3.30a.m. Christmas Morning

Hmm, I choose this of all nights not to be able to sleep! I think it's anticipation: a left-over from childhood that remains with me as the eternal spark of Christmas as it should be.

Looking out of the kitchen window, the world looks very peaceful and still. The road is quiet and the lights reflect perfectly off the river where the water lays as still as the night itself.

There is a dangerous melancholy about me. The peace has lulled my brain into unguarded thinking.Instead of dwelling on the wonderment of children waking to the excitement of presents and THE day being finally here, I think of the way Christmas has become. Please someone, reassure me that kids still experience the magic that cynical adulthood has crushed - or, perhaps, misplaced?

Maybe I'm just too old for it all? I watched EastEnders tonight with all its careful preparation for the chaos characteristic of Albert Square life and was totally immune to the implosions of families apparently to come. Then I saw the Salvation Army band playing carols in the Square and got totally emotional.

Now I'm not a greatly religious person but part of Christmas is still hearing the chapters in Luke's Gospel . There is something comforting about the constant of the words and the message contained within. I hear Wham! or Slade and feel nothing - Oh Come All Ye Faithful or Silent Night serve not only as a reminder of a life of past Christmases but carry a beauty which, to me, is so totally perfect and totally evocative of a moment. A moment that makes me hope that mankind can live together.

I've posted very little over the past few days. I have held my thoughts and emotions in check. The question: Is this because I can't let myself get too excited for fear of disappointment or I don't feel I deserve to be allowed the pleasure of "joining in"?

Anyway, it is of no consequence now, Christmas is here and I shall be spending a full day, surrounded by people. It should be great.

Yesterday I only managed 5 Christmas kisses (and one of those was from a bloke!). I must be slipping!

Maybe this year is strange because of Dad. I think of him a lot as he so loved Christmas. I can't honestly say I miss him - but I miss what he represents. I suppose Christmas is a bit like that too.

Happy Christmas XXX

A Christmas Blog

Inspired by others out there, I thought I'd do my own Ho Ho Ho Christmas meme. I've not thought of questions (nor answers!) in advance so step one is brainstorming a few of the former. Now, you can't see this bit but I'm taking a Sheaffer Imperial (filled with brown ink) and jotting down various ideas. Not the easiest of tasks as the (previously broadcast) tidy desk has disappeared under a morass of papermoney, mugs, paper, tissues and.............hang on..........where on earth did that come from? Oh, how gross! I think Reg must have popped round.

Anyway, I now have a list so here goes:

• Ideal Christmas: Warm inside, dark and stormy outside. The room filled with loved ones...............Oh, you know what I mean. I'm sure everyone has the same ideal.

• Best Present Ever: Absolutely no idea! I have strong memories of a scooter when I was about 6. It rained for several days and all I could do was use it up and down the hall. Most frustrating.

• Christmas Food: I'm not a turkey person really: give me roast beef any day. Having said that, cold meat and pickles is always my favourite bit and I shall be doing my Coca-Cola ham as tradition dictates. We're actually going out for our Christmas meal for the first time ever so that should be whizzo. No washing-up and, as the restaurant is literally next door, no worries about getting there or back. We've also been invited to a friend's pub for a private evening and more food so basically, the diet's totally buggered that day.

• Christmas TV: Having made my annual Radio Times purchase, I see that the schedule is as bad as always. I shall watch some carols at some point, Corrie and Eastenders - apart from that, little else appeals. Is it me or is it Society? Once we were happy with Morecambe and Wise and even Noel Edmonds. I think Christmases were gentler then and we had no wealth of expectation as we do now.

• Christmas Film: As a kid at Christmas, I'd sit there and watch all the "greats" like High Noon, Ivanhoe, Jason and the Argonauts etc. Mum and Dad loved their films and it was tradition to sit and tick off the ones they really wanted to see. As I went through this year's, I found myself thinking how much Dad would have liked them.

• Christmas Song: Sadly, when they all start blaring in the shops from October onwards, modern songs seem to lose their appeal. Having said that, I shall probably slip on a Christmas songs CD to listen to on my iPod Christmas morning when they seem to take on a different light. Ideally, I would love a Sally Army band outside the window playing carols because I still think they're the best Christmas songs. Silent Night is the most incredibly evocative tune of past Christmases and will reduce me to an emotional wreck.

• Best Christmas Character: Has to be Father Christmas of course! Sitting telling tales of his preparations for Christmas when the kids were smaller was wonderful and their faces as they scanned the Christmas Eve skies for a glimpse of him are still very real. I still tell my children that Father Christmas is real if you want him to be (and I still believe it too).

