My favourite fictional character is, without question, George Smiley – a creation of the complex mind and colourful experience of the masterful writer John le Carré.
Both le Carré and I once lived in the Swiss capital Bern, and both of us are published authors, but it causes me no little chagrin to admit that this is where the similarities between us end.
To take afflatus from him, on several occasions I have sought out le Carré’s apartment in Bern, Smiley’s house in Chelsea’s Bywater Street, and the former MI5 headquarters in London’s Cambridge Circus, as per the books and as part of my homage to the venerable fictional spymaster, who lives with vividity in my head and heart, thanks to the author’s elegiac work.
Another homage will take place between now and December 25, when I go home to Inverness for a few hours to visit my parents’ grave and lay a Christmas wreath. I stand and chat to them for a while before disappearing, deep in thought and memory, back to the station and, thence, the rural village where I exist, all but an anchorite. It’s pretty there, but it’s not home.
On the return rail journey, when it’s too dark to immerse myself in the remarkable scenery which surrounds the Highland line, I usually sit and write my Christmas cards. But, this year, it’s different. They’re already done, signed and sealed lang syne, and lying beside the front door in as serried ranks as any Trooping of the Colour, until a more festive day later in the month when I can legitimately pop them in the post.
So long, Scrooge – roll on 2024
My second favourite fictional character is the Dickens bellwether, Ebenezer Scrooge; a man whose misanthropy I have mimicked with uncanny success down the decades – particularly at this time of year. But, listen to this: I really believe this is a very different Christmas.
Why? I have no idea, but I’m actually looking forward to it for the first time in aeons. I even acquiesced to one of Her Ladyship’s customary five Christmas trees being erected in the front room, in what could fairly be described as mid-November.
My creaking old car, which happily still has a CD player, roars out Carols from King’s on every journey, and the Christmas tape – and, yes, it is an actual tape – bellows out a concoction of Christmas tunes around the house from my bachelor-pad boom box.
I promise you, down decades of existence as an arriviste, I was always bah humbug about the whole thing until the morning of Christmas Eve, at the earliest.
Not only am I looking forward to the forthcoming festivities, not only are the cards written and ready to post, but I have been sufficiently well organised for once to have bought my customary A4 diary in plenty of time, and am busily populating it with the big events of 2024. Prime among them is a pilgrimage to Germany to watch Scotland in the Euros. Consequently, I’m now even relishing next Christmas as well.
Nothing beats sitting down at my desk, leaning on my blotting pad and writing entries in a paper diary with a fountain pen. I use a fountain pen because, for the life of me, I can’t find a quill anywhere.
I jest. But if you know me, I don’t jest that much. I have yet to master the art of coordinating the calendars of my myriad email addresses on my laptop, far less my phone. So, in the meantime, pen and ink is good.
I’m actually looking forward to Christmas
However there’s a dunt, a downside. Ordinarily, I travel far and wide to seek out actual shops selling those special gifts for the near and dear, and buy my goods and chattels therein, eschewing hideous self-service checkouts because they’re doing someone out of a job. While I usually dig in my heels and rage against any machine which tries to tell me what to do, this year I have reluctantly made every single Christmas purchase from my phone, and largely in the bath.
I hasten to add that all of those gifts, which arrived before St Andrew’s Day, were promptly wrapped and tagged in front of a roaring fire while listening to the Christmas tape and supping a glass of something nice from Speyside.
Am I a Renaissance man – if a little late? Is this (yet another) midlife crisis?
What can I do? Am I slowly but irretrievably shrugging off my troglodyte status? Am I a Renaissance man – if a little late? Is this (yet another) midlife crisis?
I’m actually looking forward to Christmas, I’m shopping online and longing to see the Christmas Day faces of those for whom I’ve bought those special gifts. However, if you see me reaching for the TV controller at any point over the festivities to watch Mrs Brown’s Boys, then please send help, for I truly need it.
Mike Edwards OBE was the face of the evening news on STV for more than 25 years and is a published author, a charity trustee and a serving Army Reservist
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