Goodbye Christmas

The not so traditional version of the 12 Days of Christmas.

And here we are at Twelfth Night. The feast of the Epiphany. It is time to take the decorations down and say goodbye to Christmas for another 12 months.

Hope you enjoyed the Twelve Days of Christmas. I certainly enjoyed wandering down memory lane!

Twelfth Day of Christmas

On the twelfth day of Christmas my true love gave to me... twelve drummers drumming.

I think the writer of the song went to the same parades as me. Along with the pipes in the pipe and drum bands are of course the drums. There are drums in all the bands, my favourites being the horses who carry a drum on either side.

Drums is something I do know about. As part of A-level music you had to play in the Orchestra. Sadly my violin playing (the only qualifying instrument) wasn't anywhere near the standard required, so I had a crash course in percussion and became the percussionist. Depending on the piece it can be a thankless task. you get about a quarter of the music that the rest of the orchestra does as a lot of it (especially when playing the timpani) requires "48 bars rest". You have to pay attention so that you don't miss your cue from the conductor when it is time to join in! I eventually lost my spot as there was somebody who actually studied percussion as and instrument, and could do the elusive drum roll (which I never mastered). To be honest I was glad to give it up... I hated trying to tune the timpani, I have no rhythm (the irony is not lost on me) and I frequently missed my cues daydreaming during the long rest periods. Give me the choir any day!

Eleventh Day of Christmas

On the eleventh day of Christmas my true love gave to me... eleven pipers piping.

Not the sort of pipers you were thinking of? My thoughts of pipers drift immediately to the annual Lord Mayor's Show. There are marching bands, pipe and drums bands, the whole lot. They are interspersed through the parade and provide uplifting marching. There are all sorts from schools to the Salvation Army to various Army regiments. 

I always harboured a secret desire to learn to play the bagpipes, although I think it would make me massively unpopular with my neighbours. As for other pipes, well I don't have the 'embouchure' for flutes (although I did once have a wooden one that I played badly). 

Tenth Day of Christmas

On the tenth day of Christmas my true love gave to me... ten lords-a-leaping. 

Who were these Lords, and why were they leaping? The only Lords that spring to my mind are members of the upper house in Parliament... the Lords Temporal and Spiritual. My memory is foggy as to whether or not I have ever met one of these Lords (Peers of the Realm). I certainly have written a few letters to some of them though, in my armchair activism mode. A full list of members of the House of Lords can be found here.

Ninth Day of Christmas

I wanted to be a ballerina, doesn't every little girl who sees "The Red Shoes"? My first efforts at ballet were cut short by my crippling stage fright and refusal to be a sunflower, or bumble-bee, or whatever five year olds are.

My next foray was when a friend and I, in our mid-teens, decided to take up ballet. I don't recollect either of us showed great aptitude for it. We also tried our hand at tap; the first class with a bunch of five year olds, subsequent classes on the half landing of a staircase from one of the girls in our ballet class. I can still remember "shuffle, step, change, step, hop, step, ball-change". This didn't last long either. I don't really have any rhythm - odd for someone who studied music seriously and played percussion in the senior orchestra. Mind you I was sacked from that job when they found somebody who could do a drum-roll and didn't fall asleep in the 48 bars rest!

The shoes lasted longest. I used the ballet shoes as slippers for many years, and the tap shoes (with the taps taken off) were excellent party shoes until I broke a heel!

Ballet shoes as slippers, my Uni days

Off to a party in my tap shoes

I always wanted to be able to dance 'ballroom' style. My parents were excellent dancers, I never really got the chance to find out... I have enough trouble walking these days!

Eighth Day of Christmas

On the eighth day of Christmas my true love gave to me... eight maids-a-milking.

I have never milked a cow. I've seen it done though. Growing up there was an Agricultural College in our village, and they had open days. These cows were milked by machines great barns of cows, standing chewing the cud whilst pints of milk were collected. On holidays in the West Country as a child I saw milking done the traditional way too. 

Of course there were my cousins' grandparents and their goats. This looms large in my mind as, although I've since developed a taste for goats cheese, as a child I couldn't bear goats milk. Let's be honest, if you are my age and had the 'free milk' at school you probably weren't fond of that. I imagine they were about a half pint bottle, delivered in crates and left outside until morning break. Not too bad in winter but distinctly unpleasant in Summer. It only took a few lactose intolerant children who brought juice instead before we were all demanding a release from break-time milk!

Seventh Day of Christmas

On the seventh day of Christmas my true love gave to me... seven swans-a-swimming.

Beautiful gliding swans, they cut serenely through the water, as their legs do the work beneath the surface.

