Craswall

It was an hour later from Capel-y-ffin. There was already a sunset feel to the afternoon light. I'd been up and over Gospel Pass, and now I was driving south-east on the English side of The Black Mountains, in the far south-western corner of Herefordshire. A somewhat remote bit of countryside, a place of ridges and scattered farms and houses, and very few proper villages. This is what you'd see while driving down-valley.

The largest village hereabouts was Longtown, with its old ruined castle, but that was a few miles away yet. Presently I was driving into a strung-out community named Craswall, which seemed to have no particular central point. Here's a location map, which might help. Click on it to enlarge.

The yellow line is both the Welsh-English Border, and the eastern edge of the Brecon Beacons National Park. This has been debatable land, much disputed in centuries past, sometimes in Welsh hands, sometimes in English hands. You can see a double-kink in the road that goes from top left to bottom right on the map. At the outer point of the upper kink is a little cross, the map symbol for a church without tower or steeple. I am always attracted to remote historic buildings. I thought this one might be worth investigation.

Well, it certainly looked promising. I opened the gate and went through the old churchyard. First thought: what had happened to all the graves? There was just a monument of sorts, with a wooden celtic cross as its centrepiece.

All very mysterious! As has become my habit, I did a circumnavigation of the church before entering it.

It mostly resembled a low barn, with a porch and a stunted belltower. It seemed to grow organically out of the surrounding grass, as if planted as a seedling or bulb some time back. And no proper path to the entrance. Was it still in active use? Was it one of those redundant but preserved churches? Let's see.

Leaf litter in the porch, peeling plaster. This church wasn't presently getting enough TLC. But despite the apparent lack of maintenance, it was in use. There were notices pinned to the door. I'd look at them in a while. Only one keyhole, you notice, not like Capel-y-ffin. No need to triple-lock then, and presumably no teddy bears inside to disturb. I opened the door carefully, a little surprised that it was unlocked. 

A rather bare room, purpose unknown. Perhaps when people turned up for services, or events held here, this is where they would be greeted. The place was supplied with electricity, and could be used after dark. But it all looked cheerless to me. And not at all ecclesiastical. There was a squat door in the far wall. It didn't seem the right kind of door for a church entrance - how did they manage coffins at funerals, for instance? Or if there was ever a wedding here? But it appeared to be the only way into the main part of the church. If, that is, it were unlocked.

It wasn't locked. I was even more surprised. Ducking a bit, I opened the door and stepped inside. Utter silence greeted me. You could almost pat it. And the shadows were getting more pronounced.

I wondered what would happen if the local keyholder came along while I was hidden from view inside. Would I get locked in? What was mobile phone reception like hereabouts? Pretty dire, I supposed. And within these thick stone walls, even more dire. Meaning that if I were locked in, I couldn't phone for release. Nor would anyone hear me from the lonely road outside. Fiona was parked not at the main churchyard gate, but in a wider section of the road some way off. Would anyone work out that a parked car down the lane meant somebody inside the church? Possibly not.

A whole night spent in this drear place wasn't a happy prospect! Oh, surely the person with the keys would check that the place was truly empty? Surely. 

With that somewhat unfounded hope in my bosom, I looked around. It was actually a picturesque interior of historic merit. Not ultra-special, but amply worth the visit.

A bit bare of creature comforts, but neat and tidy, and there was at least an electric heater that could be switched on. And lights: if locked in here by the keyholder, I could put the lights on, and somebody would doubtless come to find out why they were blazing. The lights would be my distress signal. I felt reassured at the thought. It also helped that there was no row of Voodoo teddy bears lurking on a seat. I didn't want the wrong sort of company while waiting for rescue. 

There was another of those upstairs galleries, so popular in this part of the world. Naturally, I went up to have a look.

You'd have to be pretty keen on religion to endure a long sermon while perched on such hard and uncompromising seats! Perhaps there was no choice about it in the old days. Well, at least you'd have a bird's eye view of the proceedings. 

The roof beams looked a bit old, and possibly not too healthy.

Downstairs again, I checked out the little organ.

A Victorian instrument by a local maker.

The final thing I wanted to do was examine the pinned-up notices.

Ah. They had the occasional music evening here. There had been a woodwind and harpsichord recital two weeks previously. I wondered how many had turned up. Where had their cars gone? The road outside wasn't wide, and I hadn't noticed an obvious church car park.

