Je ne me trouve pas ou je cherche – et me trouve plus par rencontre que par l’inquisition de mon jugement, says Montaigne, writing in the 16th Century. I do not find myself when I look for myself, but rather through engagement with others than through self analysis. He means that you reveal your nature most when you are involved in random and spontaneous activity rather than when you meditate or look into your heart. The word he often uses for the fact that life reveals itself more when you are in flux and off your guard, which is the natural state of man, is branle, mostly meaning something else these days but in 16th century meaning wiggle or constant movement. He also defines our nature as the act of dessiner rather than graver, sketch rather than engrave. We are unfixed, impermanent, modifible at any moment.

Embrace the flux, I say. This morning in the cafe I bumped into an old friend from years back, with whom there is some distrust. To his question how are you? I replied with an anecdote from my present life about the water leaking into my kitchen from the flat upstairs. Lesson one: be in the moment of your life (dessiner not graver; no earnest conclusion; keep the other on his toes). Then, looking at my book, he said what are you reading? I said, showing the Montaigne: you wouldn’t understand. It was in French, so he wouldn’t, so only a semi tease. But then I added, it’s philosophical. More of a tease, as he sees himself as philosophical. This is all to destabilise. It’s how I function on conversation. It’s my true nature. En branle.

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I had a QR code on my phone offering two free drinks and two free cakes on the 5th floor of John Lewis on Oxford street but the deadline to claim it was next week. It said Invite a Friend very perkily, but I couldn’t think of a friend who’d want to trek across to soulless Oxford street on a Saturday morning for a cup of tea and a lemon drizzle cake. But I knew I’d feel bad about letting the January 31 deadline pass. I decided to go there on my own this morning and try and find a shopping trip to do at the same time. My anxieties were legion. First, I don’t trust a QR code. I don’t really know what they are. What if I was ridiculed at the counter and it was invalid? Would I then have to go through with buying an unwanted beverage and comestible? And how would I get two drinks and two pastries? How would I phrase it? I’m on my own today. Just the one coffee. Maybe two of those lemon drizzles. I’ll take one home for tea. This was basically what I said. Over-articulating, as usual. The woman at the till couldn’t care less whether I had a friend waiting at the table to share the treat with me. She said, Just the one drink? I managed to say yes, instead of my friend can’t swallow warm liquid at the moment, so yes. After all, what was I doing without a friend. In fact, I ordered two cinnamon buns and wrapped one up in serviettes to take home like a rather sad loner. When I had drunk my coffee, eaten one cinnamon bun, wrapped the other in serviettes and stowed it in my bag for later, I made to leave. I organised my tray and crockery in a neat and fastidious way on the table top, as if I was being filmed and to somehow assuage guilt. Then left. Operation accomplished. The good thing was that I popped into a shop over the way and got a nice cheap shirt in the Sales. So, you see, it was a perfectly justified trip out.

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I went to the cafe in the park yesterday afternoon for a coffee. In the queue I got talking to a man, who was probably middle-eastern. He said, is that tweed? about my jacket. I said, I don’t think so but it’s wool. We got to talking about synthetic fibers and natural fibers. He said, would it be right for me to buy you a coffee? It was as if he was asking about the correct protocol. I said, no, that’s premature. It would be like buying a dress for a girl on the first date? He looked at me puzzled, but then smiled. I went to my table and waited for my coffee to come. He went to another table where someone I thought was his mum was sitting waiting. I realized I had made that error I always make: taking on a jokey manner immediately before I even know the person. I jump too quickly into the ironic mode and when you are talking to strangers, it’s thoughtless.

This was a reference from experience. Once when I had just started going out with someone and we were looking in shop windows, we saw a dress. I said, try it on. She did. I had to make a quick calculation about buying the dress for her or not. I decided not to. It could well have been a foolhardy purchase. Who could tell how long the relationship would last. As it turned out, it didn’t. My callous calculation was right.

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When you are telling a story to a child of three, the key is to include them in the story. You do not say Humpty Dumpty went down to to the park one day. You say Remember that day when you and me went down to the park with Humpty Dumpty. At first she looks confused. She does not remember that day. But you goad her. You blackmail her with the promise of a great adventure and she says yes. Then you say It was really icy, wasn’t it? And she says yes. She is getting into the spirit of things now. And you say. You told him not to sit on that wall, didn’t you? And she says yes. Because it was icy, you say (reference to the weather of the moment; this is Christmas). and what happened?, you say. Now she has been trained she is ready to spread her wings. He fell off! she yelps. That’s right. You shake your head. He cracked. We called the ambulance. They couldn’t do anything. We called the doctors and nurses. They couldn’t do anything. We called all the king’s horses and all the king’s men. Here she repeats the mantra. They couldn’t do anything. It was just all yellow and white on the grass. Do you remember? She remembers now all right. She has been trained in complicity and deceit. It’s a skill she’ll need. You even pop in a little joke for mummy. You say, We were all upset, weren’t we? because Humpty Dumpty was our friend, wasn’t he? And mummy was going to make a nice omlette for us all for dinner and now she couldn’t. Mummy will have to make us roast pork instead, won’t she? Yes, says the three year old, as mummy slips the joint in the oven.

