Style, set and match

Why are sets of things so much more soothing than hodge-podges that don’t match? Sometimes it seems that anything is better in identical sets, from crockery to triplets to Christmas tree decorations.  It’s so fundamental it seems odd to ask ‘why’?

We discussed this as I decorated the tree last week with my very un-matched collection of decorations acquired a few at a time.  It’s been one of my pre-Christmas tasks to buy attractive or unusual tree decorations each year since the mid 1980s.

Some of my very un-matched decorations

If you read decorating magazines, then you’d think that Christmas trees had to have a theme. Thus:

Winter Frost Collection – follow link to Christmas Central

That makes perfect sense for corporate trees, but I have a friend whose tree is always that coherent. She’s the sort of gal – she’ll paint her nails on Thursday so it will match the shoes she’s going to wear on Saturday. There is no denying that Christmas trees like hers look much better than ones like mine, which is full of random stuff bought on my travels from Sainsburys to China and back. Mine’s not stylish: it’s barely in focus. But that’s phone cameras for you.

The question I’m asking though, is WHY do we find my mish-mash disquieting? What is it that makes us prefer sets and themes? We do, oh we do; it’s infuriating for example when a publisher changes the style of an author’s book covers when we are half way through buying their books.

At the far end of the un-matched aesthetic there lurks surrealism.

Q: How many surrealists does it take to decorate a Christmas tree?
A:

Quite.

If this effect of liking things matching and orderly is not limited to the visual, then it is presumably the underlying reason why Mozart and Vaughan Williams are more sweetly accessible than Stockhausen and Penderecki.

When you stop to think about it, it is peculiar, this preference for things to match, and the almost physical disquiet when they don’t is really odd.  Every answer I’ve arrived at so far has been circular: we dislike it because it’s unsettling, it’s unsettling because it unsettles us, it unsettles us because we dislike it.  And so on. It’s intrigued me for years.  Ants and bees have a strong sense of orderliness of course, but when we consider primates do we find that chimps and orang outangs prefer their fruit the same size and arranged in straight lines? Maybe we do. I’d like to know.

Ach, I could draw unsustainable parallels between this desire for homogeneity and the drive for standards, this being a business-related blog and all, but they’d be tenuous.

Instead I’ll leave the question open, and take the opportunity to note the turn of the year with the solstice today, and wish you a happy break and a better, more prosperous and more peaceful 2010.

Reducing and Cropping

The earlier mornings and later afternoons are a daily delight, and when you add sunshine it’s bliss.

Here’s today’s photograph, reduced to 25% of it’s original size:

And here is the mid-section of the photograph at full resolution, but cropped.

How wrong of me was it…

How wrong of me was it to be amused by the bloke carrying the 6′ x 5′ sheet of plywood who was almost blown down the street when the wind caught it this evening? He hung on like a good ‘un. Luckily the wind was on the plywood side, not the bloke side, but even so. I was deeply impressed. And amused.

Bad Aphra.

Ice

I’ve forgotten how to drive on ice.

I am not sure whether to put it down to global warming or post-recession efficiency with the gritting, but I am struggling to remember the last time I had to drive on ice. I really think it must have been the mid-90s.

So there I was, descending gratefully out of fog and blethering away with the phone on hands-free, when I lost traction on the front wheels. Not for long. In fact, by the time I’d squeaked “fuck!” into the phone I’d regained the steering and thought “Blow-out? No. Ice”. I then said “I’m ok but I’ll call you back” and started concentrating on the infuriating mixture of water and rime that I was driving over.

I am an irritatingly safe driver; the sort that always obeys urban speed limits and that will sit for as long as it takes – for three minutes, five minutes, seven minutes – waiting for a safe gap in traffic. The sort that will go round a roundabout twice rather than cut across two lanes and who will plan a route to avoid a bad junction.

I do however swear like a Big Brother contestant at anyone I think is endangering me and I run red lights on the basis that – where I live at least – every other bugger out there is running the reds which makes it more dangerous to go through on green. Actually, I prefer to run red lights than get rear-ended by the two vehicles behind me who follow me through. (Have I mentioned how much I hate tailgaters?)

It was dark as well as icy this evening, so I drove at 20 miles or so per hour in the middle of the empty country lane in case I found some black ice, skidded off to one side, ran out of tarmac and landed in a ditch, when I saw the rise and dip of another set of headlights a third of a mile or so away. So I pulled over by a farm and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Then a vehicle arrived behind me and also waited.

The headlights weren’t coming any closer and I’d got my new best friend behind me so I decided to set off again but this time with a nice friendly tailgater cosying up behind me. In fairness, he wasn’t outrageously close, but I still have no idea why he hadn’t gone past me when he reached me in the first place.