Hmm. It was, not unexpectedly, a listed building, and 'at risk'. But a Friends of Craswall Church group had been formed. In fact there was a meeting here just a few days ahead. I'd have moved on to the New Forest by then. If I'd still been in the area, I might have attended, to find out how the group intended to proceed. I was mildly curious to know. 

Obviously I was not locked in!  

Still, it had been a very solitary experience. Nobody else came to look at the church as a passing tourist while I was there. This said, it struck me that despite the loneliness of these places, I much preferred to view them on my own. I could then feel free to examine whatever I wished, and photograph whatever I pleased. 

I supposed that anyone catching me there could assume that I was either an active churchgoer, or keen on local history - the second approximating my interest in these places best. But really I just wanted to satisfy my constant curiosity, and bag some shots, and these reasons for intruding seemed flimsy and frivolous. It was difficult not to feel like a half-guilty trespasser and voyeur.

Service of All the Teddy Bears

It was 29th October. I was exploring The Black Mountains, a hilly region north of Abergavenny. I'd stopped off at Llanthony Priory, just to take a quick look. It was a ruin, of course, but there was quite a lot still standing. It was well worth half and hour.

In its heyday, when it was an active religious community, it would have been a most peaceful and pleasant place in the summer. In winter, less so. The high surrounding hills suggested that the winter months would have been notably damp, and that if it snowed the Priory would have been cut off from the outside world.

The Augustinian community here began in 1118 and lasted until 1538, when the Dissolution came. The inhabitants were not monks, but canons, all of them ordained priests who could conduct regular church services around the area. The Priory had an offshoot in Gloucester which gradually became the main house, this one becoming just a backwater. The few canons remaining in 1538 were pensioned off, and the buildings plundered for dressed stone. Later, some fresh residential rebuilding took place within the Priory grounds, and part of that is now a hotel.

Here a few a few pictures of the Priory.

From here, I drove up the valley to a hamlet called Capel-y-ffin. 'Ffin' in Welsh means 'boundary', so perhaps the name means 'chapel on the boundary'. The place is certainly close to both the Monmouthshire county boundary and the Welsh Border itself, so this is not a completely wild guess. Here is a location map. Click on it to enlarge.

Capel-y-ffin really was little more than a few houses, a red telephone box, and a chapel. And a sheepdog, who looked as if he were going to say something unfriendly about my parking outside the chapel. I saw the look in his eye. It said 'I'm watching you! One movement I don't like, and I'll bark furiously! Two movements I don't like, and you're dead meat!' I was not to be cowed, however. I tested his resolve to leave bite marks on the Melford rump by inspecting the red telephone box, as a first objective. 

Gosh, what a forlorn-looking box, with its door swung open to the elements! It must be decommissioned and abandoned, surely. But no.

Fully-functioning! I suppose the mobile phone reception must be dodgy here, then, and access to a public landline is still needed. 

You know, I can't remember the last time I ever used a public phone box. Maybe at Victoria Station in London in the 1990s? Since 2001 I've carried a personal mobile phone, and haven't needed to use any of these red boxes. Nor have I wanted to - how hygienic might it be to touch the handset, or put the speak-into part close to one's mouth? Not very, I'm thinking. I'm rather fastidious about such matters. I shouldn't think the average local swineherd or travel-stained backbacker would stop to wash their hands or clean their teeth before making a call. 

Offhand, I wouldn't know how to operate the phones in these red boxes, and would have to study the instructions carefully. And this one took only coins: if lacking the right change, one might be thwarted!

Moving carefully, for the sheepdog was still not showing any sign that his heart had melted, I wondered whether I was pushing my luck by lingering here. Fiona was a safe refuge from this hell-hound, and she urged me to be sensible and drive her onwards into the hills and the Gospel Pass. But she was a distant and dangerous road-width away, and if I could reach her without being attacked then I might as well go the whole hog and look at the chapel as well.

I was not going to be bullied. One must stand up to tyrants, and never surrender. I gave the hell-hound a disdainful look that said 'Be careful. I have Super Powers. I don't know quite what they are, nor how to demonstrate them to you, but any false move from you and they will undoubtedly be triggered, with devastating effect. So back off, boyo.' He backed off. I entered the churchyard intact.

Ah, a church - not a chapel. OK. Let's look more closely.

It was small and pretty, with a quirky timber bell-tower. A low entrance door. 

