The Christmas Carol Concert

Sometimes I feel glad for short days and long nights with bare branches of trees blossoming white bulbs of light and soft fringes of yellow fairy lights fluttering like the epaulettes of dress uniforms stretched from first storey windows


and here a single Christmas tree - multi-coloured and signalling the entrance to the town hall


with its marble columns and pink Cheshire sandstone blocks. Then inside a great wooden staircase, stained glass windows, a chandelier and a smear of green garland. It is Christmas


and time for brass bands and choirs singing carols, and joining in (because I know each word) and feeling that at just that moment I am happy. All the recent cares fall away and I remember how it was when I was young that I meant every word and I too could 'sing in exultation'


as if I too were an angel dressed in a swan-white dress


praising God or blasting the last trumpet or wishing I had been a shepherd with the other shepherds blowing on my fingers against the cold

or, better, in with the wise men smelling of frankincense or myrrh following a star to a stable smelling of a sweet fug of hay and a child mother too young to be anything but innocent and beautiful.

And then the music stops and winter sets in and I remember other Christmases - that time in Manchester when a woman seemed so raw with grief that it hurt to see her from my window on a train, and then, more recently my parents determinedly laughing over unfunny jokes, and last year my mother-in-law delightedly opening presents from a large man dressed as a fairy - and then opening exactly the same presents again with just as much surprise and happiness a few seconds later.



Outside Father Christmas oversees his kingdom and the choir marches past. 'I hate Christmas' one of the altos told me last week - with such a quiet intensity I did not ask why.