Culture

In a Word . . .

. . . celebration

Patsy McGarry's face
Patsy McGarry
Sat Dec 28 2019 - 00:00

My head aches and a drowsy numbness pains my sense as though of hemlock I had drunk. The weariness, the fever, and the fret, feeling pale and spectre-thin.

Am sitting here where men (and women! – this is an equal-opportunities misery column) sit and hear each other groan while youths are pale and spectre-thin, full of sorrow and leaden-eyed despairs.

With apologies to John Keats and his Nightingale.

Yes, folks, it’s that time of year when thou see’st in me the twilight of such day as after sunset fadeth in the west, which by and by black night doth take away, death’s second self, that seals up all in rest.

READ MORE

Yes, when in me thou also see’st the glowing of such fire that on the ashes of his youth doth lie, as the death-bed whereon it must expire, consum’d with that which it was nourish’d by.

With apologies to William Shakespeare and Sonnet 73.

Just three days left of 2019 and, as the saying goes, “God is dead. Marx is dead. And I’m not feeling too good myself!”

Sated and bloated after the Christmas festivities, I am in “never again” mode, full of dread at the “joy” ahead of New Year’s. I am celebrated out. “Sick-up and fed” as a beloved friend used say. He, who left us all bereft, without warning or notice, at this time seven years ago.

A heart by-pass in November. Pneumonia in December. Dead three days after Christmas 2012. Leaving a wonderful wife and family, and us, the friends.

A gifted actor and teacher, one stand-out moment from his funeral was the story of a troubled pupil in a class he taught. He assigned the children an essay on Jack and the Beanstalk, but from the cow’s point of view. The young lad responded with 12 pages of “moo, moo, moo”, etc. Our friend gave him an A.

Nor would he be here in full moan, in mid regret between festivities, because he had an inexhaustible appetite for celebration and for life.

Instead, he would reach for a draught of vintage! that hath been cool’d a long age in the deep-delved earth. For a beaker full of the warm south.

Cheers to him, to you. Happy New Year.

Celebration, 'to perform publicly with appropriate rites', originally of the Mass. From Latin celebratus.

John KeatsWilliam Shakespeare