• Best Christmas Memory: Obviously, Christmases when the kids were young. Seeing their faces and enjoying their happiness and excitement was a privilege. The frantic building of toys and the desperate search for batteries was a real joy! Let's face it, Christmas is a time for children of all ages and I would give so much to recapture that feeling.

• Christmas Wish: A Christmas time-machine! Oh, and I'm ever hopeful that, one day, Steve McQueen and his motor-bike will get over that bloody fence!
  

Other Christmas memories I have: Walking to Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve with my girlfriend when I was about 20. It was snowing and the roads were silent and white - absolutely magical. I remember Christmas Eve as a kid myself. Mum and Dad would come in and put my presents on the end of the bed once they thought I had gone to sleep. I, of course, was still wide-awake and lay there petrified that they would see this and take the presents away again.

The room was freezing cold (lino and no central heating) and I would take my Christmas stocking and dive under the covers where it was nice and snug and warm. In the darkness, I would slowly, carefully and quietly remove the contents: a few nuts and a satsuma at the toe but also perhaps a metal racing car or some soldiers. Laying there, still shivering with excitement, I would eventually drift off to sleep - Christmas had finally arrived.

I still long for Christmas although it is a much more muted affair these days. This year will be stranger than most as Dad used to so love Christmas and my thoughts are of him quite a bit. However, now's as good a time as any to wish my few faithful readers a very peaceful and wonderful Christmas. May you all be surrounded with joy, happiness and the greatest present of all - love.

The Pen is Mightier than the Bored

These days, for reason unknown, I just can't seem to write. It's as if my brain won't permit me to do something I enjoy now that I have given myself the freedom to do so.

I remember once someone said to me that I tried to destroy anything that made me happy as a way of punishing myself. It's something I've pondered on long and hard and I think that, whilst once it was probably true, nowadays I have come to terms with it and have adapted my life accordingly. I take the easy option these days as, since I retired, my challenges have become less and I have the luxury of walking away from those that don't appeal. Perhaps I'm just getting bored with writing? I had certain things I wanted to get out and (maybe) they are all now released therefore the desire has been assuaged.

Personally, I think I have just put a pressure of expectation upon myself: a bit like when you're asked to give a specimen. You can rest assured it's the one time you can't co-operate.

I hope that, one day,I can get back into unconscious writing and thus rediscover something that gave me so much pleasure and was a real therapy once upon a time. Perhaps I'm scared of writing? Early this morning, I was re-reading some stuff I wrote several years ago when I was fairly screwed up and the sheer intensity and "nakedness" of it made me almost wish I was back there. I wrote because I had nothing to lose. I wrote because I needed to release things within me. I wrote, I think, because I had nothing else to give.

They were interesting days. I was asked if I wanted some time away from the world, which I gratefully accepted and my private health insurance paid for a few weeks in a lovely old building in Hove which had been converted to a Clinic. At that time, I had really withdrawn from the world and to be somewhere that I could be myself with no pressure, surrounded by others who understood my feelings, was just wonderful.

I wasn't totally gaga - I'd apparently "burned out". I just wanted time and peace and solitude. A place to relax where I could do what I liked, when I liked and how I liked. At first I just read, relaxed, wrote and chatted to the other people there. The nursing staff left me to my own devices as I was effectively on holiday and I was free to come and go as I pleased. They did try to get me to come to discussion groups but I wasn't very good at those as I kept disagreeing with the lady running them to the extent that, one day, I was asked by her if I wished to take over their running. A challenge which I accepted and we all had a great time.

Sadly, I was looked on as a bit of a rebel (funny that!) and was once told that I should be setting a better example to the younger residents as they looked to me as a leader. Oh. I led alright. It was great being classed as psychologically poorly because you could do anything and get away with it. We had food fights, practical jokes galore, all sorts of silly pranks - and they couldn't touch us for it! It was the 1998 World Cup whilst I was there and we decorated the smoking room with banners, flags and other assorted football accoutrements and had a thoroughly wonderful time. I used to drive home at weekends but really looked forward to getting back on a Monday - a little oasis of allowable madness in the great insanity of the outside world.

I was there for several weeks in total and they were some of the happiest and saddest times of my life. I met real people, stripped of all pretensions and controls. They were being themselves, as, at long last, was I and that forged some really strong friendships. The problem was, of course, that we all had problems and it was both a privilege and an agony to see veneers removed. We shared great highs and dreadful lows and there were many times when we would sit there all night, secure in each other's company, talking about our doubts and our fears. Often, this would be therapeutic for those involved but, just sometimes, I would see the results of the agonies within. Someone would disappear for a while and then return with bandaged wrists or freshly-scarred bodies. Their agony became our agony as we all closed ranks against the world.