What a quaint entrance! Why three keyholes, implying three keys to open the door? Did a trio of keyholders have to turn up? You know, as if there were something inside that had to be guarded or kept away from casual view - so that special precautions were needed, lest people like me enter at the wrong time. Did they all convene at dawn and dusk, to unlock or lock the door? Was there a set order, a ceremony, a ritual? Anyway, daytime was clearly OK. They just locked it at night.

I unlatched the door and went inside. Within, there were seats on two levels. The floor space was so small that there had to be an upstairs gallery.

It was charming. More than that. It was cared-for, cherished. There were flowers, and there were artistic touches with a Byzantine flavour.

Now who might that androgynous person in the picture be? The church was dedicated to St Mary the Virgin, but the person in the picture could have been a man or a woman. Ha, a non-binary saint, peradventure? Look how close the ordinary fields and mountains - and the wild weather - would be for the people attending services here!

The fixtures and fittings of the church were all present and correct. An ancient font.

A pulpit from 1780.

Bench seats from 1783.

An old organ, with an intact keyboard but worn stops. And harvest-time music. Elgar's Nimrod too.  

And...teddy bears. A line of them on the front bench. All sizes. Apparently an entire bear family.

What was this all about? Churches often have a play area for tots and very young children, but these clean and carefully-arranged creatures did not seem to be toys. Were they meant to be a permanent resident congregation? Were they the only congregation? Certainly, the humans attending the scheduled services might hardly outnumber them. For some services, the bears might easily outnumber the humans. 

Perhaps they represented the humans? Did each human member of the regular congregation contribute a bear, so that there was a one-to-one correspondence? Were the bears' names exactly the same as their owners'? So that the bear named Sally had been donated by a woman called Sally, and resembled her in some recognisable way. And that when this woman wasn't herself in the church, her bear would represent her, like a Voodoo doll. Were the bears stand-ins for living people only? What if they represented people who had died, so that they could still take part in the services? 

Was that notion strange, bizarre or outright creepy? I wasn't sure. 

No, they must just be toy bears, and the local children did play with them, and simply set them up in a neat row after each session here. After every session. Without fail. Surely they did.

But if not, then there was that spooky idea that at night they held a service of their own. A Service of All the Teddy Bears. Becoming animated. Aware. Able to whisper words into the darkness. Did they sound like their owners? Or former owners?

What kind of service? For whose benefit? For what purpose, good or evil? And what would happen if they were interrupted in their midnight chanting? Would baleful, beady eyes be turned on the intruder? Then what? What could they do?

I earnestly hoped they were locked in after dark, safely locked in by The Three who held the keys and knew the secret, so that no innocent person might blunder in on something frightful. 

The Black Mountains might be very well-named.

As I drove on, towards the high Gospel Pass, I wondered if I had misunderstood the sheepdog's behaviour. Had he been trying to warn me?

King Arthur's Cave

This post will seem similar to one posted recently by my friend Angie (see my blog list) - which shouldn't be surprising as we were there together - but I hope to give it a different slant.

On the hillside overlooking the River Wye, just a few miles north-east of Monmouth (which is in Wales), but actually in England, is a hard-to-find cave complex called King Arthur's Cave. It's worth the effort, however. Angie and I went there on 28th October. Here's the scene.

It's actually a series of shallow caves, sufficiently large inside to provide shelter for quite a large company of soldiers, plus their horses, though nothing like a royal army. Half a mile to the west is a big neolithic hill fort, and although there are caves there too, the inhabitants may once have used King Arthur's Cave for the sort of storage you don't want too close by. Or else, then or later, as an outlying guard post in times of trouble. This is all English-Welsh border land, after all, the Wye forming a natural boundary line between warring tribes, as well as a means of water-based communication. There's a spot on the south bank of the river, about a mile off, called The Slaughter, which hints at a bloody battle. And across the river, on the 'Welsh' side, are the Far and Near Hearkening Rocks, which sound like places where the local defenders might assemble when attack loomed.

I dare say this is all completely fanciful conjecture though! Angie will probably tell me that The Slaughter was where the wild black boar of the Forest were rounded up and killed for food. The boar in modern times are a serious pest, and many would doubtless like to see them decisively culled. They make a mess of roadside verges, foraging with their snouts, and are bold enough to invade villages and even towns at night, ruining any unprotected area of grass, such as recreational parks for children, and private gardens. They are shy by day but formidable by night, and will attack dogs. There are no reports of their attacking humans, but personally I'd be scared if I were suddenly confronted by a big savage boar, with tusks, while out on a forest walk, especially if it felt cornered. They always rear up on their hind legs, and go for the throat.

