new year reflections: december 2023…

I’ve been scribbling New Year Reflections on my blog for a number of years now (as always – just a reminder for ME). Initially, I decided to drop this rather lame ‘tradition’ but then realised that, because I forget stuff so easily, it made sense to jot things down for future reference! I’ll endeavour to keep it relatively brief this year (some hope!)…
 
WONDERFUL BOOKS:
The Storysmith Book Group (run by our lovely local bookshop) has continued to be brilliant - interesting books, lovely people and good fun too… and I’ve also been part of the ‘Blokes Books’ bookgroup involving some great mates (but, as ever, it seems to take ages for the group to read each book/organise meet-ups!). I continue to read a LOT of books (85 this year) and here are my FIVE favourites (in no particular order):
Small Things Like These (Claire Keegan); The High House (Jessie Greengrass); Devotions (Mary Oliver); Tin Man (Sarah Winman); and, I KNOW I’m cheating here, four ‘Lucy Barton books’ (Elizabeth Strout, my current favourite author): My Name Is Lucy Barton, Anything Is Possible, Oh William! and Lucy By The Sea.
 
GREAT FILMS:
Strangely, I’ve only been to the Watershed eleven times this year (a lot of post-pandemic films haven’t really appealed to me?) but, nevertheless, I saw some brilliant movies. These were my FIVE favourites:
Talking Heads: Stop Making Sense; Tish; Past Lives; Asteroid City; and Lunana: a Yak in the Classroom… (plus, of course, It’s A Wonderful Life!).
 
LOVELY LIVE PERFORMANCES/EXHIBITIONS:
We continue to enjoy going to the theatre, concerts and exhibitions (but, sadly, not many theatre trips in 2023 – although those we did make were excellent) – but still a long way to go! Here are a few favourites (I feel sure there are some exhibitions I’ve forgotten):
THEATRE:
As You Like It (RSC Stratford); Drive Your Plow Over The Bones Of The Dead (Bristol Old Vic); and Kathy+Stella (Bristol Old Vic).
CONCERTS:
Karine Polwart+Kitty Macfarlane; O’Hooley+Tidow; Three Cane Whale; The Metropolitan Orchestra: Mahler Symphony No.1; The Metropolitan Orchestra: Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No.4 (all at St George’s). 
EXHIBITIONS:
170th Annual Open Exhibition (RWA); Threads (Arnolfini); Force Of Nature Light Show (Bristol Cathedral); Found Cities, Lost Objects: Women In The City (RWA); Oil Fountain: Luke Jerram (Bristol Cathedral); Photography Exhibition (RWA); plus various art at The Ashmolean, Oxford.
SPORTING MOMENTS:
This year has been a sparse year in terms of watching ANY ‘live’ first-class sport (understatement!). I watched just ONE game of rugby (courtesy of Robin) and, I think, only TWO days of cricket at Gloucestershire CC!
Pathetic, I know! Determined to watch more cricket in 2024…
 
ART STUFF:
With no Art Trail participation these days, my ‘Art Stuff’ is fairly limited… and predictable (although it continues to represent a crucial and enjoyable part of my life):
1. I’ve continued to post a drawing or photograph every day as part of my “One Day Like This” blog (now some 4,120 consecutive days – that’s more than 2,000 drawings and 2,000 photographs - since I started in September 2012, more than 11 years ago)!
2. Urban Sketchers, Bristol: I’ve continued to really enjoy this wonderful group (which I joined in March 2018 and am now one of its three administrators)… it’s a worldwide organisation and, here in Bristol, we meet up every month and get anything from 15 to over 30 people coming along. It’s a real highlight and joy.
3. I think I need to paint a bit more than I actually do…
 
HOLIDAYS/LEISURE:
After three years of ‘no holidays’, we actually went away a couple of times this year. We spent a lovely 5 days in Oxford in July – re-living our student days; and then 6 days in Exmouth - it was lovely to see the sea again after so long (just a pity that the weather was pretty grim).
 