I was never very good at allowing my feelings to show and tended to pretend I was fine. Once, for reasons I forget, I allowed myself to let out my emotions. It was a strange experience: half of me wanting the uncontrolled sobbing to continue whilst the other half of me was desperately fighting it. I was doing fine until a (rather nice) Norwegian nurse came up and cuddled me and that was the signal to regain control. Lesson Number 1: never let them see.

You see, I can talk about it now because it's impersonal. Should people read it, they don't know me so they can't judge me. It's also predominantly historical now so I can talk about it freely. When I finally finished there I don't think I walked out a different man but who knows? I'm certainly better these days although I still have my periods of introversion, isolation and self-doubt. But then, who doesn't?

I'll leave you with something I wrote in honour of my time there.

Owed to T********** Clinic

Life is just a bowl of corn flakes
You wake up every morning and it's there
The world's in collusion to enhance the illusion
It's a cereal killer beware.

They send us men to mend our minds
If we've got minds to mend
If they can't find it, never mind! It
Proves we're round the bend!

Another session to combat depression
To learn, perchance to live.
So much travail, to what avail?
I'll take, why can't I give?

Pretence is my defence.
A ruse by any other name.
A fraud, a sham, who gives a damn?
The whole thing's just a game.

To blur is humane: to forget, divine.
Just hide behind the mask.
Plus ca change, mais where's the new day?
It's such an uphill task

Secure withing my counsel house,
Unsure of what to find.
Potions and pills merely camouflage ills.
I'm scared of finding my mind!

Religion is an opiate.
Oh God, please let me sleep.
Is this all dreams or what it seems -
A thought that's gone too deep.

Come Morpheus, take me to your arms,
We've got a date to keep.
I promise true I'll dream of you
But I just can't get to sleep!!!

© GH 23 July 1998

An Apple a Day............

When I was a kid, there weren't, of course, the amazing toys that children have these days. I had my toy soldiers, my toy guns and a tortoise called Esmerelda. As you can appreciate, I was militarily inclined as a young'un: Esmerelda didn't really come in useful apart from yanking her little tail and lobbing her like a hand grenade but she played her part (albeit briefly). I had a Scalextric and a lovely train set as well but they were occasional fads and these stopped when my Mum informed me that she'd sold them "as I no longer played with them" - bless her!

Maybe because of the dearth of technology (not to mention money) in those days, I am an archetypal "boys toys" candidate and the latest addition to the fold is the new sixth generation 80gb iPod Classic which I bought yesterday. I've never had an iPod so spent a happy time trying to work out exactly what it did and how it did it. This failed miserably so, resisting the urge to read any manuals, I decided to plunge in and import some of my mp3s. It can hold about 20,000 songs or 100 hours of video so I had plenty of scope: the only trouble was, where did I start?

I decided to go for my Terry Pratchett audio books - some 36 of them, and started working my way through them, unRARing and then importing. The problem was that the nice people who allowed me to share these (wink!) weren't exactly tidy in the way they put the files within each audio book. Oh sure, they went in fine and I could play them but the iTunes list was soooooo messy! Different files within a single book titled differently and (horror of horrors!) lots of spelling mistakes. Aesthetically and semantically, my anality genes were up in arms (now, there's a vision to conjure with) so I had no alternative other than to go through and put it all right. By 4am this morning I had those I had "podded" looking all neat and tidy so stumbled off to bed, only to wake again this morning, loins girded, prepared to finish off the rest.

Let me say, at this juncture, I was also indebted to our new Tassimo coffee machine which had provided me with enough caffeine the day before to keep several hundred narcoleptics wide awake (I wonder what's the collective noun for narcoleptics? A kip? A flop?). For those that are looking for a Christmas pressie that makes great coffee and even passable tea, quickly and with the minimum of mess and faffing around, consider a Tassimo. Currently on special in Tesco for under £60 and most worthwhile.

Anyway, where was I before the commercial break? Ah yes........the Pratchetts finished, I played around for a while with video but still can't work out just how to transfer YouTube vids. None of the stuff on Google made a lot of sense so I put it on the back burner and prepared for the main task of music selection.

Oh my gosh, where does one start? I initially thought to put everything on there but then realised I would need several more iPods, given the several hundred CDs we have - not to mention what I have as MP3s. OK, be logical, Graygray: what has priority? I immediately dashed off around the various CD staches in the house and came back precariously balancing 27 Neil Young CDs. I put several on (which is actually dead easy) and then stopped..........will I really listen to them all? The audio books alone will take me some 288 hours to get through therefore should I be selective in the music? I wandered round gazing at the CDs once more. Ooh, that one's got one I really like and this one's got a couple and............aaaaaaargh! Is the rest of my life to be devoted to feeding the insatiable iPod?

