A fond farewell to 2005...
Saturday, the 31st of December, 2005 - 26 to 2pm.
Current Song ~ "Never Get Old" by David Bowie.
A belated Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and Splendid Newtonmas to one and all!
Things went rather well in this neck of the woods. I got a fair few nifty presents, namely:
* Two Doctor Who videos (Terminus and Enlightenment)
* The Performer's Guide to Music of the Romantic Period (book and CD set)
* Early Novels by Jean Rhys (four whole novels in one hardback volume!)
* Reality by David Bowie
* X, Dark Blue World, and The Royal Tennenbaums on DVD
* Bailey's Irish Cream truffles
* A moss-scented candle. As in the green stuff that rolling stones don't gather. No, I didn't know that such candles existed, either.
The Doctor Who videos have, naturally, since been watched, at last putting me out of the misery that comes of owning part one of a trilogy. I'd had Mawdryn Undead (part one of the Black Guardian Trilogy) since August, but as is always the way, Terminus (part two) proved elusive.
We had our traditional quail for Christmas Dinner, and once again I feel that I must hail the quail as the answer to most common festive dinner problems. No spending hours trying to adequately cook an immense carcass, no carving, no fights over who gets the appendages, and most importantly, no being doomed to eat leftover turkey for the rest of the week - score!
Of course, it wouldn't be the festive season without some source of irritation, and this year the Church's approach to carol-singing was enough to make a sensitive chorister weep.
I've always felt that the choral high point of the year is the singing of all seven verses of O Come All Ye Faithful, which can only be done at two services - Midnight Mass and Christmas Morning.
But alas! The former ran overtime, so two verses were dropped mid-carol (this was a teensy bit alarming for those of us who suddenly found ourselves in the thick of the descant), and - horror of horrors! - the next morning we didn't get to sing O Come All Ye Faithful at all.
Instead, we got to hear a poorly executed gospel-style solo rendition of the carol; unaccompanied but for my sighs and sharp intakes of breath.
Every year, I think that the Christmas Morning Service has hit rock bottom, and every year, the Church reminds me that it can always dig down those few extra feet...
Since then I've attended the annual gathering of my relations (notable mainly for the discovery that my grandmother's approach to sherry trifle is to fill a bowl with madeira and drop a spoonful of trifle into the middle of it), fulfilled all of my goals for 2005 (whoo!), and played the first couple of tracks of Bowie's Reality many, many times.
I shall end this by saying that 2005 was definitely a very spiffy year in all sorts of ways - some of which have been recounted here, some of which can't readily be explained outside my head - and I hope that 2006 turns out to merit the cutting, pasting and slight editing of this paragraph.
Au revoir until the New Year, everyone!
Lily
