, after a day or two, the baby (the child, the teenager, the adult….) become(s) the name they’ve been given. So my own children quickly became Emily and Harriet (though particular variations occur regularly…. Em, Emilia, Haz, HarrietRose….) and no doubt Ellisa will now forever be Ellisa, as her brother Logan is impeccably Logan, until either of them suddenly start wanting to be called a variation. Somewhere in America, no doubt Mrs Zappa found it unremarkable to shout “Moon Unit, come and get your tea! Dweezil, tidy your bedroom! Diva Thin Muffin, what time do you call this?!” Perhaps, like Zowie Bowie (who now prefers to be known as successful film-maker, Duncan Jones) Moon Unit, Dweezil and Diva Thin Muffin go by more ordinary names these days…. The most exotic (real-life, non-celebrity) name I ever heard about was Allegra Star Hoopengarner-Blaha; and a favourite name on one of my registers as a teacher was Fraser Rumble which, to me, sounds like someone who will one day be a hero.

Sally, Chris, brother-in-law Mick, sister Teresa and Jess

Meanings of names
I was named Antony (without an ‘h’ and I take pride in the lack of an ‘h’ since it was good enough for Shakespeare in Antony and Cleopatra.) My sister Teresa and I are godparents to Ellisa’s marvellous Mum, so it was a privilege to come full circle and witness our god-daughter having her own child named and celebrated in high style. And lovely to catch up with the extended family news. Names start to mean the people they are but there is a long tradition of trying to trace the origins of names, so I spent some time doing that for some of the guests at the Christening:

• Ann = “favour, grace” (Hebrew from Hannah)
• Terry = “ruler of the people” (Germanic from Theodoricus)
• Lisa/Ellisa = “my God is an oath/my God is bountiful/devoted to God” (Hebrew from Elizabeth)
• Dan = “God is my judge” (Hebrew from Daniel)
• Logan = “from the little hollow” (Scottish)
• Nick = “victory of the people” (Greek from Nikolaos)
• Daniela = “God is my judge” (Hebrew, feminine form of Daniela)
• Eliana = “Daughter of the sun” (Greek/Latin)
• Livio = from Livy (Titus Livius) who wrote a history of the city of Rome (Latin)

• Antony = from Roman family name Antonius, possibly meaning “priceless” (Latin)
• Sally = “lady, princess, noblewoman” (Hebrew from Sarah)
• Emily = “aiming to equal or excel” (Latin from Aemilius)
• Harriet = “rules the home” (Germanic from Heimirich to Henry to Harry to feminine form)

• Mick = “who is like God?” (Hebrew from Michael)
• Teresa = from Saint Teresa of Avila (16th century nun), possibly meaning “harvester” (Latin)
• Jess = first used as Jessica by Shakespeare in Merchant of Venice (probably based on Hebrew name Iscah from Bible meaning “rich”)
• Chris = “bearing Christ” (Greek from Christopher)

Siblings forever - Logan and Ellisa

Summer's Lease

Alex's afternoon tea and Morris Dancers in Badby

The world’s mine oyster
I’ve written elsewhere (see here) about how some places that are not officially home can feel like home. And so it was that August’s end contained a family visit to collect me from my week of bachelor vice…. the vice of glutting…. glutting on productions at the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon and soaking up interesting views by leading academics and theatre-makers at the annual RSC summer school. My first attendance at this event was in 1986, the year The Swan theatre opened and, although I haven’t been every single year, I’ve been more often than not. 32 years ago I was one of the whippersnappers and now I blend in seamlessly with the silver-haired and reverend Shakespeare fanatics.

RSC summer school and the 2018 Macbeth

Something Wicked This Way Comes
You need afternoon tea (thank you, Alex!) and the English/Moorish oddities of Morris Dancers tinkling their bells after such a marathon experience. After descending into the maelstrom of darkness that was a Time-dripping creepy Macbeth with Niamh Cusack, Christopher Eccleston, Edward Bennett, Luke Newberry, Michael Hodgson as Lady Macbeth, Macbeth, Macduff, Malcolm and the Porter. After hearing challenging views about Macbeth and other plays and hearing from actors, including Alexandra Gilbreath who reflected on her previous performances and performed alternative versions of speeches.

