In a Word . . . Sated

Hello. And it’s goodbye to 2017. Tomorrow I feel I will wake up and it’ll be “goodbye to 2018”. Life is flying.

They say it’s a sign of ageing when time appears to pass so fleetingly. I am accelerating through these middle years at warp speed. There on the horizon I can see already the foothills of old age. In a hazy blue. Fair weather there?

Usually, at this time of year I am not bothered. Sated by Christmas excesses, the thought of New Year celebrations leaves me as uninspired as a painted ship upon a painted ocean.

The spell is spent and the longest month, doleful January, awaits with his 31 Mondays back-to-back, his bills, then “when blood is nipped and ways be foul”, when the only consolations are marginally longer evenings and Turner.

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English painter Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851) is seen by many as the first great impressionist. It is over 117 years since 31 of his works, bequeathed by wealthy collector Henry Vaughan, arrived in Dublin, transported in a specially made wooden cabinet.

Vaughan shared his Turners between Dublin and the National Galleries of London and Scotland but stipulated that they should be shown free of charge and only in January when the light is at its weakest.

Modern methods makes such caution unnecessary but the National Gallery continues to honour his request so helping make this annual display, first exhibited in 1903, compelling. It supplies that USP (Unique Selling Point) essential to success in any context.

This year the Turner exhibition will be complemented by etchings and drawings from Kerry based master-printmaker Niall Naessens.

Such wonderful, if pale relief, from January.

How did we get here? Ah, New Year! This time of year has never moved me. All I feel is a serious case of undigested “. . . so!”

Let it be. Mother Mary come to me. Speak words of wisdom.

This is probably because of what Patrick Kavanagh noted in his poem Advent. "We have tested and tasted too much . . .Through a chink too wide there comes in no wonder."

Maybe we need January’s chill days to appreciate less, more. So sated are we by now that a prolonged doing-without will put an edge to life by the arrival of that lesser month, February.

But it’s such a long trudge there.

Sated from Latin satiare, "to satiate", Old English sadian "to fill", root sa- "to satisfy"

inaword@irishtimes.com