December 2025 Update

Medically, we have seen our GP & dentist and our physiotherapist twice. Had a phone appointment with Marsden Hospital. Subsequently, I was told that my Vitamin E was too high. I have been taking 1000 IU daily since I was 20.

I’ve had phone calls with Nicole in Aachen, Darby & twice with both Gin and Jimmy. I phoned John in Flagstaff, but he had visitors. Zooms have been with Theitic and with Coral & Nancy (Rosie could not make it, and Anna & Roger could not connect). We’ve been to the Whitelands House committee meeting, but I forgot to raise the reimbursement issue for the blocked radiator problem. The following evening was the Whitelands xmas party. Our dinners out have been to Balans Soho on the 5th, with Kathy at Vardo on the 10th, and at Azteca on the 27th. Gin’s 75th birthday celebration was at their place in Camberwell on the 16th. Our own party was on the 20th and included Paddy & Keir, James & Eammon, David Barrett, Stead (who was a marvellous server), Woody of course (whose cuisine production was perfection), Jasmin, Woody’s friends Tom & Luke (who I found marvellously engaging) with girlfriends, Gin, Rix, Cosmos, his former girlfriend Betty (stunning), Nina & Big Max (who prepared Richard & me negroni after all the champagne – I think I have 9 bottles left),

Jon Atkinson, Johnny & Agnes (also fabulous), Caroline, Carrie, Patrick & Sue, and Guy & Caroline plus Claire’s nephew Nino with Skye & another friend, if not more as well. Richard & I had fun, though a reason for a party is to be able to see friends that otherwise might not be possible, but each brief conversation is actually just a tease.

Our yule celebration begins on the 11th for which I cooked a turkey, and it concludes with the 23rd for which I baked a duck. There was the Nonsuch Singers xmas concert at St. Peter’s Church, Eaton Square on the 13th. On the 15th the Portland Gallery had the vernissage of Francis Macdonald. She was there, and I bought her “Musdale, Kintyre” painting. There was a Soteria on the 21st in which we read Jack London’s moving “To Build a Fire.”

I had the times wrong, so I missed the CHS Zoom meeting on the 13th, but I did at least listen to the BASR presentations on the 9th. Kas came on the 5th and installed our laundry washer permanently so that we no longer need to get the discharge hose to the bathtub. Our films this month have been Ella McCay and Wicked For Good. Richard did not enjoy the singing in this last, but we both enjoyed the film itself. And on the 30th, we thoroughly enjoyed the youthful singing and dancing in Irving Berlin’s Top Hat at the Queen Elizabeth Hall.

For xmas itself, Gin phoned to say that they were all running late. She took us to Ben & Tan’s new house (since October). Rix brought us back. Saul, Woody & Jasmin, Cosmo, Hillary, AuntShirley, and Greg and Sarah from Canada. 14 in all? Had champagne and both Glenfiddich and Lagavulin as well as turkey & goose, Christmas pudding and delicious cheeses. It was all most memorable.

Two books I’ve read this month have been China Miéville’s strangely weird The City and The City and Andrew Irwin’s editing of a challenging thought-wise but digestible Good and Evil: 12 Philosophers on How to Live. I am now reading Francis Young’s excellent Silence of the Gods in which he most thoroughly presents the religious history of Europe’s unchristianised peoples from the official conversion of Lithuania in 1387 to the dawn of the twentieth century. Otherwise, I have been concentrating on the revisions to my ‘Dark Green Religion in Europe’ article for JSNRC.

With their Eurovision decisions, I think my currently favourite countries are The

Netherlands, Spain, Ireland & Slovenia and blessedly I have a citizenship with one of them. 2026 may not be the year in which what has to happen does happen – which would be wonderful if it actually were, but let it be at least what we can get through as gently and smoothly as possible!

This month I have also managed to complete my 328th sonnet:

The evil sister locked in bourgeois thought

For godless hero broke by horror’s pain

And repetition’s meaninglessness naught;

There’s interstitial nil from this to gain?

Might melody be cosmos outward bound,

Just all the same ‘spite here-and-now forlorn,

E’en with the e’er returning weary round

And if quintessent dream’s no more than born?

So much to do, so little time is left;

May Mother Nature be our last embrace

To mineral bliss wassail the rest bereft!

O welcomed ‘blivion to end the race!

But moment’s joy is still eternal bliss

That jocular dissensi we no less shall kiss!

Eides of December 2025

London