I eventually stopped playing and decided to go out and buy some dinner, pleased that I had finally joined the ranks of Podders. Proudly sporting my insignia of the white lead as I wandered the shelves of Scummerfields, and idly noticing that for once, their shelves were actually stocked; albeit with several hundred different makes of Christmas biscuits and several thousand barrels of Twiglets, I stopped every 20 seconds as I changed my mind about the music and chose something else. It was like being in a sweet shop with such a selection to choose from but I finally settled on the latest Kaiser Chiefs album.

Now I don't know about you, but it's very funny watching people listening to personal music. Their mouths occasionally emit a tuneless drone as they subconsciously sing along and, after seeing the feared glances in my direction, I realised I was guilty of the same crime. Strangled groans along the lines of Ruby, Ruby, Rubeeeeeeeeeee were drowning out the musak of the store speakers as I searched desperately for something non-Christmassy to eat. I was also suddenly conscious of bopping around as I stood and gazed catatonically at the mountain of mince pies where real food once existed. I grinned embarrassedly at the onlookers and hid for a while behind some boxes of Easter eggs before finally making my escape.

It's a time-consuming pastime loading an iPod but I'd better stop now - it's time to go explore some more torrents.

Boy's Toys? I love 'em!

Pomp & Circumstance

Now most of my life I've been a bit of a rebel: walking on the cracks on the pavement, gaily passing under ladders and even, (just occasionally) not saying Good Morning Mr Magpie, should I see one in solitary splendour. I remember about 30 years ago, as a reasonably senior member of the Inland Revenue in Brighton, strolling in wearing an earring and seeing the looks of shock on the faces of the other Inspectors. It was a small victory against the Establishment and one of many over the years.

I like to be different. People know it's me wandering around the town as nobody else wears a full-length leather coat and black suede stetson hat and I see nothing wrong with asserting one's personality (or should that be eccentricity?).

Having said that, I watched the documentary on BBC1 about the Royal Family and was totally blown away by the whole programme. I know a lot of people who would have us as a Republic; they talk of the money wasted on an outdated, anachronistic and iniquitously inherited aristocracy, they speak of the money wasted in ceremonial matters and the vast upkeep required to keep the Royals in splendour. No doubt they have some valid reasons for their beliefs and, equally, I would probably agree with some of them, but the bottom line is .............I am a staunch Royalist: I always have been and always will be. I can't rationalise it and don't really feel the need to. All I know is that seeing the pomp, the ceremony and the sheer bloody hard work which goes into making our country the envy of the pageantry world makes me pretty damn proud to be a loyal subject of Her Majesty.

I was in awe at the efficiency of the Royal household. If nothing else, it proves that tradition can be useful. The whole well-oiled operation; whether it be visiting dignitaries, investitures or just plain everyday Court duties is based on precedent and an incredibly organised machine. One can only imagine at the number of hands shaken over Betty's reign, the endless speeches given and listened to, meaningless conversations and ceremonies and the knowledge that her every move is watched. Even worse, her every public move is choreographed. No popping out for a quick 30 minutes, no throwing a sickie - just a life of total duty. It's the same with a lot of the other Royals (and I know the argument about so do a lot of other people).

They were born into a life not of their own choosing, a destiny to which their choice has not been taken into account. The argument that they live a life of luxury doesn't hold water with me - I certainly wouldn't trade places (apart from the getting into footie matches free). Sitting down to nice meals is great but I'd rather do it with friends and not with 200 people I don't know. Going to watch a gig is great but sitting through a Royal Variety performance? I think not! Even having everybody watching their Ps and Qs all the time rather than just enjoying a social moment is enough to put me off.

There are plenty of valid arguments both for and against the Monarchy but it boils down to one thing for me - I get a real thrill and pride watching the pageantry and revelling in the tradition. I remember in my Foreign Office days, sitting at a window in Whitehall watching the State procession when Emperor Hirohito visited London. Sheer magic. I've been lucky enough to (in a very small way) be part of the great British tradition and wandered the halls of history. The sheer majesty and splendour of the great London buildings and palaces is awe-inspiring and I would hate to see it all become anything less than a working environment.

Had I pursued my career at the Foreign & Commonwealth Office then, by now, I might be speaking from a position of greater knowledge. However, I shall have to wait a little longer until I get the letter from Downing Street informing me of my recognition for services to Queen, Country and the Haribo Corporation.

Until then, I shall still stand proud as the National Anthem is played and raise my glass to the Queen - God bless her!