Ahem
Our Christmas celebrations normally start after we celebrate Gwen’s birthday on the 12th, when this year the family met at the Bonsai restaurant in Brighton for a vegan meal so good that even Alli was singing its praises. She and I arrived early and had a drink on Baker Street at the friendly Mitre pub, whose manager conceded that he was having a bad day after my first two requests could not be fulfilled (Harvey’s Best and a glass of Sauvignon Blanc). Gwen’s birthday celebrations were spread over a few days, starting with a sober overnight stay in Uckfield before going on to Burgess Hill and Brighton, to parties and clubs with sisters, cousins, and friends. A few days later, we all went into Brighton again to eat bao buns at the Pond, then see the Christmas stand-up comedy show at the Dome with Sam Campbell, Simon Amstell, Lou Sanders, and Sharon Wanjohi, compered by local celebrity Maisie Adam.
After a period in intensive care, my cousin Christopher is now showing clear signs of improvement even as he awaits the results of several tests taken to discover the precise nature of his ailment, which is a type of myosotis. I took advantage of my own appointment for a scan at St. George’s Hospital in Tooting to drive to Croydon hospital where I saw Christopher with his sister Christine at the end of visiting time. Traffic on a Sunday afternoon in London is not lazy and seems almost as busy as on other days of the week. Christine was encouraged and relieved by Christopher’s improvement and the continuous presence of his dedicated friends, and has now flown back to New Zealand.
Alli and I had a Sunday roast together at Stanmer House near Falmer with Mary and Brian. This was a first visit to the interior of the house for me, despite having walked around it several times with the dogs. Stanmer Park has a special aura of its own. The 18th century sandstone mansion is the calm focus, with the tiny village, cafes and workshops, church, and the walking routes and pastures stretching out unhurriedly across the folds of the South Downs.
I have reached a first staging post with The Prisoner of the Landskron, having finished the first draft and sent to potential agents a first batch of “querying” letters, including the text of the first few chapters, a plot summary and a covering note. Almost all the agents I wrote to warned on their web sites that it could take up to two months to look at each “query”, so I took a writing break for Kwanzaa as most of the Miles family met together again in Burgess Hill for four days of banter, chatter, gossip, party and board games, quizzes, food, drink, wine-tasting, and visits to local pubs, most of which were rammed full of people mostly organised in family groups with the same idea as ours. The Greyhound in Ditchling, the Block and Gasket in Burgess Hill, and the Thatched Inn in Hassocks were particularly favoured. Jessie, Ella and Sam, Gwen, and I joined other Chisletts and a huge wave of 1500 people for the Preston Park Run on Christmas morning, which was bracing, although I walked rather than ran. We also played a hilarious Danish game, Pakkeleg, a Danish Christmas tradition new to me in which guests bring small, wrapped, unwanted, or just plain silly gifts to exchange with others by rolling sixes with dice in two timed rounds (the gifts are unwrapped in the second round) to either claim or steal them from each other, leading inexorably to urgent chaos and mayhem, with guests scrambling over each other for entirely otiose articles such as key-fobs, bubble-gum shampoo, and paperback novels by Richard Osman.
This was funny enough, but when we went to the Thatched Inn for a drink the next day, our own celebrations were drowned out by the hullabaloo of a helplessly shrieking group, acutely audible from the next room. We thought it was a rugby club piss-up gone too far or perhaps an illegal cockfight, but it was a convulsed English family who had clearly also adopted the Pakkeleg. So another venerable European tradition is exported to the UK. We might as well re-join the EU if this keeps happening.
Each year, in the family we all create our “Best of” list of tracks on Spotify to mark the best of the new and old music that we have each heard during the past year. My humble choices are linked below.
With best wishes to all for a sidesplittingly happy and peaceful new year,
Lionel