Merry Christmas!

A very happy Christmas to one and all!

And "God bless us everyone"...

(The Dickensian festival is still affecting my thinking!)
But if you ever feel like a taste of Dickens for the day, Grassington mounts this event on three Saturdays in December every year. And it is one of the most cheerful and pleasant events I've been to. The whole town came to life with laughter, light-heartedness, and rejoicing. And very brisk trading too at all the many stalls - good to see in a year that has been Doom and Gloom with recession, etc.

GRASSINGTON'S DICKENSIAN FAIR

These "Dickensian" ladies were eager to have a go at the Tombola!

It was a very happy, crowded and jolly day, cold of course, but mulled wine and a hot roast pork sandwich soon warmed us up. And a hand-warming handful of roasted chestnuts, better than gloves any day.People had come to it from all over: a splendid Scot from Forfar in his equally splendid kilt; people from Wales and Liverpool and Sussex. They had all been before and loved it; I had only just come to hear of this annual event, but I too fell in love with it, returning home with, among other things, a treasured pot of homemade marmalade, truly the best I've ever spread on my toast.
There were brass bands, jugglers, and barrel organs, Mummery and Jiggery, acapella carol singing, and towards twilight a procession with a young Mary and Joseph, and the donkey, led round the town by the Town Crier, knocking at the pub doors and three times refused, before they were offered "a shed round the back".
They were followed by a crowd bearing burning torches and if after that cheering sight you were still cold, well, there were always the braziers depicted above for a
quick blast of heat!

TRAINS AND TIGGERS

My car has hit the dust recently so I am using trains. On Saturday I'm going to Todmorden for a celebratory Christmas reading in the library, with mince pies and wine. I'll be reading with poets Janet Loverseed, Gina Shaw and Joy Howard. It doesn't seem a simple thing to get to Todmorden from where I live so it's going to be an interesting experience....The reading will be short, fifteen minutes or so, but the day will be long!

I went to Grassington's Dickensian Fair last weekend, had to take a series of three trains, and the most charming was the Ilkley train, extremely clean, with a beautifully modulated recorded message saying "Welcome to the Ilkley Train" and some very polite passengers who all apologised profusely if they elbowed you accidentally and who all, I noticed, dutifully placed their used tickets and any other rubbish in the station bin when they got off the train. The worst trains I've ever travelled on have to be Merseyrail trains; I don't like "Liverpool bashing" but these are shabby, badly battered by the humans they transport, and at certain times of day travelling on your own doesn't feel too safe. And as for bins? You just use the seats and the floor...much like the London Underground really.

In Grassington I met the Festival Director Amelia Vivyan. She described how working with her team was like working with a gathering of Tiggers! All keen, all "yes, yes, we can do that!" or "Wow, let's do this!" Bounce, bounce. How I like that! We shared a few names of people whom we thought to have flair and charisma at these events, and some who don't....

What would the world be like if it were populated by Tiggers? A bit like trains, I imagine, loud, jostling, chaotic - but full of adventure. Adventure? YES! Adventure. Bounce, bounce. I like that!

Here's to readings, and trains.