The swans in  England belong to the Queen. Well, some of them do. Actually all unmarked mute swans on stretches of the Thames and its tributaries belong to the Queen. Every year they are counted in a ceremony that goes back centuries Swan Upping. The right to ownership of swans was also granted to two of the Livery Companies, the Dyers and the Vitners - who celebrate this with 'Swan Feasts' every year (although swans are no longer eaten! You can read more about these feasts in Peter Gladwin's book (left).



Swans are another of the avian crew who inhabit St James's Park - these ones, so close to Buckingham Palace, probably do belong to the Queen.

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Uploaded by nat_mach on August 27, 2011 Some rights reserved.

Then again... quite often the first thing that pops into my head when I think about swans is 'Dance of the Little Swans' from Tchaikovsky's 'Swan Lake'.

Sixth Day of Christmas

When I think of geese I think of Canada Geese. As a child a family friend 'adopted' a Canada Goose for my brother and I at Gerald Durrell's zoo in Jersey. I think by the time we visited Jersey and the zoo seven or eight years later we no longer had the goose but anyway. As a child a battered copy of 'My Family and Other Animals' was my favourite book. I hated staying away from home, and on the rare occasions that I couldn't persuade my parents that I didn't have to go this book always came with me... gradually disintegrating until the original copy had to be replaced!

I digress. The place I most often meet geese these days in St James's Park. There are a colony of various geese there (including grey geese and Canada Geese), which honestly are as much of a menace as squirrels if you settle down to eat a picnic lunch - in as much as they march on you with then intent of 'sharing' whatever bread product you may be eating at the time! Most of the waterfowl there are pretty tame but the geese verge on aggressive!

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Uploaded by nat_mach on August 27, 2011 Some rights reserved.

Fifth Day of Christmas

On the fifth day of Christmas my true love gave to me... five gold rings.

Gold rings now are associated with marriage bands.

I only have to look at my immediate family for inspiration when it comes to marriage. 

The most romantic is probably my father's parents. My grandfather was a Latvian/Russian Jew. His family had left Russia to avoid the pogroms and settled in Germany. Unfortunately there is nobody left from that side of the family to tell the story; but as far as I can piece together I think my grandfather was into import/export and must have met my grandmother in London. She then visited him in Berlin (in the 1930s no less) and they were married at the beginning of 1940. Sadly my grandfather was killed in a road traffic accident at the end of that year, just after my father was born. My grandmother brought my father up alone, and never re-married. Such love.

The happiest and most long lasting marriages I know are my mother's parents and my own parents. They were married on the same date in July 30 odd years apart. 

My grandparents were married during the war (my grandfather in his RAF uniform) and I think it was their 55th anniversary he replaced my grandmother's wartime wedding ring with a new one. Every photo I have of them together the love radiates between them. 

My parents were married in the 1970s on the same date. Growing up with such a loving marriage meant I had a very happy childhood. My parents celebrated just short of 40 years of marriage before my father passed away. 

Many of the happiest family memories from my childhood are big family parties celebrating wedding anniversaries. My grandparents' ruby, gold and emerald; my parents' silver and pearl; even my godparents' ruby.

It's not five gold rings; but they are the best examples of gold rings I can come up with

Fourth Day of Christmas

On the fourth day of Christmas my true love gave to me... four colley birds.

I love this picture as it was only doing my research for this project that I discovered that it was colley birds (blackbirds) not calling birds!

In my younger days I used to visit an elderly lady who had once sung in our choir. She didn't have any family close, and I worried she must be lonely. She had a budgie (whose name I forget). Let's get this out of the way, I hate budgies. My grandmother had one when we were kids and he was an evil little bird who would literally bite the hand that fed him.

This budgie the old lady kept was also an evil little bird.He could perfectly imitate the telephone and the doorbell, and his owner (a little hard of hearing) would often try and answer one or the other before it became apparent that the budgie was the culprit.

At school we kept Zebra Finches. A great tribe of them in a rather large cage. They came to stay (only the one time) for the holidays... what a racket. They were exiled to the far end of the house!

Blackbirds, whose song is absolutely beautiful, are one of the most territorial garden birds. You may have a couple (Mr and Mrs) the female being a dark brown... but if another male shows up, feathers may fly. My mother had one in her garden who didn't limit himself just to other blackbirds but pretty much any other avian that showed up! Next time you hear beautiful birdsong though, look up, you'll probably see a blackbird perched somewhere high, beak to the sky, warbling.

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Third Day of Christmas

On the third day of Christmas my true love gave to me... three French Hens.

I haven't known many hens (I am not much of a bird person!). My cousins' grandparents kept a farm and they may have had hens (although to be honest, it is more the goats and the goat milk I remember). We also had a few holidays on farms when I was a child... but again it is either the dog or the lambs or the bull in the field that I remember.