Back to King Arthur's Cave.

The place was in fairly recent history used as a dwelling by a local woodsman of dubious repute. That would certainly be feasible, if you spread some kind of cover over the entrances, and were able to overcome the discomforts of bare rock and the dim light within. Given a fire, it might be cosy enough - though smoky of course, there being no chimney. And no doubt the ceiling dripped whenever it rained. 

Angie had visited King Arthur's Cave before, but it was new to me, and I explored the interior a bit, using the torch app on my phone. It went back quite a way into the hill, sufficiently far for complete darkness to prevail deep inside. It was easy to imagine it being the prehistoric lair of many a malodorous post-glacial wild beast. Or a safe retreat for the malodorous humans of that time.

The 'King Arthur' name means nothing much. The name of that Man of Myth gets attached to many kinds of landscape feature, although more usually it's his magic-weaving sidekick Merlin who has his name put on caves. Perhaps these caves were considered too grand for a mere wizard. Ah, King Arthur! 'Tis said that one day he will return and save the country. Just getting us a jolly good Brexit deal next year would do fine.

The solemn little girl standing outside the entrance in one of the pictures seemed reluctant to venture inside, even with two clucking old ladies clearly coming to no harm whatever. No doubt she considered the place haunted, and that we were foolishly tempting the wrath of King Arthur's ghost. Children know.

Not far away was the Wye gorge, and a set of cliffs called the Seven Sisters Rocks. We went there next. The Rocks, on which you can trip up very easily if you're not careful, overlook an especially steep part of the gorge, and offer fabulous views each way. Here's me, venturing close to the edge, courtesy of Angie's photos.

And here are my own shots.

It was very windy here, fit to blow you into the river!

I may look happy, but in fact I was pretty nervous, being fearful of heights, and liable to trip up while wearing my big Alt-Berg walking boots. I could envisage The Last Flight of Lucy Melford all too easily.

This was a new part of the Wye Valley for me. Usually Angie takes me to places that are actually within the Forest of Dean, but this was a detached bit of countryside across the river in Herefordshire. I wouldn't mind exploring the area again. I'd especially like to inspect the Near and Far Hearkening Rocks, and the curiously-named Suck Stone close by. (Something for the spring, Angie!)

A Christmas ritual ends

This morning I felt like crying. All the pre-Christmas meetups and meals and drinks - and they have come with a rush in the last week - have left me feeling tired and distracted. I haven't been able to concentrate on doing the things that must be done for Christmas. Suddenly it seems all too much. Way too much. And consequently I'm emotional.

In my immediate family, we long ago decided to stop giving each other Christmas presents. We all had everything we could possibly want: buying token presents that weren't genuinely wanted seemed a dreadful waste of money and effort. Once Mum and Dad were too old to face the crowded shops, they were easily persuaded that the annual ritual should come to an end. But we continued to send Christmas cards to each other, though I was never quite sure why. Perhaps we felt it was a step too far to put a stop on cards as well, as if this would somehow damage 'the meaning of Christmas'.

Well, let's look at that meaning. What would not sending a card threaten?

If I were religious, and specifically a Christian, then indeed Christmas would have profound meaning. But I am very secular. Christmas has no spiritual significance for me. That's true even of alternative 'Winter beliefs', whether ancient or modern.

What about Christmas being the time for family unity and togetherness? But my family has vanished, death taking everyone except myself. I have no grandparent, parent, sibling, child or grandchild to send my best wishes to. There are some remoter family members, but basically I am on my own.

What about friends? Ah, I do have those, and cherish them as I would a family. But then I see them (or hear from them) throughout the year, and in some cases every couple of days: we keep in touch, and sending a Christmas card would add nothing to the sense of togetherness.

All considered, there isn't much reason - beyond custom and expectation - to send a Christmas card to anyone I know.

There are reasons not to.

Chief among these must be the frivolous use of high-quality paper. For most of my life, I've been troubled by the daily production of paper goods, and its toll on the forests of the world. I don't so much mind paper books that will be kept, and read again and again. Nor brochures and pamphlets, which may have an ongoing informational purpose. But newspapers, magazines and greetings cards all seem an outrageous use of timber. I'd much rather go paperless, and view such things on a screen.

I am also concerned that the Royal Mail has to use its expensive resources delivering a vast mountain of Christmas cards, which choke up the ordinary postal service and prevent more important stuff getting delivered on time. I'd rather not add to their difficulties.

