I was ambushed last Sunday. No, not by deserters and footpads returning from the Duke of Monmouth’s Pitchfork Rebellion, but by Jane. I should have seen the warning signs: the request for a printout of our Christmas Card List, the purchase of what seemed like £100 worth of Second Class stamps…. However, like a fool, I had taken no heed and had innocently followed my usual Sunday morning routine of wondering if it was too early to pour myself a glass of sherry while looking forward to my Sunday roast. Like a becalmed windjammer drifted by the current into the Bermuda Triangle, my course took me to the Garden Control Tower, aka the Breakfast Room or Orangery, where I hoped to grab a cup of coffee. Instead of coffee, there sat Jane with several boxes of Christmas cards, a sheet of stamps, the Christmas Card list, my fountain pen – and a very determined look on her face. It was Christmas Card time, and I had been nobbled yet again. I sighed. I knew from experience that it was no good arguing, for my Christmas duties in the Shacklepin household have been laid down in tablets of stone for nigh on forty years: erect the Christmas tree, assist with its decoration, arrange the exterior Christmas lights…and ‘do’ the Christmas cards. I write the insides and Jane writes the envelopes – an odd distribution of labour, now that I come to think of it, as my printing (honed over the years of producing engineering drawings using a 2H pencil) is quite neat, while Jane’s handwriting can be (how can I put it?) somewhat individual. But there it is. Philosophically, I sat at the table, shot my cuffs and uncapped my pen as a precursor to matching appropriate cards to our friends and relatives named in the List, a document annotated with firm deletions of the names of those who failed to send us a card last year and who, therefore, were cast into the outer darkness and damned for all time, never to receive a card from us this year. What to write in a Christmas card? Half the message is usually there already, pre-printed, so there is not a great deal of scope for original prose. I do write a hand-written account of my year to one old naval friend whom I have not seen for thirty years; as to the rest, a pathetic offering of “all the best” is, indeed, the best I can come up with. I draw the line at adding a kiss unless the recipient is female, and I pointedly pass cards with a joint or male recipient over to Jane for her to add her own ‘X’, much to her annoyance. I have been known occasionally to throw in the odd witty comment in cards to good friends, but I have to be careful, as a lifetime’s experience has taught me that my idea of “witty” does not always match the views of others or even of my good wife. Besides, Jane is prone to implementing a random quality assurance check on the cards before they go into the envelope and any offerings that do not meet her approval are rejected, so that I have to do the whole card again, extending what is already a lengthy annual task. On this occasion, the seasonal evolution finally came to a close after an hour or so and I spent the next hour trying to scrub black Parker’s Quink ink from the second finger of my right hand. ‘Twas ever thus. Is it time to stop sending Christmas cards? I have heard of some people doing so because of the cost of postage: £0.68 per stamp soon adds up if you have a lot of friends and relatives, and I understand that some people send out an email stating that they will not be sending cards this year, but “will be donating the cost of stamps and cards to charity instead”. Of course they will…but it would be better if they kept their sanctimony to themselves. “I did something rather wonderful today….” just about sums it up. As to the annual Christmas card duty in the Shacklepin household, I might grumble about it but, in reality, I am only too pleased that Jane and I have people to send them too. On that basis the cost of a few cards and stamps is a small price to pay for friendship and staying in touch. Long may it remain so.
Blimey, thirteen shillings and sixpence for one stamp. Who would have believed it? But then, who would have thought we’d ever have a royal prince called Archie or that men could suffer periods…?