2018 Romeo and Juliet to die for and Merry Wives of Windsor relocated to Essex

The Long and the Short of it
I thought Romeo and Juliet was a fine production, a believably youthful portrayal of the madness of early love (Karen Fishwick and Bally Gill) and performances by Andrew French and Ishia Bennison as Friar Lawrence and The Nurse that revealed their charismatic attractiveness but awful culpability in the tragedy that unfolds. The Merry Wives of Windsor was a different TOWIE kettle of fish – anchored by Ishia Bennison (again, as Mistress Quickly), Beth Cordingly, Rebecca Lacey and Jonathan Cullen as Mistress Ford, Mistress Page and Dr Caius but (happily for me) dominated by David Troughton’s Sir John Falstaff. There were more laughs than there probably should have been because of the skills of the actors (and the stunning Lez Brotherston’s set and costume designs) – but there will be other productions of this extraordinary play in years to come. A fitting quotation for both Romeo and Juliet and Merry Wives of Windsor is one of my favourite Shakespeare lines, a bit lost in the cartoon-world of this enjoyably shallow production:

O powerful Love, that in some respects makes a beast a man, in some other a man a beast.

Tamburlaine the Great, the play that unleashed Marlowe's mighty line

To be direct and honest is not safe
And so to Tamburlaine the Great, Marlowe’s two plays wrestled into one evening by ex-artistic director Michael Boyd with career-boosting performances by Jude Owusu and Rosy McEwan as Tamburlaine and Zenocrate. This was a hypnotic, careful, terrifying ensemble production with stunning music (James Jones) and evocative designs (Tom Piper with lighting by Colin Grenfell) and the whole cast should be applauded for their commitment to bringing the “scourge of the world” to full realisation. As if the RSC summer school glut of productions was not enough, I then indulged with Michael, my Shakespeare buddy, in a double-bill visit to Shakepeare’s Globe on London's South Bank to see strong productions of The Winter’s Tale and Othello. I’m often criticised for being too positive about life and always seeing the good in things – but although there were things I could carp about (certain lines, certain moments, certain perverse decisions) I always remember what it’s like to stage a production (in my 32 years of teaching) and try to appreciate at least what they were trying to do. (Hard to forgive the shit bear! in Winter’s Tale – but a pure revelation (to me) to have a black Michael Cassio in Othello. Mark Rylance, of course, was a devastatingly affable and disingenuous Iago – and I genuinely mourned the loss to the world at the death of André Holland’s Othello.

London's South Bank and Othello and The Winter's Tale

Cursed Child

The Palace Theatre and the walk to Top Withins

All is well

“The scar had not pained Harry for nineteen years. All was well.” Thus ended the seven books of J K Rowling’s Harry Potter series, a set of books I cannot praise too highly, as a retired teacher, for their readability and cultural impact during the time of the rise of mobile devices. My daughters “grew up” with the series paralleling the school years and troubles of Harry, Hermione and Ron (and Luna and Neville and Ginny and Draco and Dobby and Remus Lupin and Nymphadora Tonks and Sirius Black and Albus Dumbledore and Minerva McGonagall and Severus Snape….) and the cavalcade of characters, good and bad, complex and straightforward that continue to exercise the loyalties of readers the world over. It was inevitable that one day we would end up seeing “book 8” in its stage form and patience paid off as Harriet secured tickets for the two parts of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. Armed with Alex from Badby, a Younger Muggle for protection against interference from the Dark Arts of the railway system, we spent the last Saturday of June at the Palace Theatre.

Badby Barbecue

Who is the Cursed Child?

Since we faithfully promised at the theatre that we would Keep The Secrets, there will be no answer here to the question of Who is the Cursed Child but in typical J K Rowling fashion, the answer’s debatable. I managed to steer clear of the script, all reviews and any spoilers, so when the lights went down, I confess I was expecting something tourist-friendly and a bit theme-parky but within minutes I was hooked. By the twists of the narrative, the depth of characterisation, the connections to the Wizarding World’s canon, the bravura theatricality, the commitment of the cast (Jamie Ballard as the grown-up Harry Potter! – working every bit as intensely as when I’ve seen him before on stage as Antonio, Angelo, Hamlet, Mercutio, Flute and in Ibsen’s Emperor and Galilean.) Given the huge fan base, the production was way better than it need have been and the themes perfectly in keeping with the Harry Potter universe. How do parents shape the characters and destinies of their children? It was a profound climax to Harriet’s “birthday season” in 2018, the other highlight of which was tramping up to the cobweb-blowing meaning-of-life moorlands at Top Withins.