Then what about the poor bin men in January, dealing with heavy refuse bins full of junked Christmas cards? For, of course, most of the cards sent will never be retained.

I may sound coldly rational, but for me the time has definitely now come to stop sending Christmas cards. I've made a mental shift. I'm stepping aside from convention, and distancing myself from a social ritual that is hard to find the time for, and seems to accomplish nothing much for all the effort expended.

And yet, having decided this, my first impulse was to send something else - an email, perhaps. If only to give notice that henceforth I would not be sending cards. I began to write a standard email for the purpose. It would be illustrated with photos of my successes during 2017. But then I realised that every email I sent would need to be personalised. This would certainly take more time than writing a card would.

In any case, not every recipient would enjoy having an electronic message, whatever the content. Some people would feel cheaply fobbed off. And what about those who, even now in 2017, hadn't got themselves familiar with doing things online? They'd need a handwritten or typed letter in a stamped and addressed envelope...

In the end, I've decided to quietly NOT send any cards, or emails, or anything else. No explanations, no justifications. I will be silent. 

I will of course acknowledge any cards I receive with an email, as good manners dictate. (Half a dozen of those already, and I've emailed back in response)

I wonder if anyone will notice that they haven't got a card from me? If they do, and we haven't been in touch for some time, then perhaps I will get an anxious email on the lines of 'You didn't send a card - are you all right?' We can then have an exchange. Otherwise, it will be normal contact after the New Year, as the occasion arises. I can't really see anybody being offended, or slighted, or put out in any way by my not sending them a Christmas card. Secretly, they might even be pleased, the annual ritual having been broken by someone, setting a precedent that they can follow.

I definitely won't be the first person to have abandoned this task. People who go abroad at Christmas will have been saying 'We won't be here to see any cards send to us, and as we need the time for packing and seeing people before we go, we aren't writing any'. If it's reasonable to escape on holiday and avoid all the Christmas kerfuffle, then I don't see what's wrong with staying at home and avoiding the same.

If everyone does this, then of course the custom of sending Christmas cards will die out. But I don't see that as a great tragedy. It will simply restore the position that prevailed before an affordable postal system was established in the nineteenth century - typified oddly enough by the snowy Regency scenes so often shown on traditional Christmas cards. In those days there was an emphasis on very local face-to-face greetings, and the provision of practical things like food and drink and entertainments. I'm OK with that!

Ah, I feel a lot more cheerful now. No more tears. I can get on with other things.

Naturally, I feel that I have committed a social faux pas here. There will be raised eyebrows. There may even be howls of protest, about my undermining all that Christmas stands for (whatever that might be). Well, I'll just have to take any consequences.

I felt just as 'guilty' when I unplugged my landline handset five years ago (see my post Under Siege on 6th December 2012) to eliminate unwanted calls, and thenceforth intended to rely solely on my mobile phone. It felt as if I was deliberately cutting myself off from a lot of people who would be happier speaking to me on my landline. But it worked out beautifully. Perhaps the odd person was irritated by the change, but if so, I never heard them say so. Even in 2012, using a mobile phone on 3G was by far the better option if anxious to check who was calling before answering, or needing to block calls. It was a step forward. So I'm sure I will in time come to see this switch from cards to emails at Christmas as simply a sensible advance.

Those Christmas chores

Every year, on 1st December, two seasonal items show up in the to-do list app on my phone. One reminds me to set up my ceramic Christmas Tree (a small green china Christmas Tree, looking like a little fir tree with snow on its branches, festooned with coloured plastic 'cones' through which light shines when you plug the thing in). The other nudges me to create a Christmas Card list (nowadays a spreadsheet, pre-populated with the names and locations of last year's recipients).

The tree (which I have owned since 1992 or thereabouts - it was a present from Mum and Dad), looks very pretty when lit, and setting it up in early December is something I look forward to. And for twenty-five years this has been all I ever do in the way of Christmas decoration, even though up in the attic is a box-full of more usual Christmas stuff that Dad used to put up.

The sending of cards is something else. It's a definite chore. And I don't know anyone else who doesn't regard it as a chore too, however much they may otherwise thrill to the atmosphere of Christmastime. I suppose you can have chores you don't mind, as well as chores you find something of a drudge. I don't hate the task. I do like the notion of sending a personal message individually written in one's own fair hand, with the intention of keeping in touch at a merry and warm-hearted time of year. But the reality is much less golden. It involves organisation, time and expense, and can become a job of work on an industrial scale. This detracts badly from the essential purpose of sending these cards.

