Triggered by a pre-Christmas article in the “Information
Professional” I’ve been binge-reading strange French person Georges Perec. Last
night was the turn of “A Man Asleep”, a thoroughly depressing account of a 25-year-old
moderately comfortable flâneur wandering repetitively around Paris,
experiencing only indifference, distaste, meaninglessness, boredom and – in
fact – depression, in the midst of one of the world’s most fascinating cities.
The story not only succeeded in depressing me but got me thinking about mood in
general, as a determinant of how one perceives and responds to the world at
large. How could one be indifferent to Paris? Easily, it appears. In particular
it got me thinking about seasonal and epochal moods. I know I’m getting old and
all that, but is the entire world depressed these days? Evidently, the future
isn’t what it used to be.
Perhaps it’s just me. I’m not good at New Year (or as the
Americans call it, New Year’s, just like they call Sgt Pepper Sgt Pepper’s.
Irritating, even though they have a stable genius looking after them).
Except in those years when sad personal events have
occurred, like bereavements, I’m never keen to move on into a new year, never
eager to take that giant step among the midnight bongs (tinnier this year than usual) out into
the chronological ‘here be dragons’. I get to feel safe within a year, at home,
comfortable, temporarily immortal. Christmas acts throughout much of the year
as a psychological target, a magnet to be drawn towards, but also implicitly as
a barrier, an endpoint. As the autumn progresses the sense of safety and comfort intensifies. I feel pleased with myself, getting things done, finishing off another
batch of futile projects that no one will be interested in, tidying up. I
cannot, as it were, see beyond Christmas and its impassability.
Over this last year we’ve had a lot of Ginger Harry, but do
you remember Blonde Harry and “picture this, a dying December”? I never do -
until it’s too late. I always suppress the fact that it will die.
Well into December, it’s only when I start calculating
coldly that I realise, so many days from now, not only will Christmas be gone,
but it will be well into bleak January. Into another year. Who knows what can
happen then? We’re not talking climate change here, but experience suggests
that the world will be colder than ever. Progress isn’t something I look
forward to. It’s probably the same sort of calculation that my hypochondriac
cousin makes, when he bumps into the realisation that in the same time forward since his last bowel scrape or
urological probe backward, he will be dead and buried. The kind of calculation that
should come with a warning: Don’t Go There. Actually, that’s probably why he’s
a hypochondriac. Nurse, nurse, my brain hurts.
Without consciously desiring to be in any way bah-humbuggy
about it, I sense the flatness of New Year and the whole post-Christmas
sagorama well before the big day arrives. My ability to anticipate pleasurably
is not what it once was; I suppose I’ve lived through too many Christmasses and
subconsciously I know I’m never going to be given another Knockout Fun Book or
pile of Meccano spares. Already, long before The Day is over, I’ll notice that oh-so-familiar
sinking feeling, and it’s not just the sprouts. The Day passes in all its
sherry timetabled Queen at 3 pm predictability, and soon it’s over, sooner than
most days. Even the sprouts were harmless.
Then there are those few days out of time, protected from
the future, cossetted by war films and chocolate decorations off the tree, until
New Year’s Eve arrives. Midnight strikes, the telly gets muted and the hyperactive
Eye put in its place while the important phone calls are made, the fireworks
erupt all around the neighbourhood for their fifteen minutes of fame, and I
wander outside, hoping to share a greeting with a neighbour, hoping to prolong
the old year by even a minute or two, to transiently reboot the festivities, maybe
to chink a glass or two and to make a new friend. But no, there’s never anybody
there; they’ve always all gone to bed at half past ten and switched their outside
decorations off. The next morning it’s dark and damp and not particularly cold
and it’s back to normal, the world is as manky as ever, the same crap people
are in charge, the same old same old, and it’s another year when it’s hardly
ever Christmas.
But at least we’re still here, and the alternative is worse.
Poor John, poor Peter, poor Chris. They didn’t make it into 2018. Absent
friends.
Anyway, back to zero, another year to build up laboriously, another
year to start from scratch, another year to get comfy in.
Happy New Year
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