SPIRITUAL LIFE:
In theory, I continue to be part of the Community of Saint Stephens in the heart of the city but, as has been the case for several years now, I’m really struggling faith-wise. So much so that, for the past 15 months or so, I’ve taken a ‘sabbatical’ from attending church services (although I did attend the ‘Bethlehem Midnight Mass’ at Saint Stephen’s on Christmas Eve). How long this will continue, only time will tell (indefinitely perhaps?). Moira continues to attend pretty regularly. In the meantime, I’m still trying to find a way of reflecting on the spiritual stuff in my life (albeit far from convincingly!). Meanwhile, I continue to go along to our weekly 7.30am café gatherings for Blokes’ Prayer (which has effectively become my ‘church’) and also attend many of the fortnightly Resonate evening sessions.
 
HEALTH:
My health has been pretty good this year… apart from the normal ageing process (my teeth continue to fall out; I’ve got two hearing aids; I take tablets for my atrial fibrillation plus blood thinners and statins; and have eye drops to deter my glaucoma). My main frustration is my left hip (it’s gradually got worse over the past 3 years); I’ve been walking with a stick over the last 6 months (and my geographical range has vastly reduced!)… and I’m finding it increasingly debilitating. I definitely need a hip replacement (my right hip was replaced 9 years ago) and I’m currently scheduled for an operation in 6-9 months’ time (I’ve got a hospital appointment on 5 January – when, hopefully, I might be given an operation date?).
Meanwhile, Moira continues to deal with her Parkinson’s Disease (confirmed May 2022). She’s generally pretty well and her medication seems to be pretty effective… and she undertakes daily physical exercise via her PD Warrior links (I’m a little in awe of her). Her main frustration is the lack of contact with her Consultants (she’s seen them just once – in May 2022 – and was promised a follow-up consultation within 3-4 months). Despite pressure on the Consultants from her PD Nurse (Moira’s only way of contacting the consultants), she’s still awaiting ANY feedback – 19 MONTHS LATER!
Having lived with the uncertainties of a pandemic over the past FEW years, we’ve become rather used to living with uncertainty!
 
OTHER STUFF:
My early morning walking activities have dropped depressingly over the past 12 months (due to my ongoing hip issues)… but, as alternative dawn ‘activity’, I really enjoy watching the mornings begin… looking through our living room windows.
We gave up the car 6 years ago and, more than a year ago, I gave up driving altogether – so buses and trains are now our default modes of transport. Weirdly, I seem to have developed some form of ‘anxiety’ towards travel.
The world seems to be full of challenges these days (it was probably ever thus)… wars, the climate change, annoying politicians… greed, poverty, lack of funding for the NHS, mental health, education and so much more.
But I DO love reflecting back on the things that have happened over the previous twelve months and, each year, it’s a reminder that there WILL be some very special things that they will happen in the coming year – even though, at this moment, I don’t know what 2024 will bring. No doubt there will be some sad stuff too… and perhaps encounters we feel ill-equipped to face? In such times, families and friendships will, once again, see us through.
For us as a family, it’s been another good year (despite its challenges)… and we continue to count our blessings.
I wish you (and all yours) a very happy, healthy and (hopefully) peaceful 2024. 

