FraserWords

CONSIDERING that these days, when I sweat, beads of pure 100% hate speckle my brow, it seems remarkable to me that I have thus far survived Christmas. It has been close. Last week, the black dog was upon me and therefore you have had to manage without me, you poor saps.

I find I am missing Captain Kay very much: of course, it is only absence that has made me realise quite how much I relied upon him to breathe sanity and joy into my shabby life.

I also find that with each passing year I find it harder to adjust to winter’s absence of light; the grey half-night of every day for the past few weeks has borne down upon us all, I think, and the unseasonal warmth just makes my skin prickle with unease. It’s that quiet hostility you feel in the sky before a thunderstorm.

And then, Christmas, to me, has always been a season for nostalgia, for remembering the things that have made the season precious to me down the years. But with age, so many of those things are no more – the people, the places, the customs, especially the simplicities. The key, of course, is to focus on making new memories, but that can be difficult sometimes.

And the final summoner of the black dog is the world outside: the world of Donald Trump and his redneck cheerleaders, the world dropping bombs on women and children in Iraq and Syria, the world howling its usual crass cliches that enable the stupid to keep the venal in charge, the world that buys death but not food, that buys guns but not medicine. Christmas? Christmas my arse.

But. To those cursed with eyes and ears comes the heavy task of seeing and hearing things to bring the dog to heel. Believe in your eyes and ears and you have to fight the black dog. So.

With my own dog, in the woods this morning, the unnatural silence of a rainy day, the only accompaniment to my squishy footsteps and her ragged breath the dropping of the rain.

On television, last night, our blessed saviour BBC4 and a couple of hours that showed Bruce Springsteen for what he is: a man of decency and passion, a man among the most essential songwriters of the past 50 years and a man who, in his pomp, playing live with the incomparable E Street Band, was the very living breathing essence of rock’n’roll. He knows the dog, and respects the dog, but fights the dog.

In a charity shop in Tavistock today – I buy from chains for Christmas over my dead fucking body  – a cheery 81-year-old lady bantering cheekily over the counter: ‘I love coming in here, love; I’m still being treated for breast cancer you know but I said I’m not stopping doing this, keeps my brain active and makes me smile and at my age we’ve all had it worse haven’t we and if you can’t keep helping out what’s the point and do you want a carrier for that?’ Magical.

In Spain, the success of the left-wing party Podemos in yesterday’s election. Across Europe, the right is rampant and the life-deniers who worship the Osbornes for finding money for rich friends and death-dealers while denying opportunity to others are in the ascendant – if you believe the newspapers. But as Corbyn and Podemos are showing, the left still has a voice, and that voice is getting stronger.

Yes, the Telegraph and Mail readers will keep their cowardly silence while the right rises and the status quo shifts on its path of cruelty, but the left will never be silent and the fight for fairness will never end. The world may indeed be a crock of shit, but nobody will ever tell me I settled for it. Not ever. And I’m proud of that.

Lives. Yes, I miss my friends, very much. But what lives they had and what fun we shared, and those are memories like my own secret old master, a painting of jewel-like colours to be brought out under the twinkling lights of the Christmas tree and gazed at, happily.

Opportunity. Brother Bigfoot has reminded me that possibility is always part of life with plans for new stories. Brother Fiddle has reminded us of the joy of creation even when all is difficult. There are stories to be told.

I could go on. But that’ll do.

Dear Captain Kay taught me this: you can’t shut your door to the black dog. He’ll always find a way to unlock it, and you have to accept that. Give the dog your attention; the black dog is not a trivial thing to be treated lightly. But watch him carefully, carefully; listen and look, watch and wait, and you will see that always, every time, every single time the black dog comes crawling he presents you with something priceless, something marvellous: the golden moment, the reward for a thinking man or woman, the release, the opportunity… to boot him right up the fucking arse and hear the bastard howl.

Christmas is as good a time as any to send the black dog on his way, and we shall do so, brothers and sisters, as tradition demands, with this place’s own Christmas message, a message founded on an old country tradition my grandparents knew, a message that believes in old magic and new hope. I hope you enjoy reading Thomas Hardy’s The Oxen for our fifth year together, I thank you for reading for another 12 months, and I wish you all a very merry Christmas free of black dogs and full of joy.

Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.

“Now they are all on their knees,”

An elder said as we sat in a flock

by the embers in hearthside ease.

 

We pictured the meek mild creatures where

they dwelt in their strawy pen,

Nor did it occur to one of us there

To doubt they were kneeling then.

 

So fair a fancy few would weave

In these years. Yet, I feel,

if someone said on Christmas Eve

“Come; see the oxen kneel

 

In the lonely barton by yonder coomb

Our childhood used to know”,

I should go with him in the gloom

Hoping it might be so.