The northlondonhippy

Archive for December 21st, 2009

There are only 3 accept­able pop­u­lar xmas songs, Dar­lene Love’s “Christ­mas Baby (Please Come Home)” from the Phil Spec­tor Christ­mas album, Bruce Springsteen’s ver­sion of “Santa Claus is Com­ing to Town” and this one, also from the Boss, his cover of “Merry Christ­mas, Baby!”

Go on, get all funky and fes­tive and check out this recent video of Bruce per­form­ing it live on tv:

Weird things hap­pen around the hol­i­days, often unex­pected and not always pleasant.

I don’t know what got me on the sub­ject in my head, I was think­ing about duck and before I knew it, my crazy brain started remem­ber­ing weird shit from my childhood.

The duck con­nec­tion: I am cook­ing a small three-bird roast for xmas dinner.

For those of you who’ve never heard of such a con­coc­tion, it is quite sim­ply, a whole bone­less duck, stuffed with a whole bone­less turkey, then inside the turkey is an entire, bone­less pheas­ant. Larger ver­sions start with a goose, but I’m not serv­ing enough peo­ple to make that sensible.

I’m not sure how the farm­ers get the birds to grow inside the other birds with­out bones, but get­ting the feath­ers off must be a bitch. I guess it has to do with genetic engi­neer­ing, by I digress. I want to talk about duck.

When I was very young, an elderly rel­a­tive lived with us for many years, my Aunt Ger­tie, short for Gertrude. She lived to be 95, died in the mid 1970s and was part of the fos­ter fam­ily that raised my orphaned father.

Yeah, I know, get out the violins.

Aunt Ger­tie lived in our house for four or five years, until her per­sonal care became too much for my mother. Up to that point, her pres­ence meant we didn’t do very much out­side of the house, as she needed fairly con­stant super­vi­sion, even more so when she started falling down frequently.

After my par­ents took the dif­fi­cult deci­sion to place Aunt Ger­tie into a rest home, things changed for us and we had some free­dom again. The very first night she was gone, my father took the fam­ily out to a fancy restau­rant for din­ner. This would have been around autumn 1972, so I would have been nearly 9 years old.

Now, here’s the fowl con­nec­tion, that night in the nice restau­rant, I ordered Duck l’Orange for the first time in my life and it was the most amaz­ing thing I’d ever eaten. It was a half duck, still on the bone and the wait staff actu­ally helped me strip the deli­cious meat from the bone.

Its a fairly vivid mem­ory, and I can still remem­ber the four of us, me, my par­ents and my younger brother all feel­ing slightly guilty that we were able to enjoy such a fine meal, only because Ger­tie was in a care home.

Aunt Ger­tie lived for sev­eral years in that care home, slowly, grad­u­ally los­ing her mind. Up to that point, she was scar­ily sharp and didn’t miss any­thing and it was only in the last year or two that she started to become con­fused about things. She passed away just a cou­ple of weeks before xmas, at the same time my half-brother’s wife was deliv­er­ing her first child in the same hospital.

The last time I saw Ger­tie in the hos­pi­tal was about 10 min­utes before I saw my nephew for the first time. Even at the age of nearly twelve, I realised there was a weird con­nec­tion between new life and death.

Ger­tie died the next day, two weeks before xmas.

But that wasn’t the only death to darken a fam­ily xmas, a year or two before, my father’s fos­ter brother, my Uncle Jack, died unex­pect­edly on xmas. I was prob­a­bly around 10 years old.

I always liked Uncle Jack, he was very much an out­doors­man, he liked to fish and hunt, which are the sort of cool things that impress a young lad like me. He died on xmas eve, my father woke up to the news on xmas day.

Again, I have vivid mem­o­ries of that morn­ing. My brother and I burst down­stairs, ready to attack a pile of presents left by santa, with enthu­si­asm, but our mother’s face told a dif­fer­ent story.

We both imme­di­ately knew some­thing was wrong before she told us about Uncle Jack. She explained how upset my father was, he had not come out of their bed­room yet. I’m sure it was silly early in the morn­ing, my brother and I were both chil­dren and prob­a­bly didn’t sleep a wink the night before.

It was one of the few times I saw my father with real tears in his eyes. He was a strong, impos­ing man, think Hem­ming­way with­out the booze and it shocked me. My dad wasn’t sup­posed to cry, ever!

It was a very low key xmas that year.

All of this is remind­ing me of the scene in the movie Grem­lins, when Phoebe Cates char­ac­ter explains why she hates xmas and tells the story of her father dress­ing up like santa and get­ting caught in the chim­ney. They find him still there, dead, a cou­ple weeks later. Talk about a hol­i­day downer, I bet the stench would put you off your dinner.

Last xmas was eas­ily one of the worst of my life, my beloved mother passed away unexpectedly.

I was at work, ready for a long hol­i­day run of night­shifts when I got the bad news. I found out at 6am on xmas eve that she died.

The thing about deaths around the hol­i­days is that it doesn’t just bring down the rel­a­tives of the deceased, it has an effect on those around you too. It dis­tracts oth­ers away from their enjoy­ment of the sea­son. My sud­den, griev­ing absence from work had an impact on many peo­ple and that upset me even more.

Last year’s xmas was very depress­ing. That’s an under­state­ment, it was dev­as­tat­ing. You get the idea.

When you sit down for your big turkey (or 3 bird roast!) din­ner on xmas day, spare a thought for all the peo­ple whose hol­i­days have been blighted by unex­pected bad news and whose future hol­i­days may be coloured by these events.

More impor­tantly, I sin­cerely hope its not you and yours who is the recip­i­ent of any­thing unto­ward. How­ever, if it is you who draws the short draw and catches some­thing unpleas­ant, know that you’re not alone, it can hap­pen to anyone.

And if it is your turn, just remem­ber that it will get bet­ter and I hope you have plenty more fes­tive sea­sons await­ing you that might in some ways, make up for it.

From every­one here at the northlon­don­hippy, we wish you noth­ing but the very best of the holidays.

Oh wait, its just me here on my own, but the sen­ti­ment very much remains the same!