november-december 2023 books…

Tomorrow And Tomorrow And Tomorrow (Gabrielle Zevin): This is our next Storysmith bookgroup book (478 pages long – which, as we always skip meeting in December, allows time for us all to read it!). This is a book about video gaming. I know NOTHING about video gaming… but it didn’t matter. It’s a complex book about friendship, love, creativity, betrayal, rivalry and tragedy (but, as the book’s cover makes clear: “it’s not a romance”!). The key characters, Sam and Sadie, first meet in childhood – in a hospital games room (Sam had an injured foot, which becomes a long-term disability). Years later, they bump into each other at a train station when they were both college students (Sam, mathematics at Harvard and Sadie, computer science at MIT) and, cutting a long story short, end up making an incredibly successful video game together. Their non-romantic relationship is a joining of minds and of worlds but, such creative relationships can also cause rivalry and resentment… which is what happens with them (despite them both continuing to work in the Company they’d set up together at the very beginning). I don’t want to spoil things, so will leave it at that – apart from saying that the story ends with an abstract section set in a virtual world which, ultimately, reveals a means of communication and reconciliation for its real-life players. It’s a very clever, intriguing (and very enjoyable) book.
Uncle Fred In The Springtime (PG Wodehouse): I read this more than 6 years ago (first published 1939), but had forgotten most of it(!). Uncle Fred is Lord Ickenham - as with many of Wodehouse’s books, this one’s full of titled/upper-class characters – and he is urged by a Lord Emsworth to save his prize pig (an everyday story of country folk!). The plot is predictably complex and farcical and, just to complicate things further, many of the characters take on disguised personas during the course of the tale. Who could ever forget(!) people with names such as Pongo Twistleton, Horace Pendlebury-Davenport, Galahad Threepwood, Bingo Little, Oofy Prosser and Bricky Bostock? It’s an absurd storyline but, thanks to Wodehouse’s wonderful, posh descriptions and humour, it provides a hugely enjoyable respite to all the current troubles here in the UK and the world.
Mrs McGinty’s Dead (Agatha Christie): Resorting back to yet another Christie novel (I think we have something like 35 of them on our bookshelves!). This one was first published in 1952 and a village charwoman is murdered and her lodger is found guilty of killing her… but a local police superintendent has his doubts and seeks the help of a certain retired detective, Hercule Poirot. It’s a very clever, satisfying mystery – with lots of plausible possibilities and suspects.
Pessimism Is For Lightweights (Salena Godden): This is a book of 30 poems by a writer I hadn’t previously come across. One of the reviews I came across talked about them as poems “for courage and justice”… there are poems that salute people fighting for justice, poems on sexism and racism, class discrimination, period poverty and homelessness, asylum seekers, immigration and identity. I found them hugely impressive and read them out loud to myself each morning. Excellent.
Choose Life (Rowan Williams): This was my book for this year’s Advent. It’s a series of Christmas and Easter sermons Williams gave in Canterbury Cathedral between 2002 and 2012 (I’ve just read the Advert ones for now). Williams has always struck me as a wise and intelligent man and so I felt that, in my ongoing faith struggles, he might be a good person to read about Christianity at Advent. It proved to be a useful, thought-provoking book – albeit it didn’t quite haul me out of my spiritual wilderness. 

it’s a wonderful life…

Han, Fee, Ursa, Moira and I went along to the Watershed yesterday to see Frank Capra’s iconic 1946 fantasy Christmas film… starring James Stewart (George Bailey) and Donna Reed (Mary Hatch).
It’s a great favourite of mine and I’ve watched it several times (and own the DVD), but never at the cinema… and Hannah, Fee or Ursa hadn’t ever seen it.
You’re probably very familiar with the plot… on Christmas Eve 1945, in Bedford Falls, New York, George Bailey contemplates suicide. The prayers of his family and friends reach Heaven, where guardian angel second class Clarence Odbody is assigned to save George in order to earn his wings…
So starts a series of flashbacks of George’s life… he saves his younger brother from drowning; prevents the local pharmacist from accidentally poisoning a customer's prescription; his ambitions for travel and study are thwarted by his father’s death and so is required to take over the family banking business… he marries; ends up using their honeymoon savings to keep the bank afloat… and, of course, has to fight off a certain Mr Henry Potter who effectively controls the town through devious methods…
I’ll spare you the remaining gory details but, cutting a long story short, Potter steals money from Bailey without Bailey realising; the bank faces scandal and criminal charges… and George Bailey contemplates suicide.
Enter Clarence…
It proved to be a rather wonderful evening: a pretty full-to-capacity cinema; all members of our ‘party’ absolutely loved the film; and, perhaps for only the third time in my experience, the entire audience clapped at the end!
If you’ve never seen it, then I really thinking you need to!
PS: Apparently, at the Glasgow Film Theatre, it’s been the venue’s biggest earner for 12 of the last 15 years!

