Nostalgia ain't what it used to be

For weeks I couldn't summon up sufficient festive spirit to pen the verses for this year's Christmas greetings, but just as I was resigning myself to buying a multipack of charity cards, the General Election result on Friday 13 December (how apt) shocked me out of my lethargy. Rod got out his watercolours, we stocked up with printer cartridges and Fabriano paper and envelopes and created downloadable print and fold versions for overseas friends and business associates.

So with apologies to Irving Berlin and to Sir Quentin Blake, here is the RhysJones  Christmas Card for 2019. 

We were dreaming of a white Christmas,

just like the ones we used to know,

when treetops glistened, politicians listened

and people weren’t homeless in the snow. 

We were hoping for a gold Christmas,

and honest people at the top,

with no pretensions, and best intentions

to make the Brexit nightmare stop.

Now we’re looking at a blue Christmas

this card is really hard to write,

when days aren’t merry or bright

and we await the promise of the right.

We’re dreaming of a green Christmas

when all the little girls and boys

say ‘how fantastic, there is no plastic

in our big stockings full of toys.’

We’re going to have a kind Christmas,

just like the ones we used to share,

when friends and neighbours did people favours

and all knew what was right and fair.

We wish you all a good Christmas

with peace on earth to everyone,

and a future that fills up with light

making all our Christmases glow bright.

Sins of omission

As we enter the last month of 2019, with a mixture of festive anticipation and uncertainty about what the New Year will bring, I stick doggedly to my resolution to be positively creative. Driven partly for pleasure, partly by guilt about a neglected blog and partly to escape political mayhem. last Saturday I spent the day at a novel writing masterclass at The Guardian. This Sunday it’s the Buzzwords poetry workshop and readings in Cheltenham,  run for many years by poet and academic Dr Angela France. Guest poet Jean Atkin, billed as the Troubadour of the Hills, starts off by giving us a piece of Victorian verse and tells we have five minutes to redact it to create a different poem. “Redact like the Russian report, or Mueller?” I find myself asking. “Absolutely,” comes the reply.

My verse is from a religious poem called ‘Immanence’, written by devout Anglo Catholic author Evelyn Underhill, whose work Mysticism was the most successful of its genre until Aldous Huxley published The Perennial Philosophy in 1946, five years after she died. Words leap out of the lines, conjuring an irresistible image of another devout Englishwoman, famous for shoes and rural childhood misdemeanors.

Theresa May’s Naughtiness

Little things, my feet,

Amidst the delicate wheat

That springs triumphant.

I dwell in power,

not broken or divided,

I come to flower

at the threshold [of number 10?]

So much for escaping politics, and a lesson in how removing words can dramatically change an author’s sense and meaning. Brings back memories of those years at Kings College London, and the MSc in Construction Law. Time to get back to the novel, not to mention writing the verses for this year's Christmas card....

Taking a coffee break and enjoying the view from The Guardian offices