Tendring Topics……on Line
'You picked a fine time……'
Do you remember 'You picked a fine time to leave me, Lucille…' a 'country and western' ballad about a subsistence farmer in the American Mid-West whose wife, after years of virtuous drudgery, had left him, 'with four hungry children and a crop in the field', to sample the joys of a less-than-virtuous life? It had a haunting tune and a simple straightforward lyric. It isn't surprising that in the days when every pub and quite a few cafes had a jukebox (it must surely have been in the '70s) it was a firm favourite.
I thought of the ballad's opening words when the government's latest solution to one of the country's ills was announced. Those in receipt of sickness and disability benefit are to be compelled to seek employment to the limit of their capacity. Those who fail to do so will have their benefit reduced. Meanwhile family doctors are to be asked to issue 'medical certificates' specifying what their patient is still capable of doing, rather than what he or she can't do!
It might I suppose, have been a good idea if business and industry were booming and there was a heavy demand for any sort of labour. But just now, at the beginning of a worldwide recession when long-established firms like Woolworth are closing down in high streets throughout the United Kingdom, when the number of unemployed is nearing two million, and it is feared that the three million mark may be reached next year?
Any jobs that may still be available to unskilled and inexperienced workers are likely to be the heavy, dirty and unsocial ones that nobody else wants to do, and that even moderately disabled men and women are unlikely to be capable of attempting.
I can't make up my mind whether this latest initiative from the government is dafter, or not quite so daft, as the idea during the Thatcher years of reducing the unemployment figures by allowing unemployed men over 60 to take early retirement (from being out of work!) and draw their state retirement pension, provided that they promised not to seek a paid job.
The present scheme once again takes my memory back, this time a bit further, to World War II when the government was urging everyone to work longer and harder for victory. Huge posters appeared in which Herbert Morrison, then a Labour leading light in the wartime coalition government, gave a message: 'Three words to the whole Nation; GO TO IT!', which positively invited the irreverent reply, 'OK, but where the (expletive deleted) is it?
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Dickens reborn in 2008!
Have you been watching 'Little Dorrit' on BBC tv? If so, you'll have watched the collapse of the great Merdle Bank into which thousands had invested their entire fortunes, in the firm belief that the great Mr Merdle 'the man for the age' would be able to make them grow and keep on growing. Hundreds of people were ruined, the hero of the novel found himself in the Marshalsea Debtors' Prison, and the disgraced Mr Merdle took his own life.
Having watched these fictional events unfold on the small screen on Sunday evening, we were faced with an almost identical situation on the new bulletins and news headlines on the Tuesday morning. Of course, this is the twenty-first century, not the nineteenth, and the events took place in the USA, not England. Everything was therefore, as might have been expected, on a much larger scale. Nor has the principal actor in the real-life drama taken his own life. Today's top rank miscreants are made of sterner stuff, and can probably afford better lawyers to get themselves off the hook.
To Mr Bernard Madoff, until recently the toast of Wall Street, the few hundred thousands that Mr Merdle had embezzled would have been little more than petty cash. He is claimed to have defrauded multi-millionaires and struggling charities alike out of something like $50 million!
I feel desperately sorry for the charities and the small investors that are among the victims though I can't help experiencing just a slight feeling of schadenfreude at the fact that others were super-rich pals of Mr Madoff who had trusted him with some of their millions, confident that their brilliant friend (another man for the age) could turn those millions into billions. British banks and British investors have been caught out too. I'm glad that, this time, HBOS, in which I own a few hundred virtually worthless shares, hasn't so far been reported as being among the dupes.
Those banks and those wealthy investors really should have known better. Mr Madoff's enterprise was regularly paying dividends of ten and eleven percent to its investors, far in excess of any others in the market place. Some of the people who have been caught out are the ones who have told the rest of us until we're sick of hearing it; 'If something looks too good to be true…….it probably is!'
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The Humbug Club
A small all-male club of 'grumpy old men' based in a Walton-on-the-Naze pub must have been surprised to find themselves featured, if briefly, on national tv a few days ago. I don't suppose for a moment that they are the only people in the country who are disenchanted with the approach of Christmas and everything associated with it. They are though, as far as I know, the only group who have actually got together and declared their agreement with the unredeemed Scrooge's comment on the festive season: 'Bah, humbug!'
When questioned, it seemed that their leader wasn't quite wholehearted in his abhorrence. He thought that it was a good idea to celebrate Christmas on the 25th December (he didn't actually say so but I had the idea that he might be tucking into some turkey and plum pudding himself!) but he was sick of all the commercial and other activities that had been going on for weeks!