Talk of Jane rejecting some of my Christmas card greetings set me thinking about the whole concept of inadequate written work being returned to the author for correction. It is a very familiar one, for that is how things were done from the very early stages of my naval career. It may well have been a common practice in the civilian world too, for all I know. In those pre-computer days, senior officers took the view that correspondence sent out in their name and from their ship should be of the highest standard of grammar, brevity and accuracy. Letters were drafted in long-hand and passed through two or three levels of editing by the ship’s hierarchy before they reached the Captain for final approval, typing, and signature. Nowadays, correspondence may still originate at the lowest level of an organisation, but it seems to be dispatched at that level too, without any oversight. I cannot comment on the current Royal Navy practice, but I have received letters or emails from commercial organisations of the most appalling standard, in one instance a missive from a car dealership that was complete gobbledygook. Newspapers are little better, with even the broadsheets such as The Times, The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph sometimes publishing poor grammar or spelling. Such instances do nothing for a company’s or newspaper’s credibility. My contemporaries and I developed our grammar and writing skills, not at school, but by having to keep a weekly journal when we were Cadets and Midshipmen (a two year period), the objectives being to establish skills in observation, expression and orderliness. Improvements in grammar, spelling and English were additional benefits. At least five foolscap pages of handwritten text and one sketch were demanded each week, and a failure to do so resulted in the time-honoured technique of one’s leave being stopped until the shortfall was corrected. The journals were scrutinised and marked by an officer appointed for the task known as “Snotties’ Nurse” (a “Snotty” being naval slang for a Midshipman), and they were submitted to the Captain monthly, for comment. I quite enjoyed keeping my journal, but some of my colleagues found it hard, for not everyone enjoys writing and sketching. I always remember my best friend, Hand Major (Blog 67) submitting a rather dodgy sketch of a Maltese dghajsa in his journal, for want of nothing better that week, but using a pencil that was so faint you could hardly see the boat. The Captain annotated his journal with the comment, “As viewed in fog?”. My friend was most indignant. Journals were still in use for junior officers in the Fleet when I was last at sea in 1992, and the standard was still variable even then, in a navy dominated by graduate officer recruitment. I hope the tradition continues as the practice not only provided the vital functions outlined above, it also acted as a handy reference to one’s past as well as a source of useful information. I still have my journals and occasionally glance through them to remind myself where I was, and what I was doing, throughout 1970 and 1971. There is also an excellent article and sketch in one of the journals on how to moor a 6,000 ton destroyer with two anchors incorporating a swivel piece (well, you never know…).
We spent a couple of days onboard the boat towards the end of November, on what was planned to be our last visit for 2023. We do not routinely lift APPLETON RUM out of the water for the duration of winter and, whether we did or not, certain preparations have to be made: the freshwater system isolated and drained, a dehumidifier fitted and running, all ventilation sealed off and all mooring lines doubled up for the winter storms. Sometimes we remove all the bedding and soft furnishings, but that is not really necessary if the interior is dehumidified, and leaving it onboard gives us the option of coming down to stay overnight in the forthcoming months. I did suggest that we might spend Christmas onboard, but Jane went rather distant when I mentioned it, muttering about the comfort and the lack of full facilities in the galley. I thought we were quite well kitted out in the galley as boats go, what with having a small refrigerator, a double gas hob and a gas oven, and she has produced some excellent meals in the past with what is there. Still, I suppose our nice warm and cosy house with its fully fitted kitchen and comfortable bed does seem the best bet for Christmas – I think we’ll go for that option.
Well, the Christmas lights are up outside and the presents have been wrapped and the non perishable food has been purchased. The Christmas jigsaw has been started and is already proving a challenge. All ready to go, almost. Some people started early with their decorations, the festive spirit becoming apparent even halfway through November. We can never understand that, as we see it as the equivalent of opening all the doors of the Advent calendar in one go; where is the sense of anticipation? Christmas trees and decorations should go up at Advent which, this year, was 3 December. We are on our own this year for Christmas Day and quite happy in our own company (having roast duck for Christmas dinner, as you ask). It is too early to say if we will have a white Christmas in Melbury this year. Contrary to the scenes on Christmas cards, it is quite rare to have a comprehensive fall of snow in southern England in late December – I think I read somewhere that it has only happened about four times in the last fifty years which, from my shaky memory and personal experience, seems about right. Snow is common in the Highlands of Scotland, of course, and on all high ground in The North, but for us southerners – well – we can only hope. We had several days of sub zero temperatures at the end of November and snow fell in a few places elsewhere. Here in Barsetshire it was quite cold (by English standards) and the wind was distinctly icy, but – as I write – we are back to 8C, wind and rain. I think I preferred the cold.
