Comfort and Joy?

No doubt about it – Christmas starts earlier each year. No, not that one – not unsleeping capitalism’s brazen attempts to part us from our festive cash as early as August – I mean real Christmas, the one people create for themselves in their own homes. Mid-December used to be the signal for trees aloft, lights ablazing. In recent years this has defaulted to 1^st December as the first decent time to decorate the house. This year it seemed as if people couldn’t wait that long to dispel the uncertainty, misery, anxiety of life that is the lot of so many and sparkly trees were quite commonplace as you walked the streets in mid-November.

It’s a very sad form of escapism, I think.  When reality is so cruel and awful, it’s very tempting to displace it by anticipating the brief (usually) interlude of Christmas. It’s a time when people are kinder to each other, smile more, seem a little more tolerant. Who wouldn’t want more of that and for a longer period? But, as it is such a special time, is there not a danger of dissipating its enjoyment and attraction by artificially prolonging it? The nature of escapism is that it provides a short-term escape from an unpalatable reality – but return to reality is inevitable. It might be better to fight to change the reality, rather than decking the halls with boughs of holly in November.

Apropos of nothing, really, here’s a piece I wrote about my childhood Christmases. On reflection, it is relevant as an instance of escapism.

The Most Magical Day of the Year

Every day of every year was the same, in hindsight. We were a poor family, like everyone we knew. There were no incidental treats at all, ever. There was hand to mouth living, waiting for payday, every week, every month, every year.

Except one day. Christmas Day.

With the considerable assistance of Provident checks, which had to be repaid over the whole of the following year, my parents somehow managed to transform our lives completely and utterly for one day of magic. I can never forget the excitement and anticipation of the run up to Christmas, which reached a crescendo on Christmas Eve. The kitchen, always full of good, tasty (but cheap) food to sustain the six of us, was groaning under the weight of the feast to come. Exciting things like mince pies had been appearing for a few days; tangerines tantalized; the smell of Christmas cakes in the oven for hours gave a hint of the glories to come; a huge turkey was resting in the larder; the clove-scented aroma of bread pudding pervaded the air; tins of sweets, Cheese Footballs and Twiglets were hidden away, to make a glorious appearance on Christmas morning; a bottle of Harveys Bristol Cream stood proudly in the larder, ready for the festivities to begin.

We four children were despatched to bed as soon as possible, for my poor exhausted parents to make the colossal preparations for the next day. Sleep was practically impossible because of the excited frenzy and was short-lived when it came. Whoever woke first edged nervously to the foot of their bed to check if He Had Been. Of course he had! Word travelled fast round our bedrooms and soon we were all up, my poor parents, who had only just gone to bed, swept along by an unstoppable tide of excitement.

Down we all went, dragging our bulging pillowcases behind us. The turkey had been left in the oven to cook overnight. The coal fire, the only source of heat in the entire house, had been banked up so that no-one had to light it on Christmas morning. And the living room soon was literally covered with wrapping paper as we ripped the covers off present after present after present. It is no exaggeration to say that we each received every single thing that we wanted, having carefully crafted long letters for Father Christmas in November, based on completely self-indulgent wish-lists. And for one day of the year, my parents were spared the misery of the hand to mouth existence they endured every other day as they basked in the delight they had created for their children.

I’ll never forget those Christmases. I can still see that room, filled with the sheer warmth and happiness of six people, enjoying together a piece of magic in their lives.

It didn’t even end the fateful year when I found out for myself that there was no Father Christmas. I was eleven and when I woke up to detect with blinking eyes the ethereal spectre of a bike at the foot of my bed, glittering in the darkness, I reasoned that Father Christmas couldn’t possibly have got down the chimney with that. Rationality triumphed over magic. I never told the others though.

Thank you for reading,

Sheilagh

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London’s Burning - Plus Ça Change

By Sheilagh Dyson

Important lessons….lessons learned……using the experience of past mistakes to create a better future…..we humans are not very good at that. Whether we’re returning for the umpteenth time to an abusive partner, starting smoking again after giving up for years, lending money once more to someone we know will never pay it back, renewing our season ticket, aware that it will mean another season of frustration and anguish, we never seem to learn, though we often mean to. Really, really mean to!

