Christmas greetings

After a turbulent year for so many and with an uncertain future ahead, here's hoping for a restful and peaceful Christmas for us all.

Routines and rituals

I can't remember how many years ago it was that the tradition started. But Christmas hasn't begun for me until I hear Messiah sung somewhere locally - then you can legitimately bring out the mince pies, "deck the halls" etc. and wish people a Merry Christmas. Yesterday evening we went to hear the Three Castles Baroque in St. Mary's Priory Church in Monmouth with four superb soloists and first class instrumentalists - a really lovely evening. Now I feel galvanized into preparing for the coming festivities!

Near Goytre Wharf

But it's prompted me to think about the rituals and routines that we as writers often adopt, the little things we "have" to do to get ourselves going, to focus on the job in hand. I don't think we're obsessional, but I know so many people for whom the same pen, the right chair or the order in which they approach a task makes the difference between achieving a writing objective or not. For me an essential at the planning stage of a new project is a long walk; last Sunday it was along the Monmouth and Brecon Canal as I tried to get to grips with a plethora of ideas that had been forming for some time but refusing to coalesce into some sort of coherent whole. Another definite is getting something mapped out on paper in long hand (be it a long book or a short poem) before I start; the laptop is redundant until I can literally see the shape of what I'm doing.

The evening also started me off thinking about how large Christmas features in so many books and stories - usually, though not always, highlighting the negative! The enforced jollity, the high expectations of family get-togethers that crash to the ground on the first evening - we've all had them; the alcohol-fuelled outbursts, the stifling cocooning from well-meaning parents, the intrusive questioning about a life thankfully being lived out miles away ....  No wonder writers capitalize on the season for dramatic effect in their work. There are, of course, happier accounts; I was rereading A Child's Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas recently (it so reminds me of some of my own childhood experiences there) and I love Laurie Lee's tales of carol singing and family Christmases in Cider With Rosie. Let's hope that for all of us this year there are more pluses than minuses in whatever the season finds us doing!

Catching up before Christmas

If it hasn't been looking after someone else, it's been looking after myself since that last post! I hate being ill at the best of times but when life is as busy as it should have been ... Still, I'm back in the land of the living again now, and fortunately was in time for our Women Aloud Christmas lunch, which I would have been very sorry to miss.

But things have got very behind schedule with a couple of deadlines missed and a rush on now to get things done before the festivities are upon us in two weeks time. I'm working on a series of radio scripts for when I resume hosting The Writer's Room in the New Year, to which I'm very much looking forward now. The series is going to look at Welsh life past and present; I've had a very enjoyable couple of days working on a programme about Welsh folk tales, some of which I've known most of my life but several of which I've come across more recently. Fascinating stuff - and a welcome relief from current reality with this week's election business hanging over us! Although how much of that comes into the realm of fantasy ...

Fall asleep on Cadair Idris and you'll wake
up as a poet or a madman!