Of course, no Christmas would be the same without the great ceremony of installing the tree and decorating it. This year we had it delivered by a local nursery and it lay there on the operating table (ie the garden table) ready to be operated on for insertion into the tree stand. Jane acted as theatre nurse for the procedure. In previous years I have made do with my DIY tools and had some difficulty hacking into wet wood to shape the base of the trunk. This year it would be different (I rubbed my hands in anticipation); this year I had a new chain saw. Oh yes, no messing about with this baby: it was the biz. In thirty seconds I had trimmed the trunk down to almost perfect roundness to fit the stand. Unfortunately, I had also covered the patio, myself and Jane in wet wood shavings like the first fall of snow. Jane had taken the precaution of wearing an old Barbour jacket, which was easily brushed off. Unfortunately, I had not copied her example and was wearing my old naval uniform pullover, or Jersey Man’s Heavy Navy Round Neck (known colloquially in the Service as the Woolley Pulley), now in its fiftieth year and still going strong. The trouble is, the shaving operation may have taken only thirty seconds, but we then spent thirty minutes clearing up the patio, the saw, and – with a great deal difficulty – me, Jane tut-tutting as she tried to pick individual bits of wood out of my pullover and my hair. At last we were ready. I fitted the base of the tree into the stand and, heaving and grunting, we transported the whole assembly into the drawing room via the french windows, taking care to remove our shoes and fall over during the transit. I cut away the transportation net and, behold, the tree expanded and exposed itself in all its green glory. As usual, I was detailed off to lie under the tree and twist it around to obtain perfect perpendicularity and, also as usual, I covered my hair and pullover in pine needles in the process. Time for Phase 3: vacuum up the needles. This was no job for a wishy-washy battery vacuum cleaner; this called for The Big Dyson: 230 volts and 1,200 watts of cyclonic power, wielded by my skilled hands. I was puzzled as to why, this time, the clean-up seemed to take longer than usual for, as fast as I ‘Dysoned’, more pine needles seemed to appear on the floor. Then I realised that, on the other side of the foliage, Jane was very helpfully shaking the tree “to shake any loose bits off”. She was invited to desist. At last, the two of us were finished and we stood gazing at the tree complacently, admiring its shape and form, and the excellent way we had installed it this year.
It was at this point that Jane realised that the base of the tree was so snug in its stand (what we engineers call an interference fit) that there was no means of watering it: it needed a channel in the base of the trunk to enable the water to trickle down into the reservoir part of the stand.
I stared at her in disbelief. Couldn’t we just leave it? No, she said, if we do it will dry up and drop all its needles.
There was nothing else for it: out it had to go to the operating table again, a reverse of the installation process (fell over again putting on shoes), only this time made harder because the transportation net had been removed so the tree was at full girth.
“Hmm”, said Jane,”you’ll need a ¼ “ chisel for that. Or maybe a router.”
“Thank you dear, I worked that out for myself”.
Hack, hack; turn it round; hack, hack. Give it two channels for luck. Soon the modification was done, the stand refitted like a well-worn pair of slippers, and the whole farce of transporting the thing back into the drawing room repeated: stumbling out of shoes (again), covered in pine needles (again), out with The Big Dyson (again). Then we realised that, this time, the tree had a distinct rake, like the masts of a Yankee schooner in full sail. No amount of twisting it in its stand would correct it and, in the end, I was dispatched to the garage to obtain bits of wood for shims to place under the tripod stand. The tree stood there resentfully, sort of upright and stable, but clearly not entirely happy and settled in its new home. Sipping our traditional glasses of sherry, Jane and I looked at each other in mutual unspoken agreement: next year, we get an artificial tree.