The spreadsheet I created for the first time last year was a distinct improvement on the hand-written paper lists I'd used each year before. For one thing, as an electronic document it could be copied and reused. I had a system for showing who had been send a card, and on what date. It was capable of statistical analysis. It was a tool for getting a big job done efficiently. But, as I proceeded, I felt - even more than in previous years - that I was tackling 'a job of work' - rather than pleasurably keeping in touch with the people I most cherished in my life. It crossed my mind that while this was not a pointless exercise, it was most certainly a tedious annual ritual, and to some extent an insincere one, because politeness and even-handedness required that everyone connected with me by ties of family or acquaintanceship had to be sent a card - not just my closest friends. That rather swelled the numbers!

Of course, to a great extent the thing was reciprocal: In December 2016 I wrote 51 cards, 35 of which had to be posted. (There were also a handful of emails to those who, for a variety of practical reasons, could not be sent a card) But a harvest of cards came my way too. More than enough to 'decorate' my lounge with. Collectively they added much to the Christmas atmosphere in my home.

It crossed my mind that many more people could be sent emails, rather than cards, but then if we all did this the annual exchange of Christmas Cards would decline to a small trickle, and the Royal Mail would be badly hit. And besides, an email was an intangible thing, and, whatever the warmth of its words, would seem insubstantial and 'cold' to many people. And there were people who had not embraced computers, and 'electronic technology' generally, as a routine part of their lives, and would never even realise that one or more Christmas messages had been sent to them. This was perhaps a generational thing. I was sure that young adults wouldn't mind. But older people might feel offended, fobbed off (as they might think) with a 'lazy' email.

Children, of course, still needed the personal touch, and if I were sending them (or anyone else) a cheque or a banknote, then such an enclosure demanded a real-life card to hide it in.

Sigh. There is no across-the-board solution to this. Except to cancel Christmas entirely!

Well, I suppose I will update this year's spreadsheet during the next day or two, and set to. Some cards will be written with fondness and great pleasure, others as almost a duty. About £40-worth of cards and stamps will be needed. That's not a small cost, and although I can easily budget for it, I'm conscious that more people than last year will find it difficult to find the money. In other words, if a card from me drops onto their hall mat, it creates an obligation to send me one in return, and that will strain their own Christmas budget a little more. It will also chip away at their time and attention. In different ways, I'm guilty if don't send a card, and guilty if I do; and the same for everyone else.

Let's face it, if a person really means something to you, you keep in touch during the year by other means, and sending a Christmas Card is therefore a superfluous ritual act.

This year, on the 20th December, I am having my best village friends over for a Goose Dinner. This is my warm-hearted Christmas Effort. It'll be a dinner for eight, and a proper squeeze on my table for six. It involves a 5.5 kilo goose, a huge variety of vegetables, a starter and a dessert. I'm concentrating my personal effort on getting the house looking nice, cooking the bird to perfection, and dealing with those vegetables that need not go in the oven. Jackie next door is handling the veggie bake and the oven-cooked vegetables. Jo is doing the starter, and Valerie the dessert. I've spent £80 or so on sixteen of those snazzy square plain-white dinner and dessert plates, as seen on Masterchef. I have never entertained on such a scale for Christmas. I have never before cooked a goose. Indeed, I've never personally cooked a large bird before, for so many guests.

But it's no great technical feat really. My girl friends will cluster round, and I can call on their husbands to carve. I'm sure it will be a very jolly occasion. And, to my mind, it will be so much more to do with what this time of year is really all about: affirming friendships face-to-face, enjoying nice things and happy times in each other's company.

Food and drink and laughter will do. I don't think any of my guests will feel a sense of loss if I haven't handed them a Christmas card.

But of course I will. At least for this year, 2017. I've got a feeling, though, that the nature of Christmas has already changed sharply for the worse. It's now totally swamped by blatant commercial interests. At, it seems, an accelerating rate. You know, not just ordinary sales in shops, but Black Friday too, and now an extended Black Friday that goes on into the following Monday, and beyond.

There will inevitably be a reaction. I'm thinking that out-of-control frenzied consumerism will at some point soon be seen as a social disease, a vice, possibly even as something revolting and horrible, the source of life-ruining ills such as rampant personal debt.

I don't think that a new spirituality will replace the frantic spending spree, but perhaps we will all take a step back and do something better with December than we do now.