Empathy.
Sometimes there comes a rare moment when suddenly you realise that your experience has put you in touch with the emotional state of some great character from literature. You gain an insight, through suffering, of what one of the tragic heroes has had to endure. An epiphany of sensitivity; a cathartic instant when your sympathy becomes almost universal, you reach for the infinite and Sorrow brushes your soul. A time to stop, take stock and ponder.
Such a moment has come to me. Today: in the domestic, nay, trivial surroundings of my living room. A moment unlike any other. A moment when, with all humility, I can say that Hamlet became, for a moment, my friend. I could say with him, “The time is out of joint.”
I have wrapped my first Christmas presents and it is still November!
As someone who relies on Christmas Eve Shopping for the bulk of his gift acquisitions this early seasonal activity is tantamount to the world being turned upside down. If I can start wrapping presents in November then anything is possible.
There is, of course, a partial explanation: the Catalonian relatives are arriving for a Traditional Christmas Dinner next week and part of the Great Plan is for them to take back the presents for distribution to other members of the family so that we can travel somewhat unencumbered when we join them later on Christmas Eve.
There is also the slightly more pressing incentive of my going down to Exmouth this Saturday and having to have presents for Ingrid and Hugh wrapped and ready, not to mention preparing a forgotten birthday present for Clarrie and getting Clarrie and Mary’s Christmas presents together. All in all an unnatural set of circumstances forcing me to appear to be efficient and Ready for Anything.
The most indicative test of Yule readiness of course (which is the British Standard Preparation Mark for Christmas) is whether you have your Christmas cards ready for the Scout Post.
Given the laughably extortionate rates demanded by whatever organization now runs what used to be the General Post Office, it is astonishing that mere members of the public still have the audacity (or cash) to think of sending anything through the normal post.
Nowadays the size, colour, shape, texture and the way you hand it over the counter all contribute to the pricing of an item: the simple uncomplicated days of paying a single understandable price have long gone. Our only pathetic wheeze of opposition to the callous giant of distribution is to take petty advantage of the breaking of the monopoly of the Post Office and once a year give some of our mail to an organization (the Scouts) which will only charge a large amount of money for delivery rather than a ruinous amount of cash!
This year the Scout mail poses problems for me other than mere readiness. Where will I get the special stamps and where will I post them? Problems yet to be resolved. As far as I know I may have already missed the deadline for the posting of the early Scout mail. Only my Aunt Barbara will know these things by instinct and I confidently expect that she has been prepared for Christmas for a considerable period of time and will regard my wrapping of presents at the end of November as unbelievably tardy!
For the last three years I have been attempting to emulate my friends Andrew and Stewart who have organised their Christmas cards so that they are chosen, specially printed and put in labelled envelopes all in good time for Christmas. What I would consider to be a fairly simple concept: typing names and addresses onto a pro forma so that they can be printed out has eluded me for the same period of time. I am determined this year that they will be printed: even if it takes me longer doing this way than writing them by hand. I am nothing if not counter intuitively stubborn over something which is inconsequential.
The new problem this year connected with the printing of address labels is that the addresses were typed using Works. I have since added a new version of Word to my computer and there are minor, but significant, differences between the transfer of one document into the format of the other – I think. Or not. It could just be one of those little built in Evils which Gates delights in scattering throughout his programs. It means that when the labels are printed out more than half of them are cut off and half is printed in the margin. It is very annoying. That is not what I would write if I could ignore the constraints of decent language and moderate expression.
I would like to know the person who owns a computer and has not personified it so that it could be heaped with vituperative, vile, foul mouthed (totally justified) abuse: physical and verbal.
I would not go out for a drink with a person who had maintained calm and measured speech during all his dealing with a computer. Just imagine what their reaction would be when their turn to get them in came around.
Sometimes there comes a rare moment when suddenly you realise that your experience has put you in touch with the emotional state of some great character from literature. You gain an insight, through suffering, of what one of the tragic heroes has had to endure. An epiphany of sensitivity; a cathartic instant when your sympathy becomes almost universal, you reach for the infinite and Sorrow brushes your soul. A time to stop, take stock and ponder.
Such a moment has come to me. Today: in the domestic, nay, trivial surroundings of my living room. A moment unlike any other. A moment when, with all humility, I can say that Hamlet became, for a moment, my friend. I could say with him, “The time is out of joint.”
I have wrapped my first Christmas presents and it is still November!
As someone who relies on Christmas Eve Shopping for the bulk of his gift acquisitions this early seasonal activity is tantamount to the world being turned upside down. If I can start wrapping presents in November then anything is possible.
There is, of course, a partial explanation: the Catalonian relatives are arriving for a Traditional Christmas Dinner next week and part of the Great Plan is for them to take back the presents for distribution to other members of the family so that we can travel somewhat unencumbered when we join them later on Christmas Eve.
There is also the slightly more pressing incentive of my going down to Exmouth this Saturday and having to have presents for Ingrid and Hugh wrapped and ready, not to mention preparing a forgotten birthday present for Clarrie and getting Clarrie and Mary’s Christmas presents together. All in all an unnatural set of circumstances forcing me to appear to be efficient and Ready for Anything.
The most indicative test of Yule readiness of course (which is the British Standard Preparation Mark for Christmas) is whether you have your Christmas cards ready for the Scout Post.Given the laughably extortionate rates demanded by whatever organization now runs what used to be the General Post Office, it is astonishing that mere members of the public still have the audacity (or cash) to think of sending anything through the normal post.
Nowadays the size, colour, shape, texture and the way you hand it over the counter all contribute to the pricing of an item: the simple uncomplicated days of paying a single understandable price have long gone. Our only pathetic wheeze of opposition to the callous giant of distribution is to take petty advantage of the breaking of the monopoly of the Post Office and once a year give some of our mail to an organization (the Scouts) which will only charge a large amount of money for delivery rather than a ruinous amount of cash!
This year the Scout mail poses problems for me other than mere readiness. Where will I get the special stamps and where will I post them? Problems yet to be resolved. As far as I know I may have already missed the deadline for the posting of the early Scout mail. Only my Aunt Barbara will know these things by instinct and I confidently expect that she has been prepared for Christmas for a considerable period of time and will regard my wrapping of presents at the end of November as unbelievably tardy!
For the last three years I have been attempting to emulate my friends Andrew and Stewart who have organised their Christmas cards so that they are chosen, specially printed and put in labelled envelopes all in good time for Christmas. What I would consider to be a fairly simple concept: typing names and addresses onto a pro forma so that they can be printed out has eluded me for the same period of time. I am determined this year that they will be printed: even if it takes me longer doing this way than writing them by hand. I am nothing if not counter intuitively stubborn over something which is inconsequential.
The new problem this year connected with the printing of address labels is that the addresses were typed using Works. I have since added a new version of Word to my computer and there are minor, but significant, differences between the transfer of one document into the format of the other – I think. Or not. It could just be one of those little built in Evils which Gates delights in scattering throughout his programs. It means that when the labels are printed out more than half of them are cut off and half is printed in the margin. It is very annoying. That is not what I would write if I could ignore the constraints of decent language and moderate expression.
I would like to know the person who owns a computer and has not personified it so that it could be heaped with vituperative, vile, foul mouthed (totally justified) abuse: physical and verbal.
I would not go out for a drink with a person who had maintained calm and measured speech during all his dealing with a computer. Just imagine what their reaction would be when their turn to get them in came around.
Point made
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