He, and the members of the Humbug Club are not alone in that. Nowadays the celebration of anniversaries begins long before their actual date and often carries on for long afterwards. Almost immediately on the heels of the disappearance of all the Christmas holly, mistletoe and fairy lights, we'll have the appearance on the retail scene of hot cross buns, Easter eggs and little fluffy chicks! Guy Fawkes day or 'bonfire night' used, at one time, to be restricted strictly to 5th November. Nowadays it seems to have merged with All Halloween and the sound of exploding fireworks begins as early as mid October. It finally tails away as the pre-Christmas shopping spree really gets into swing.
Christmas is a festival that really does need some prior preparation. It is surely a good idea for people to send a little reminder that they are remembered to all their friends and relatives just once a year. Children (and those grumpy old men from Walton were children once) expect Christmas presents, and for adults Christmas is a season of giving. This is surely a good thing.
I remember, some years ago now, feeling a little guilty about contributing to the commercialisation of Christmas by writing for the local press such inspiring features as 'Christmas shopping in Holland-on-Sea (or in Pier Avenue, Little Clacton, Old Road or whatever)'. My conscience was eased when I came to realize that there were businesses, especially small ones, whose ability to provide a useful service to the community throughout the year depended upon a pre-Christmas shopping boom.
Christmas celebrations involve a Christmas tree and Christmas decoration. They can't all be put up on 24th December and dismantled directly after the 25th. The Christmas turkey and in particular, the Christmas pudding and Christmas cake, not to mention all the mince pies and sausage rolls, need to be prepared beforehand. Perhaps you dash out on Christmas Eve and buy yours at the supermarket. Nowadays, with both husbands and wives working, this is often unavoidable. However, before the sad loss of my wife I never needed even to taste shop-bought Christmas delicacies. I'm sure that she wasn't alone in taking a pride in always 'making her own', a process that began weeks before the day.
The Christian Church has from earliest times defined a period of about four weeks for spiritual preparation for Christmas. This time of Advent begins on the Sunday nearest to St. Andrew's Day (30th November). This year St Andrew's Day actually fell on a Sunday so that was when Advent began.
It might be a good idea if that date also saw the beginning of most material preparation for Christmas. The association between the spiritual and the material preparations for this festival was clearly recognised by Thomas Cranmer, the martyred 16th century Archbishop of Canterbury, who was largely responsible for compiling the Church of England's incomparable Book of Common Prayer. The collect or short prayer appointed for the last Sunday before Advent was, with its mention of 'stirring' and 'fruit', clearly a reference to pudding-making in Tudor England. My mother, who also always did all her own pre-Christmas cooking, took it to be a thoughtful reminder in the prayer book that it was time to prepare the Christmas puddings. It has a message relevant to us all and at all times:
Stir up, we beseech thee O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people; that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works, may of thee be plenteously rewarded; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen
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More Advent Thoughts
Writing about Advent brought to mind a poem by the late Sir John Betjeman entitled Advent 1955, and published in his 'Uncollected Poems' (John Murray 1882), which satirises the artificiality of some of our pre-Christmas preparations.
The only cards that really count
Are that extremely small amount
From real friends who keep in touch
And are not rich but love us much.
He goes on to speak of the Christmas presents given out for commercial reasons. These could count as business expenses and thus be exempt from income tax. The late Sir John would perhaps be pleased to know that that particular loophole has since been closed!
He concludes though with lines that are as relevant today as they were when they were written over half a century ago:
'The time draws near the birth of Christ',
A present that can not be priced
Given two thousand years ago.
Yet if God had not given so
He still would be a distant stranger
And not the Baby in the Manger.
That surely is the unique feature of the Christian Faith. Our God is not a 'distant stranger' but Emmanuel, God with us. He is present with the abused child, the family dispossessed from their home, the prisoner, the hospital patient and the down-and-out junkie, begging in the street.
Inasmuch as ye have done these things unto the least of these my brethren, ye have done them unto me, said Jesus Christ, Son of God, who was born in a cattle shed, of a temporarily homeless couple from an obscure village in the north of the land of Israel. He was destined to become a political refugee within weeks of his birth and, some thirty years later, to be tortured to death. Yet he was the True Light for all the world, showing in his teaching and example, the way in which God intended men and women to live together in peace with each-other and with the whole of his creation.
His birth was an event that should most certainly be remembered and celebrated every year. ' O Come, all ye Faithful, joyful and triumphant!…………'
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