The sweet sorrow of Christmas Bells

Castle Howard afternoon tea

Castle Howard and Chatsworth
After our visit to Burton Agnes to see the homemade decorations earlier this month we also recently visited Castle Howard for afternoon tea (thank you, Emily!) and then called into Chatsworth to see what efforts they’d made for Christmas. There’s a contradiction in my old-fashioned socialist values that these giant houses exist, but like the monarchy, as long as they’re “paying their way” and generating leisure and historical perspectives I can reconcile my conscience.

Stories past and present
I’m in my element in a stately home or castle. Every room is riddled with ghostly stories, past and present. Some real events, some imagined fantasies.

Every room tells a story
You can imagine as you wander through corridors that all the rooms have been inhabited by individuals with hopes, dreams, griefs, triumphs, sadnesses, loves and loathings. At this time of year every room and staircase in Castle Howard and Chatsworth is also trimmed with creative and colourful Christmas paraphernalia. The Christmas themes are gloriously sparkling and gaudy, and somehow also equally moving and poignant.

High expectations
Yes, Christmas time is a time to gather with loved ones and indulge in excessive food and drink. Yes, it is a time to wish peace and good will to all women and men. Yes, it is a time when it is glorious to give and wonderful to receive. We dream, we aspire, we laugh, we love, we buy into the illusion of it being a special time of year. God bless us, everyone!

Painful memories
But of course it is a series of days just like any other series of days and we might be reminded of souls departed, absent loved ones, victims of homelessness and loneliness, migrants and the dispossessed, the poor and the needy, the bereaved and the traumatised. God bless us, everyone!

The shock and awe of the Nativity
Even the Nativity story is cockeyed with sweet sorrow: on the one hand there is

• an adorable baby
• picturesque shepherds and lambs and
• fairy-godmother-style-ThreeKingsFollowingAStar;

Angels on high at Castle Howard

and on the other hand there are

• migrants being oppressed by an occupying army’s controlling census
• a (supernatural?) unexpected pregnancy
• an accommodation crisis and
• a jealous king planning to Slaughter all the Innocents throughout the region.

A combination of fairy tale, religion, Myth, Legend, Eastenders and a horror film.

Angels on high
The decorations at Castle Howard were themed “angels on high” and everywhere you looked pairs of wings, cherubs, stylized angels or suggestions of angels peered down. Some were in windows, some in silhouette, some in precarious positions and some were suggested by ribbons or drapes. Some were intimate in nature, some were flamboyant and some seemed shy and half-hidden in Christmas trees.

Chatsworth House: Oh Dickens

Oh Dickens
Chatsworth, following its brilliant Fashion-themed displays earlier in the year, provided a Dickensian treat for Christmas. Books and quotations from Dickens tumbled down from piles of books and threads of fabric. The story of A Christmas Carol featured prominently, as you might expect (including a ghastly trembling animatronic Scrooge) but so did The Old Curiosity Shop, Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities, Little Dorrit and, near the end a tragically truthful Miss Havisham from Great Expectations haunting her wedding breakfast table, decayed and cobwebby.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times
The opening of Dickens’s Tale of Two Cities contains that famous paradoxical repetition and Christmas can be like that. It was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair…. Christmas contains all these contrasts.

Christmas contrasts 
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was inspired to write the following poem in 1863 during the American Civil War when his son disobeyed his fatherly instructions and went off to fight for the Union. The poem inspired the carol I Heard the bells on Christmas Day and whilst it celebrates many Christamassy ideas, it also captures the contrasts of right and wrong, war and peace, night and day, love and hate.

Christmas Bells
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along
The unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Till ringing, singing on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime,
A chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Then from each black, accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound
The carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a continent,
And made forlorn
The households born
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And in despair I bowed my head;
"There is no peace on earth," I said;
"For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
"God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men."

Miss Havisham from Great Expectations haunts her wedding breakfast....

Stories future
And so Goodbye Christmas for another year. Goodbye to 2017. Goodbye to 2 years of 5 blogs a month. From January I’ll spend less time blogging and more time working on editing my Rhenium Tales. 2018 will be the year in which I send my words to a book agent to see if anyone outside my life might be interested. Will the bells ring for me? Time will tell.

The incredible melting snowman - will this be a symbol of me in 2018? Or will I be the Christmas cake with a chunk ripped out of it? Or the smiling guy at the Thompson's Secret Santa table, full of tidings of comfort and joy....