End of World Review

The twin highlights of 2012 were the family get-together

in August - when James, Gabrielle, Ruby and Olly made it across from Australia together with Candy and Quinn and Matthew and Charlie from Norfolk - and Pat's riding holiday with Sophy in Ireland the previous month.

Pat made her usual Flying Granny visits to the UK at regular intervals to look after Quinn. Apart from the family in August, we had Maggie and Phil as guests in March, and Dave came over in June to keep me company during one of Pat's visits to Candy and Quinn. An extremely severe winter - we were snowed in for four weeks -

prevented us from coming over for Quinn's birthday but we made it for Candy's in April, and I was able to pop over to Leicester for a couple of days to see Dave & Sue. In July I took Quinn with me to Leicester while Pat was in Ireland and we both had a thoroughly enjoyable time.

My final visit to the UK in November

ended unhappily as I managed to leave my suitcase on the train. Not, alas, the only sign of my deteriorating memory: next stop the Laurels! Fortunately, the suitcase was recovered and Pat brought it back to Italy the following month. It did, however, lead to an underwear crisis which I failed to resolve satisfactorily. Apart from visits to the UK we had two trips to Senigallia on the Adriatic coast to stay with two Italian friends, Peppe and Angiola.

Next March we plan, Mayan prophecies allowing, to visit Sophy and Adam in Dubai.

We has a super Christmas last year

with Sophy and Adam and Candy and Quinn, but were expecting to spend this year on our own. Happily, owing to a change of plans, Sophy and Adam will be coming across from Christmas Eve to the 29th. This year I failed to get any letters published in the Guardian. However, my English tourist guide to Montefalcone, published by the Comune, did get a mention in the Italian press. My translation of two mediæval texts about the Appenine Sybil has fared less well, the President of the Mountain Community insisting that it contain an Italian as well as an English translation of Antoine de la Salle's Le Paradis de la Reine Sibylle. God knows why as there is an Italian translation readily available and in my view the language into which a text is being translated should always be done by a native speaker. And the more I read Italian the more it reveals its way of structuring experience to be very different from that of the English language. A reflection, I suppose, of its different culture: its attitude to animals and the behaviour of its old men are two cases in point. Not that English culture is static: it's changing as its vocabulary becomes increasingly Americanised and its sport globalised.

Northern Italy suffered two major earthquakes this year, the earlier one figurative, the latter literal. The second devastated swathes of Emilia Romagna, the first exposed the xenophobic and separatist Northern League as being as corrupt as Italy's other political parties. Their only saving grace is that they have the sense to realise that Europe hangs together or its nations will hang separately as the balance of power swings eastwards. Meanwhile the UK's paranoia increases as it tilts at bogus enemies whilst its leaders snuggle ever closer to its inhabitants' real foes. Having made great strides in its mission to destroy the NHS, the Tories are renewing their attack on the BBC - after the temporary setback to the fortunes of its puppet-master Murdoch - by using the Savile affair as a crowbar. If the blogosphere is to be believed, there were far more powerful figures involved in his repulsive circle of abusers than a few clapped out DJs. Some at the very top of government in the 1970s have sailed off to the next world, others are still alive and as exempt from police investigation as Savile was when it might have done some good. Meanwhile the BBC is being berated for wasting public funds on Entwhistle's £450,000 pay-off. Rather fades into insignificance, I'd say, compared to the £370,000 pension the taxpayer is giving Fred Goodwin every year for helping to plunge the country into its greatest post-war financial crisis.

Apart from War and Peace my reading has has been largely confined to crime fiction: Dave introduced me to Jo Nesbos and Fred Vargas's novels, and they were a jolly good read. The one literary work I read, Ann Patchett's Bel Canto, was a disappointment. In an attempt to improve her mind, Pat is doggedly persevering with Gao Xingjian's Soul Mountain. She is not enjoying it!

Finally, if you wish to respond to this post Lynn Truss may be able to give you some hints. A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to one and all - assuming the Mayans got it wrong!

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Pat Tyler

Pat got from the UK last Friday after a week at Candy's working hard tiling her bathroom and finishing knitting Quinn's cardigan. She brought back my suit carrier and a large number of Christmas presents, one of which - shampoo from Deborah- was confiscated by Stansted security.

The dying of the light.

For some years now I haven't had to remember much: my memory's been outsourced to the Internet. Can't recall the source of a quotation? No problem, just Google it. And the coming of the iPhone meant this information was always on tap. No doubt the spread of literacy brought a similar feeling of emancipation to those who'd been previously totally reliant on their powers of recall. And just like an unfortunate who's lost a scrap of paper containing a piece of vital information, I'm bereft when our Internet connection's down. But unlike the scrap of paper, the information in cyberspace is still there and can be retrieved the following day.
   Two years ago, having bought an iPhone 4, I gave Candy my first iPhone, the 3G, which I'd acquired in the summer of 2008. On my recent visit to England I similarly passed on the iPhone 4, having upgraded to this year's model, and Quinn became the proud recipient of the 3G - minus SIM card - which he is using to play games on. But what a sad state the phone is in, bits of plastic are flaking off, and the volume switch has virtually disintegrated. Unfortunately, as my misadventures in England this November bear witness, the physical state of this former repository of my memory reflects the state of my actual memory. My forgetting to remove my luggage from the train, mentioned in an earlier post, was merely the culmination of a series of lapses.
   In the course of mooching about School after the OEs' dinner, Sam, Eccles and I ended up in the choir stalls. A battered copy of The Public School Hymn Book was in the pile of music by the organ. I thumbed through the book to find my favourite hymn, number 311 Lord Dismiss Us with Thy Blessing, always sung on the last day of term. To my horror I discovered that 311 far from being the best of hymns was the very worst: Lord Behold Us with Thy Blessing. No prizes for guessing when that was sung! For over fifty years, ever since leaving the wretched place, I've bored people with my fond recollections of hymn number 311, when all the time it was actually number 317. Soon I'll be confiding to people what a splendid chap Hitler was for standing up to Churchill's aggression and saving England from being invaded by the Nazis.
   Worse was to follow. When Matthew and Charlie came to Candy's for supper the conversation turned to their visit to Montefalcone this year. They said they hoped to come again, to which I responded that it would be a pity if this year's visit should be their only one. But it wasn't, they said. Oh yes it was, I insisted until with a sudden start I remembered that they were of course quite right, and the memory of their visit the previous year blazed into life.
   Just as the colour fades from an old man's hair, so his inner light begins to flicker warning him that soon it will disappear altogether. All that is left is to take to heart Thomas's plea to his father and

'Rage, rage against the dying of the light.'

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