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For Christmas we had bought a smallish box from Hotel Chocolate to share between us. We devised a system. First, a diagram of the display seen from above was drawn. Then each chocolate was given a number. Roman numerals were chosen. There were eighteen chocolates. These were listed. Then one after another we chose our preferences, nine each. A letter was then added to the name of each chocolate on our list. Two of the chocolate selections contained two small chocolate items. That was easy; one each. But it required a different classification letter; U for universal. There only remained to choose a colour each, to colour-code the chocolates on the diagram; brown and pink. The business was done. Now we can eat them without guilt or the temptations of deceit.

See how easy Christmas can be.

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Christmas Poem 2024. In English and in French. Happy Feasts.

A massive shadow shifts behind the line of the horizon.

It is the head of Santa approaching from the North.

It climbs over the hills and peaks. It is now amongst us.

Like during the annexation of Austria. Infiltrating

Into our world. With its jollity, its Christmas songs,

Its frantic desire to sell us more stuff.

But be comforted. This annexation

Will only last a couple of weeks.

Soon the invasion will disperse, the forces will retreat

And sweet normality will resume.

Une ombre massive se profile sur l’horizon.

C’est la tête du Père Noel qui s’approche du Nord.

Il grimpe les collines, les sommets. Il est parmi nous à présent.

On dirait l’annexion de l’Autriche. Il s’infiltre

Dans notre monde. Avec ses chansons saisonnières, son fun,

Son désir frénétique de nous vendre plus de trucs.

Soyez rassuré. Cette annexion

Ne durera qu’une quinzaine.

Bientôt l’invasion se dispersera. L’ennemi se retirera

Et la douce normalité  reprendra son règne.

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In my movements from home to one place of work to another place of work to home I maintain a strict and instinctive adherence to the regularities of the clock. I leave home at 8.30 every morning. I am not looking at the clock. I just sense it. Like I sense that the alarm will ring at 7.30 and so wake up automatically at 7.29. I am like that, embedded in time. This means that I tend to come across other people who also obey the demands of the clock: children going to school; adults going to work. There is a particular pair of mother and child that I unfailingly pass on the curve of the Oval at about 8.34 every morning. This has been going on for a couple of years now. I know them well and they, or at least the mother, know me well, though we have never spoken, nor even exchanged other than a furtive glance. Certainly never acknowledged the other’s presence. But the periodicity of our superficial encounters has produced a strange, magical relationship. Magical in that it has sprung up from no active behaviour on our part. It is, I suppose, the same kind of almost erotic frisson that occurs when two people are stuck in a lift together. The imposed intimacy can often sent up a highly charged bond between the two, the sense of having experienced a moment that fate has ordained. I wonder if I will ever acknowledge that mother and child. If, in some future moment we are ever obliged to confront each other, to say hallo or good morning in a village fete or a town hall community meeting to discuss the saving of the local post office, it would be as if we are picking up a historical relationship with all its melancholy and regret.

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My back is increasingly becoming the focus for much of my speculation and memory. A parcel of it near the shoulder blade on one side was given a mild massage about four days ago and only now is it recovering from the painful aftereffect. My conclusion is that it needs mostly to be kept underwraps and not overly stimulated. It was only a few years ago that I located the pain I habitually feel after walking for a mile or so. It is just to the right of my spine about three quarters of the way up. I suspect it is a nerve that gets bothered because of faulty posture. The only solution when this happens is for me to stretch out on a park bench on my front and for me to be sat on for a couple of minutes. This gives me another mile of relatively pain free walking before it starts again and we look for another empty park bench. Sometimes we wait by an occupied park bench, hovering in the sinister manner that someone who doesn’t look right is supposed to in a train station before planting a so-called device. I don’t know what happened to my back in the dark backward of time. I have a misty recollection of when I slipped on the lawn behind our house as an adolescent and fell, as they used to say, arse over elbow right onto my spine. Was that blurry moment the cause of all my back issues? In any case, it’s all bearable, and I only need this back for one lifetime.

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On the tube today a man came along the carriage begging for money. For once, I had some coins in my pocket and handed over £1.25. The man gave me a fist pump and a tap on the shoulder and called me his brother. I smugly sat back and tried not to catch the eye of any fellow travelers who were perhaps suitably humbled. At the next stop a slew of five or six-year-old children tumbled into the carriage with their teachers and minders, on the way to the museums at South Kensington. The teacher spoke out: would anyone be willing to stand up to let the children sit down? The woman next to me stood up. Well, one: I’m against grown-ups standing up for children. Two: I’d already forked out £1.25 that morning. I did not let the woman who had stood up catch my eye. So I sat next to the kids and overheard one boy starting up a game of I Spy. I spy with my little eye. Something beginning with…, he said. Black, blurted out an Indian boy next to me and laughed. The boy starting the game was black. Yes. It’s a moral minefield on the district line.

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It was the dreadful Milton hurricane that struck Florida last night. This morning I caught an edge of an interview with someone on the radio who said it hadn’t been as bad as she had imagined. Instinctively my heart sunk. I felt it descend, even though I knew it shouldn’t. The little boy in me wanted some great footage of devastation. I immediately tried to haul myself back into feeling a sense of relief that it had not been as catastrophic as had been foreseen. I am not a cruel man. and I am not a kid. And yet, there is this nasty residue from some more primitive nature somewhere that wants an action movie rather than a humane outcome.

‘The poetry is in the pity’, someone once said (was it Wilfred Owen?). The poet looks through the drama and finds the human, by-passing the lust for chaos which might just brighten up a dull morning.

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