Through a glass darkly – 166

I bought a diary last week, a Quo Vadis executive planning diary. As a sign of confidence in the future. But I don’t have anything to put in it yet. Except for the dates of the [grand-] children’s birthdays. And the programme for next year’s Six Nations rugby matches.

STOP PRESS  And the date of the installation of the New Rector at St Anne’s, Dunbar. Invite just received.

Facebook reminds me that we were in Kiev for Christmas four years ago, in 2021. Spending Advent and Christmas doing locum ministry at the small Anglican church there. The Russian troops invaded some five weeks after we left. FB asks if I want to re-post some of the photos. But I don’t. The following year, 2022, our much loved daughter Joanna was coming to the end of her life in Florence Nightingale hospice at Stoke Mandeville. And I stupidly, not believing that she was going to die, stayed in Chantilly on locum work until December 18th. I saw her in the hospice on December 19th and 20th, and she died very early in the morning of December 21st. We miss her every day.

For Christmas 2023 we were both back in Chantilly, and were joined for Christmas Day by Craig and Amelia and Eloïse. Lunch came mainly from Picard, as I recall. Last year, 2024, were were across in Fife for Christmas. Enjoying the hospitality of Jan and Colin and their family. And again with Craig and the girls.

This year Jem and Anna, and Freya and Oskar, are coming up to Edinburgh for Christmas. And we are looking forward to seeing them all. Needless to say, it doesn’t feel like Christmas. We haven’t been down into the centre of town to see the lights in Princes Street. The Carol  Service at St Peter’s was last Sunday evening, but with driving wind and rain I stayed at home. And the Service of Readings and Carols at Newington Trinity is not until the Sunday after Christmas. Which may be a nationwide Presbyterian quirk. Or possibly just local [invented] tradition.

With several decades of hindsight I guess the classic Christmases of my memory were from about 1953 to about 1959. From when I was eight to about thirteen. My maternal grand-father had retired from the Great Western Railway, failing to qualify by six months for the desired gold watch. [Given, I think, for fifty years of service.] My grand-parents moved on retirement to Bradford-on-Avon, to a big and distinctive house on the side of the hill above Holy Trinity, sharing it with a great-aunt and great-uncle.

The two families fell out and rarely spoke. We invariably went there for Christmas, sitting down to lunch [always chicken as I recall; turkeys had not yet been discovered] with about thirteen or fourteen aunts and uncles and cousins. And home-made parsnip wine for the grown-ups. Lunch was preceded by a [BCP] church  service at Holy Trinity. Always cold and excruciatingly dull. Followed by a walk, men and children only, up the hill towards Turleigh. We always wanted it to snow. And sometimes it did ! After tea there were games, always General Post, in the front sitting room [‘the board room’], followed by presents and tea and Christmas cake and yule log. One of the reasons it came to an end was the arrival of television. Black and white, and programmes only from 5 o’clock to 6 o’clock in those days. But already a great disruptor. As screens no doubt will be next week. 

Advent, as we all know, is the season of waiting. [I may have posted an Advent sermon on this site a year ago ?] Waiting for Christ’s return, date and place unknown. After a gap of several weeks I have got back to reading David Smith’s book, God and Mammon. He notes that in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Europe was visited by recurrent plagues, including the Black Death. The population of Europe shrank. And England and France fought each other recurrently in the Hundred Years War. And in consequence there was an outbreak of millenarian movements, as Christians looked eagerly towards Christ’s imminent return and the ushering in of God’s direct rule on earth. Looking at the television news I could be tempted in that direction too.

I’ll finish David’s book after Christmas and will write more about it then. Meanwhile I’ve been re-reading Anthony Powell’s [pronounced Pole, I believe] Dance to the Music of Time. I’m six books in so far. And convinced that Powell may be one of the most over-rated authors of his generation. Yes, he’s literate and stylish and sometimes witty. And it is no doubt an accurate picture of upper class and upper middle class England between the wars. A group of friends meet recurrently at dinner parties and restaurants and family gatherings. The two wartime books could stand alone. But generally more and more characters appear, each one more boring than the last. The narrator, Nick Jenkins, seems to me to be a bloodless, Eton and Oxford publisher. And the women are largely two-dimensional. The scenes only really come alive when Widmerpool appears, the pompous, self-important, socially gauche but upwardly mobile friend from school. Some years ago I saw the BBC 1997 adaptation,  in which Widmerpool was wonderfully played by Simon Russell Beale. And Miranda Richardson was memorable as the femme fatale Pamela Flitton.

In the wider world Trump continues to amaze and horrify with his breath-taking ignorance and his infantile vocabulary. It looks as if Ukraine will be the victims of his obsessive deal making and his limited attention span. A poorly selected and poorly coached England cricket team is being outplayed by the Australians. And, closer to home, Scottish hospital doctors are going on strike shortly. Which won’t advance my hip surgery. I am lining up a few books to read in the new year, and wondering how soon we might get to Biarritz for a few days.

A very Happy Christmas and a peaceful New Year to all who are reading this.

December 2025