We went over the brow of the hill and saw a car facing us with one wheel on the road, two wheels on the verge and the fourth in the ditch and another car behind it also facing us but more or less in the right part of the road. Since I was not following anyone, they must have both been coming towards me when one lost it and tipped off the road.

Normally I’d stop and offer to phone the police or the AA or whoever, but my tolerance for people who drive aggressively on rural back-roads is fairly low at the best of times, and my sympathy for people who try to overtake on rural back roads at night when the temperature is hovering either side of freezing dips well below freezing itself.

So I didn’t stop; I didn’t offer to phone the police or the AA or anyone else; I just drove on by and 6 minutes later I was home.

What is really odd is that I don’t actually feel like a bitch.

November again

I just realised today why this winter feels like such an endurance test. We’ve had one frost, but no sustained cold weather, no bright clear white mornings when your breath dances on the air in front of you, precious little sunshine, none of the crisp clear sharp invigorating weather you can walk out in and feel revitalised, and only two of the magical mornings when the mist is shallow and the sun is bright, so you walk out into a white world under a blue sky.

Instead we are, in the words of Bill Bryson, ‘living in tupperware’ while – to add injury to insult – being battered relentlessly by diagonal rain or just by horizontal air, day after night after day after night.

I don’t feel I’m having a winter at all – it isn’t cold enough. I feel like I am enduring four or five months of November.

In the words of Thomas Hood

No sun–no moon!
No morn–no noon!
No dawn–no dusk–no proper time of day–
No sky–no earthly view–
No distance looking blue–

No road–no street–
No “t’other side the way”–
No end to any Row–
No indications where the Crescents go–

No top to any steeple–
No recognitions of familiar people–
No courtesies for showing ‘em–
No knowing ‘em!

No mail–no post–
No news from any foreign coast–
No park–no ring–no afternoon gentility–
No company–no nobility–

No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
No comfortable feel in any member–
No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds,
November!

(PS, I know I said I wouldn’t post today, but I thought I’d share this wee epiphanette with you since the wind woke me early and so I have time this morning.)

We must wether the weather

Why do you think it is that some people luxuriate in the sun, and others hide from it?

Most people dislike rain, but I like everything from mizzle to fine rain. I don’t like cold, wet rain, straight from the heart of an ice-cloud, but soft rain is lovely. Gentle rain, blessing my skin, garlanding my hair.

Trains, too, it seems have a preference for one kind of snow over another.

Fog, I am not fond of but I am entranced by mist. I used to live just south of Swindon, and the low lying fields (presumably once water-meadows) between Swindon and Wootton Bassett would have mist lying three or four foot deep, the sun shining down on hedges growing out of soft white numinous fields.

The one who is exhilarated by wind is – as already mentioned – exhilarated by wind. But I fear wind. I dislike its relentless and random violence. Its noise. Its intrusion into my house.

When I was a wee thing, I remember seeing the fitted carpet on the landing in my parents’ house bulging up two or three inches in the middle. It surged like a restless sea.

Wind is a thief, stealing dustbin lids and deckchairs. It is a vandal, turning umbrellas inside out and tumbling rubbish down the street. It destroys trees and property.

I remember driving once down to Plymouth (or was it Portsmouth, or Portishead, perhaps) and counting the broken trees, overturned lorries and barns and houses with their roofs ripped off. We scored 1 for a tree, 3 for a lorry and 5 for a roof. I ended the journey with 87 but he got 93. A shocking desolation.

Winds have names. In Provence, men and women go mad because of the Mistral. And these are European winds. I cannot imagine the careless brutality of a typhoon or hurricane.

Perhaps the reason I like mist and mizzle so much, is that they form in stillness and in silence.

Living in tupperware

I’ve just had, what? 17 days off in a row. Much needed they were, an’ for this respite grateful thanks, an’ all that.

17 days.

The sun shone on three of them.

Still, I remind myself that the reason English women have such beautiful complexions is that we live in a cool damp climate. Our skin never fully dries out.

Twelth night, or what you make of it

For sale:

6 brace of game-birds (partridges) well hung

A perry orchard (one dozen trees)

A flock of pigeons (22 birds, mainly white)

A flock of fancy hens (30 birds)

Song-birds, (36 available in singles or pairs – cages supplied to first 9 applicants)

A large flock of geese, good layers (42 birds, will separate)

21 pairs of swans (only to homes with open water)

Herd of cattle (40 beasts, TB tested, from BSE-free herds, good milkers)

Available for hire:

Dairy operatives (40 available for reasonable rates, will travel)

Dance troupe (36 females, 30 males, fancy costumes included)

Military-style band (22 woodwind players, 12 percussionists)

Wishing you peace and joy at Christmas

The best thing I can offer you for Christmas, gentle reader, is something I found on Patry Francis’s blog. It is a quiet and loving story about her mother and grandfather one Christmas many years ago; it is a moving story, beautifully told.