            That’s on a personal level – we are incurable optimists, desperately willing hope or love to triumph over cold-eyed experience, over and over again. It’s an endearing trait in our psyche in a way – this failure to learn from the past, in the fond, baseless hope that things will be better next time.

But what of governments – those whose responsibility it is to learn from past errors and misjudgements, to see where things are going wrong and put them right, to analyse issues in a historical context and, when awful lessons from history threaten to repeat themselves, to do something for the benefit of all and draw back from the brink. The signs are not good.

Here’s a poem about London, written by William Blake in 1792. It is a vehement invective against the exploitation of ordinary people by a corrupt system of early capitalism that owned the very streets and river of London, where poverty and disease were rife and riots were considered imminent.

 William Blake

London

by William Blake

I wander thro’ each charter’d street,
Near where the charter’d Thames does flow,
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

In every cry of every Man,
In every Infant’s cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forg’d manacles I hear.

How the Chimney-sweeper’s cry
Every black'ning Church appalls;
And the hapless Soldier’s sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls.

But most thro’ midnight streets I hear
How the youthful Harlot’s curse
Blasts the new-born Infant’s tear
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse.

 

And now, here’s one written in 2012, in the aftermath of – oh yes, the London riots. Against a backdrop of austerity for most (but not others), increasing inequality of opportunity, rampant privatisation, cuts in benefits for the poorest, burgeoning salaries and bonuses for the favoured few, diminishing  hope for young people,  Monty Grant wrote this heartfelt plea:

LONDON RIOTS

Austerity twists in the lock;
The wringing click, click;
The finality, turning the key.
Open your hearts to the
Cries of inequality.
Can’t you smell in the air
The stench of confinement?
Authority slams the door
Of poverty’s cage,
Full to capacity with our
Forgotten children.

Jailer, we’re dying in here
Why am I wearing this crown of thorns?
Don’t use authority’s spear
Just talk to us blood
Dispense the confusion
Do we not have a heart?
Are we not human?
Give us the freedom we need
To make a contribution.
Too late man, you’re too far removed
We’re at breaking point
And you too numb to be moved.
I raise my shield, I’m breaking out
You ain’t listening, you can’t hear our shout,
Well hear this mother fucker
Put this fire out.
Listen to the breaking glass,
It ain’t the answer,
But you too detached to ask.

The punishment should be severe;
We will take a no tolerance approach
To these animals.
If you have caused damage,
Let fires rage,
Attacked the property of others,
We will find you,
You will be evicted from your homes,
You will be incarcerated,
You will be ostracized.

Thanks for nothin, Tory scum,
You can’t comprehend the damage you’ve done;
You lit the fire, not me, not my brothers.
You can’t govern with lies,
You should have saved our mothers,
Years before now, a generation lost,
There’s people’s lives at stake, look at the cost.
Westminster is where you reside;
In your palace you and your type can hide.
Don’t presume you can plan my life,
I want to be free to live full of pride.
Where do we go from here?
We need a dialogue,
Lend me your ear.
We’re calm for now, suppressed,
But we will rise, we will not rest.

It’s got a bit of a rap rhythm going on, but is Grant saying anything very different to Blake, MORE THAN TWO CENTURIES AGO?

            And what has happened since 2011? Has anyone in government even tried to understand why thousands of young people in our country resorted to such ugly measures last year? No, the market still rules; more cuts in benefits; no Plan B; more and more privatisation (private good, public bad, despite all the evidence); libraries run by volunteers, if at all; ethnic cleansing of poor people from affluent areas; the demonisation of working class people – same old, same old.

And there’s still no attempt to understand why so many young people on a few fateful nights last year wrought havoc, went late night shopping without a card, challenged the normal order of life, risked prison and unemployability. They had nothing to lose, that’s why. Because they have no prospects, no stake in a society that offers them a distorted set of values and feeds them a steady diet of trivia, ‘celebrity’, X Factor and ‘designer labels’ by way of aspiration.

            Will we never learn?

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