Dear December, two and three: begin again.

Dear December,

Well, it’s only the third of December and I’m already behind with this little project. I’m not going to start with an apology though (‘so very sorry for not writing – haven’t had a minute – have been grading and emailing and I’m editing a magazine – had to catch the train and had dishes to do and it was raining all day and my feet got wet – the ideas weren’t coming and I can't get unstuck and there are bombs dropping elsewhere and my coat didn’t have a hood and there’s too much bad news and the Christmas shoppers were out shopping and –‘) Nope. No excuses. Cut out the muttering. I’ll just begin again tomorrow. 

In the meantime, here are the two songs from the 2^nd and 3^rd for you to listen to (I'll be posting a song a day - not necessarily Christmas related - and thought I'd put the actual videos on here for once rather than just the links even though the first video is a wee bit ugly - I find Santa mildly terrifying...)

One.) Father Christmas by The Features (which I heard for the first time on Wednesday during a slightly surreal Christmas-themed writing group. Among other things, we all wrote a list for five minutes of things that would go in our Christmas wish book if we had one – ‘the hat that I lost last year (the only hat I ever loved), Pablo Neruda’s ‘Odes to Common Things’, a time-pausing function on my iPhone, new jeans, a plane ticket, some blue sky, ‘to feel myself beloved on this earth’, the ability to find out in advance whether ‘x’ will be a waste of time or not, a pillow that does my hair in my sleep ... etc.’).

Two.) Home by Dustin Tebutt, purely because it was playing in the background of Tinderbox in Paperchase while I was in there earlier and it's a good song. I’ve been listening quite a lot to his music this past year (in particular 'The Breach' this summer/spring when the sky took until midnight to set, and ‘Silk’ this autumn when I listened to it in the dark to try and wake myself up). I feel more than certain that when I stumble upon his music again a few years from now, I’ll click on play and – in seconds – be able to taste this whole year. 

♥

Bear playing a banjo picture by the lovely Julianaa Swaney.