I have been sent back to school. Not literally, of course, but Jane is giving me instruction in shopping lest (heaven forbid), one day I have to do it myself. We are feeling our mortality at the moment, you see (it must be the weather) and so we have taken to updating each other on those tasks that are not fully shared so that the survivor will be able to get by without the other; I tend to do the finances, for example, and Jane tends to do the shopping. Food shopping is not totally foreign to me, of course, and even I have progressed from those days when I was sent by my mother to “get the messages” – usually a trip to the greengrocer’s for half a stone of big potatoes. What has changed significantly is the self check-out facility at many supermarkets and it was this procedure that Jane wanted to demonstrate. Just to be difficult, the procedure is different for each store, but I was to cut my teeth on the procedure at ASDA. Off we set in the rain, me trailing dutifully behind Mummy, and I was shown how to check in with a mobile phone in order to obtain the self-check handset. It all looked pretty straightforward to me so, after we had checked in, I implemented my usual procedure to overcome boredom in a supermarket: I asked if I could help with collecting stuff. I commend this method to all men riding shotgun on the Supermarket Express as it minimises conflict (“What are you looking for now?), speeds up the whole dreadful process of shopping, provides helpful exercise, and offers the opportunity for you to buy all the treats and luxuries that a parsimonious wife has been very careful to avoid (“Where did that bottle of single-malt whisky come from?”). One downside for me is that my marching pace is about four times the speed of the doddering pensioners, doting mothers and undecided housewives who clutter up the aisles, so there is a tendency for me to leave a trail of disorder in my wake, like a tornado ripping through a garden party on a peaceful summer’s day. The other downside is that Jane is not good at delegating and has a tendency to be imprecise in allocating tasks. I have frequently been dispatched, for example, to “get some sugar” and when, after scouring the entire store for ten minutes, I return to the mothership with two kilograms of that commodity I immediately get sent back with it, together with the comment, “Not that big. And I wanted brown/caster/icing [delete as applicable] sugar”, as if I were being wilfully stupid (of course, sometimes I am, just out of devilment). Which leads me to another thing: where do wives hide in the supermarket? Is there some alcove or Tardis on Aisle 4 (or wherever) that they squeeze into as soon as their husbands disappear on an errand, the hideout deliberately situated in a mobile signal dead spot? On many occasions I have scoured an entire store, twice or even three times, while struggling with the aforementioned sugar, two bottles of wine and a bottle of bleach like a little boy lost, and Jane is never to be found; eventually she appears out of nowhere, usually in the fruit and vegetables section. What’s all that about?
Anyway, to return to ASDA, my lesson passed smoothly and I was all setup for the future, should I ever need it. We loaded the stuff into the car and I observed how much I was looking forward to lunch and a nice cup of tea. Jane quickly put me right.
“Oh no”, she said, “we still have Lidl to go to. I don’t do all my shopping in one place.”
“You mean we’ve got to visit another supermarket. Oh, my God.”
Alas, it was true. Far easier to shop online, that’s what I say.
Well, 2023 has been a mixed blessing for Horatio Shacklepin and might be summarised as: diagnosed with prostate cancer, successfully treated, and living stoically with the side effects with fingers crossed. The international scene has been even more dreadful. What hope for 2024? I found a very good comment by the broadcaster Gyles Brandreth about Winston Churchill in The Spectator magazine this week that I think is worth reproducing here:
Not long after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, Winston Churchill travelled to Washington DC with his Chiefs of Staff to meet President Roosevelt. On Christmas Eve, from the White House, Winston Churchill gave a broadcast to the world that I am surprised is not better known. He gave his listeners permission to briefly cast aside ‘the cares and dangers which beset us’ and let each home ‘be a brightly lighted island of happiness and peace in a world of storms’. ‘Let the children have their night of fun and laughter. Let the gifts of Father Christmas delight their play’.
I leave you with that thought from those dark days and wish all my readers, in all nations, of all religions and none, a very Happy Christmas and a happy and peaceful 2024. I’m off for a glass of mulled wine.
10 December 2023
"A Very Vintage Chap..." 