nothing changes…

As part of my Advent ‘ponderings’, I‘ve been reading Rowan Williams’s Christmas sermons from his time in office as Archbishop of Canterbury, 2002-2012 (”Choose Life”). I’ve always found him a wise and thought-provoking man…
The following words from Christmas 2008 are a poignant reminder of how little has changed in the Middle East:
“This year, as every year, we remember in our prayers the crises and sufferings of the peoples of the Holy Land: how tempting it is to think that somehow there will be a ‘saviour’ here – a new US president with a fresh vision, an election in Israel or Palestine that will deliver some new negotiating strategy. It’s perfectly proper to go on praying for a visionary leadership in all those contexts; but meanwhile, the ‘saving’ work is already under way, not delayed until there is a comprehensive settlement.
This last year, one of the calendars in my study… has been the one issued by by Families for Peace – a network of people from both communities in the Holy Land who have lost children or relatives in the continuing conflict; people who expose themselves to the risk of meeting the family of someone who killed their son or daughter, the risk of being asked to sympathise with someone whose son or daughter was killed by activists promoting what you regard as a just cause. The Parents Circle and Families Forum organised by this network are labouring to bring hope into a situation of terrible struggle simply by making the issues ‘flesh’, making them about individuals with faces and stories. When I have met these people, I have been overwhelmed by their courage; but also left with no illusions about how hard it is, and how they are made to feel again and again that they come to their own and their own refuse to know them. Yet if I had to identify where you might begin to speak of witnesses to ‘salvation’ in the Holy Land, I should unhesitatingly point to them.”
Fifteen years on, nothing changes… and the prayers remain the same. 

half a mile from home…

In August 2021, Moira and I moved into an apartment in the very heart of Bristol city centre – our immediate neighbours are the Central Library and the Cathedral.
Although we already knew our neighbourhood pretty well (we’ve lived in Bristol since 2003), we’ve become increasingly conscious of just how fortunate we are to have SO many beautiful locations within easy walking distance of our new flat – LITERALLY ‘half a mile from home’.

Here are just a few – in no particular order (ALL within half a mile of our front door):

1. The Cathedral
2. College Green
3. Lord Mayor’s Chapel
4. Balloon Fiesta (the balloons often fly over us)
5. RWA (Royal West of England Academy)
6. Bristol Old Vic
7. Brandon Hill
8. Watershed
9. Berkeley Square
10. The Hippodrome
11. Saint Stephen’s Church (our church community)
12. Saint Nicholas Market
13. Nelson Street (Street Art)
14. Bristol Beacon (formerly Colston Hall)
15. SS Great Britain
16. Queen Square
17. Arnolfini
18. Central Library
19. Saint George’s
20. Harbourside
21. Christmas Steps
22. Bristol Museum+Art Gallery

Not to mention the pubs, bars, cafés, restaurants, hotels and small shops
(and I feel sure I’ve left stuff out!).
 
Since the first Covid lockdown (March 2020), I think Moira and I have gradually both become conscious that “we’ve aged”! We’ve certainly become far less adventurous when it comes to travel and holidays… neither of us currently has a passport and or continues to drive. We now rely on public transport to get from A to B. 
There’s a sense that our worlds have become smaller and, although that perhaps sounds rather negative, it’s also made us incredibly aware of just how fortunate we are to have so much on our doorstep.
Lucky, lucky us!
Photograph: Some images (photographs and sketches) of our neighbouring facilities and resources!