The Secret Name – by Patry Francis

And all that’s left for me to do is wish you peace and joy at Christmas and happiness and prosperity in 2007.

Aphra

Festive Quiz

This quiz makes some assumptions about the way that various mid-winter festivals are celebrated in the modern world. Feel free to change it to suit your circumstances.

Which mid-winter festival(s) did your family celebrate when you were a child?

Christmas

Which mid-winter festival(s) do you celebrate as an adult?

None. Oh, ok. Christmas if you insist.

And New Year, so long as it doesn’t involve being snogged by strangers.

Earliest Midwinter / Christmas / Hanukkah / Diwali / Solstice / New Year / etc memory?

Not sure, just a general feeling of sustained excitement, I think. It was always wonderful when the Christmas decorations go up.

How did you find out that Santa does not exist?

Again, I am not sure, I think I always knew he came into the same category as fairy-stories – I remember writing my Christmas Letter to Santa and burning it on the fire, thinking “well, the grown-ups expect it, don’t they”.

How old were you?

See above. 5?

Bestest ever ever EVER present?

A toy typewriter. Aged 5. Though I was bitterly disappointed that it took me another decade to learn to type.

It’s better to give than receive – which gift that you gave someone else pleased you the most to give?

Tricky, this one. I gave my father a garden bench once, but that was a birthday present. But it did please me to give it to him.

Favourite festive tradition?

Carol singing, as a singer or an audient. But it must be real singers and real carols. I have been known to accost the organisers of mechanical carol floats and abuse them. It is just possible that abusing the organisers of mechanical carol singing is in fact my favourite festive tradition.

Least favourite festive tradition?

Over-eating. In what possible world do we need mincemeat pies and christmas cake and christmas pudding and stollen and marzipan logs all on the same day? The trouble is that we have accreted traditions rather than selected them.

What do you eat for your main festival meal?

Turkey and trimmings usually, and christmas pud.

Who prepares it?

It varies, this year it’ll be me and the one I prepare meals with.

How long is your (Christmas) card list?

Dunno. 30-ish. It used to be longer, but my most recently gained friends are on-line.

Presents – all at once or one at a time?

One at a time, for preference. I’m nosey and like to see who’s got what.

Worst ever festive memory?

Flu. Real, bone aching, head throbbing, feverish, wish-I-were-dead-RIGHT-NOW flu.

Just what, exactly, do you understand by the phrase “all the trimmings”?

Cocktail saussages with streaky bacon wrapped around them. Roast potatoes. Sprouts. Carrots. Another veg, probably leeks. Stuffing, two kinds, one each end. And gravy which has had to be seived, because there was a sudden disaster with the flour.

Stocking or pillow-case?

Stocking.

Queen’s speech or James Bond?

Neither Either. Not bothered.

Best yule-tide film?

Another tricky one, because I watch so few movies. I am trying really hard not to type “It’s a Wonderful Life”, especially as I’ve only seen about 45 minutes of it.

Least toe-curlingly awful Seasonal Special of a normal TV show?

Got to be Angela Rippon’s appearance on Morcambe and Wise. Who’d have thought she had legs, let alone such long ones. I can actually remember the feeling of “oh my god, what’s happened, it’s CHRISTMAS, it must be something AWFUL” when she appeared on the screen when it first went out. Yes, I am that old. Just.

Strangest festive tradition or habit of a family other than your own?

My former in-laws all open their presents at the same time, rip the paper and throw it away afterwards. This deeply shocked me the first time I spent Christmas with them. It also meant that I’d no idea who’d got what for Christmas. Very disappointing if you’re half as curious about these things as I was.

Oh, and they play Canasta. Or scrabble.

How early is “too early” as in “Christmas starts too early these days”?

You don’t want to know my answer to this one. More realistically, anything before December is “too early” in my book.

Have you ever been to the appropriate religious ceremony on the festive day, such as Midnight Mass or Eucharist on Christmas Day If so, when was the last time you went?

Midnight mass – I went two years ago; I rather like Midnight Mass. Church on Christmas Day? A year or so before that, as light relief from the Buddhists. I’d been to a Buddhist Puja on the same day, which was peaceful.

(UK only) Farepak – have you given? http://www.farepakresponsefund.org.uk/

Not yet.

Single mother, pregnant and homeless? Crisis is another appropriate cause.

Those Christmas puds look good.