Christmas morning walk

After making a pot of tea; reading about everyday sexism in 1952, the year I was born, that we live in a death-phobic society, how Proust developed his exquisite prose style by translating Ruskin, and a poem, of which a fragment “When I went out in early summer/the creeks were full/and the grass growing/ the bat’s-wing coral-tree stood in flower/and the lake of my heart/was clear and peaceful” (this was Australia); and making and eating my porridge, it was getting light. Anticipating a day of greed and sloth, I felt the need to walk, perhaps because it was Christmas Day.

The street was empty. I heard birdsong. There were no people, but there was the occasional car. I resented every car; one drive far too fast.The church was lit. I wondered if it was the happy-clappy people with drums that fill the church or whether they reserve a slow solemn service for the early-risers, mostly old people.

As I walked a muddy path, I sang: “And all the bells on earth shall ring on, on earth shall ring, on Christmas Day in the morning.” I sang it three times and decided that was enough. Across the Common I could see a few people, mostly with dogs. I admired the line of bare trees against the still-brightening sky. Grateful for my scrap of nature, I imagined myself somewhere more magnificent, a mountain col, a cliff with moaning sea beneath, an empty moor with a view of distant hills.

The first two people I passed said nothing. One looked homeless. I said nothing either. But the third person said: “Good morning, merry Christmas.” He was a gnome of a man, wrinkled, in his 70s, with a bobble hat. I responded and smiled back. (Merry, I reflected is a word we reserve for Christmas; we never use it at any other time, except perhaps as euphemism for drunk.) The next couple, a man and his mother, also said “Merry Christmas.” I thought of my mother, dead now for eight months. How happy she must be to be dead and with my father, dead for 18 years. I thought of my father and how every Christmas we would run along the canal from Bath to the Cross Guns pub, about seven miles. I couldn’t run that now because of my knee, but I could walk it. Perhaps I should drive there now and do the walk or take a train tomorrow.

As I round the pond, I see that Honest Tom’s burger van is open. There’s a smell of bacon. I’m tempted to order and eat a bacon sandwich, a homage to Honest Tom. I wondered if Honest Tom would be open. Would he keep his promise of being open 24 hours a day 356 days a year? He has, but surely Honest Tom can’t be there all the time. There must be many Honest Toms. Perhaps the original Honest Tom is dead. I can’t remember a time when Honest Tom wasn’t there. I find it comforting that Honest Tom is always open. Perhaps when I’m dying, filled with existential terror, and unable to sleep, I’ll get out of my bed and walk to Honest Tom’s for a cup of tea and bacon sandwich.

I walk on and past a tree filled with parrots, making a tremendous racket. Ten years ago there were no parrots. They have adapted magnificently. Will we, I wonder, adapt so well after this society collapses? I doubt it. I see huge planes fly over the Common, one after another at minute intervals, with 200 people to disgorge. I like the word disgorge. These people were flying five miles high through the night while Jesus was being born in a stable.

I’m nearly home now. There are still almost no people. Millions within a mile of me are in their beds. I can hear birdsong. As I open our gate, I feel good. It’s Christmas, a special day.