Crackle

Don't we all want to forget Grim Reality for a few days as we try and recapture something of the joyful mood that the season usually brings? I hope a cool yule blog will contribute to the Betwixtmas festivities with some folklore from crazy Iceland and the first draft of a new poem about Christmas past.

Supposing you had grown up in Iceland (the country not the frozen food store), you would have been familiar with the antics of the Yule Lads - or Yulemen as they were sometimes called - a baker's dozen of somewhat unruly seasonal spirits, the sons of Gryla and Lepparludi, whose custom was to arrive one by one on the thirteen days leading up to Christmas/Yule Day and then depart on successive days up to Twelfth Night in the order they had arrived, with every one having stayed for his allotted stretch of thirteen prank-filled days and nights. Yo ho ho and a bottle of schnapps - Brennivin (literally 'burning wine') being that country's signature tipple, best drunk ice-cold as an accompaniment to hakari (fermented shark meat).

a small sample of Icelandic Yule Lads getting seasonal

Each of the mischievous Yule Lads of Icelandic lore was named in recognition of his especial propensity to naughtiness, hence Stekkjarstaur - the sheep-harasser, Askasleikir - the bowl-licker, Bjugnakraekir - the sausage swiper, Gattapefur - the doorway-sniffer, Kertasnikir - the candle stealer and so forth, hairy one-track-minded practical jokers all. 

They also possessed a pet, the huge and vicious Yule Cat, Crackle, who roamed the snowy countryside eating anyone who had not been given new clothes to wear. I've bought each of my loved ones a pair of Icelandic socks this Christmas, just to be on the safe side (LOL); probably hand-knitted in Gryla's cave by the light of stolen candles and using wool fleeced from the backs of shivering sheep.

In more benign times, the Yule Lads still visit and play their tricks, but they also place small gifts in the shoes that boys and girls leave on their window-sills in the days leading up to Christmas and if any child has been naughty it will find a potato instead of a present in the shoe. 

For a few years in the early 1980s, my wife-to-be and I lived in a cottage on a street that only had houses on the one side. Across the street was a grassy bank which sloped down into a cutting containing the main London (Euston) to Birmingham electrified railway line and beyond that rose a wooded hill. We couldn't see more than the tops of the trains, their pantographs and the overhead power lines that fed them. We could sense their approach more than hear them, a slight vibration that sometimes made glasses and bottles vibrate as an express purred past; and occasionally our house lights would dim momentarily as power was sucked by the speeding train. 

We got so used to the sensation that it was more observable in its absence, the unusual quiet during a protracted train strike for instance, or on Christmas Day (trains have not run on Christmas Day in England since the 1960s). 

The only other time of the year when the passage of trains became noticeable was on frosty days and nights in winter, for then as each train sped by there would be an immense and rolling crackle and a series of blue or green flashes marking its passage as the effect of moisture on the overhead power cable led to intermittent breaks in contact with the pantograph, causing a spectacular arcing effect that lit the train's progress. That sight and the associated crackle will always remind me of Christmases in Berkhamsted.

crackle of a train's pantograph making intermittent contact on frosted power lines

I leave you this week (and this year) with a final, reflective, work-in-progress from the imaginarium.

Christmas On One-Side Street

This bitterly boiler-broken cold all

through the house on one-side street

reminds me of many a Fenland

winter morning as children when

we'd marvel at the patterning of ice

on the inside of bedroom windows

as we peered through to the dull

glow of blanketing snow looking

perfectly irresistible in pre-dawn light,

before skittering bravely barefoot 

across cold lino to the parents' bedroom

to plead for permission to go out and play.

Of course there was never any way

we were allowed; always  too early, 

too cold, or other agendas intervened, 

church, relatives, duties called but if 

only once you'd said yes, jumped out

of your cosy bed, let us, helped us, 

get dressed and then unlocked the door 

so we could go wild in the whiteness 

of it all, such anticipated fun  - but no.

I suppose you didn't like the cold and

now I know how you might have felt,

conceiving inconvenience or nuisance,

anticipating chills, spills, tears where

we saw only thrills but I think if I had

a child come bouncing in right now

saying Dad may we? I'd go, seizing

that moment, putting everything else 

on hold; embracing the flow and just 

sharing of yourself in a crazy adventure 

of togetherness surely makes for

a richer future out of a Christmas present.

Thanks for reading y'all, back next year! Steve ;-)