So let's move onto the French bit! My mother has a great affinity for the French language. She studied to A-level at school and (to this day) speaks it well. She wanted me to learn to speak French so when I was around 4 or 5 I started going to classes. I don't remember much (although I must have learned to count as I showed of horribly counting to 10 in French at some child assessment thing, so the story goes); I also remember a sad story about an owl (I think) who needed some water so he made himself cry by thinking about sad things... one of which was teaspoons that had fallen down the back of kitchen units.

This early start to French served me well. My third primary school had French classes, and I was already well up with the basic requirements and found it easy to learn more. This put me in good stead for Secondary School where I started learning French for the third time. When we were put into 'sets' for GCSE I ended up a long way down as I had grown bored with learning the same things over and over again.

I studied French until A-level. The requirement not only being continued study of grammar and language but also the addition of literature. We studied two books and two plays... of varying popularity.

Albert Camus: La Peste (The Plague) - a dreary story set, from memory, somewhere in North Africa, about a Plague ridden town (in fairly modern times). It was detested by all , without exception.

François Mauriac: Thérèse Desqueyroux - I found this one quite a page turner, I remember reading it on car journey's whilst on holiday in France. I can't remember much of the plot, people killed people.

Molière: Le Misanthrope. A bit more like hard work as we're now dealing with 17th Century French. A pretty good play though (from what I remember).

Jean Anouilh: Becket ou l'honneur de Dieu (Becket or the Honour of God). A play about the relationship between Henry II and Thomas Becket. Although we were reading in French we were lucky enough that the Theatre Royal Haymarket had a production at just the right time starring Robert Lindsay and Derek Jacobi. You can watch a (not so faithful) movie version starring Peter O'Toole and Richard Burton. I loved the play so much I still own a copy (somewhere). 

I tried to keep up my French. I can still read it, and after some acclimatisation understand it spoken, but writing or speaking it... well I'm too out of practice.

We spent several childhood holidays in France (Normandy and Brittany) and I went on a French Exchange to Lille and visited Dunkirk. I've been a handful of other places; but my favourite will always be Paris; I haven't finished there and I've visited three times!

Underground Paris style!

Uploaded by nat_mach on September 13, 2011 © All rights reserved

 

 

Second Day of Christmas

On the second day of Christmas my true love gave to me... two turtle doves.

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Uploaded by nat_mach on August 5, 2011 © All rights reserved

They really do come in pairs. The most beautiful of all the pigeon family that I'm acquainted with. We have a couple that hang around our garden sometimes... my Mum has a pair that live in/around her garden. Last year they built a nest behind the neighbours satellite dish (precarious spot) and raised two cute little babies. They have to compete with the sparrow tribe and some blackbirds and robins for food. As you can see from this photo, not at all shy either!

First Day of Christmas

On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me... a partridge in a pear tree.

I don't think I've ever met a partridge. I've met quite a lot of other wildlife. I grew up in a small village in Kent. As soon as we were old enough we all learned to drive. You had to, there was one bus and hour and they stopped at six in the evening. If you wanted to go out you needed independent transport (and understanding parents).

Although there was one main road through the village there were lots of winding little lanes; not only did I drive them (always taking the same route gets so dull) I used to cycle them to. My early photographic forays took place with a 35mm camera in the countryside surrounding that village.

A pheasant I met driving one of those roads (I had to stop to let him cross) is as near as I could come to a partridge.

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Uploaded by nat_mach on August 5, 2011 Taken in West Peckham, England © All rights reserved

Twelve Days of Christmas

Christmas has been on the way for a whole year - seriously on the way for a few months, and now we are into the home stretch. The tree is trimmed, the presents bought and wrapped. Soon the turkey will be eaten, the gifts open and the long stretch between Christmas and back to work in January will be upon us.

As I'm not planning on going many places or doing much out of the house I was wondering what I'll be writing about.

So I'm taking as my inspiration the 12 Day of Christmas. From 25th December until Twelfth Night (5th January) a different line of the song.

Backwards the items are:-
    12 Drummers Drumming
    11 Pipers Piping
    10 Lords-a-Leaping
    9 Ladies Dancing
    8 Maids-a-Milking
    7 Swans-a-Swimming
    6 Geese-a-Laying
    5 Gold Rings
    4 Colly Birds
    3 French Hens
    2 Turtle Doves
    And a Partridge in a Pear Tree.

The inspiration will clearly be very loose - not least as I don't come across many partridges, lords or pipers! The idea is to take the line and use it as a (tenuous) link to a blog post. Fancy joining in? Let me know in the comments... it could be fun to see where it takes us!