Category: Uncategorized

The ubiquity of Gifs

Gifs are a universal language that everyone understands. Who hasn’t sent a Gif to cheer up a friend or posted a funny reaction? With the click of a button, we can appear to engage with the world without any real effort.

There is no doubt that Gifs are wildly popular. A staggering seven billion Gifs are sent around the world daily. That is just under the estimated population of the world which currently stands at around 7.8 billion. Facebook, Instagram and text messages act as conduits through which Gifs jetset around the globe. As a product, Gifs are not short of a market.

The auto-play loop of a Gif is hypnotic. Perfectly sensible people watch cats walk backwards only to fall off cupboards. Repeatedly. I admit, there is something mesmerising about these images, but I fail to see how this recycled humour can be considered generative or funny once seen for the fiftieth time.

Gifs are said to enliven a message. There is nuance to a Gif that an emoji can’t capture. Popular culture is referenced in novel ways to get a message across. We can choose to raise a glass using the iconic scene from the Great Gatsby where Leonardo DiCaprio’s raises his Champagne glass. It allows us to be part of a mass experience while at the same time feeling as if the image represents us personally. Of course, Leonardo has nothing in common with our lives, but we can pretend to have some deep affinity with him by sending a drunken message to a friend at two in the morning.

Not everyone can be a master of repartee. It takes time and effort to come back with a witty remark or pun. A Gif eliminates this dilemma. Even a child can find an image that is apt and funny, even if hackneyed. This can be seen as a great leveller or even a democratisation of the conversation where everyone can take part. However, I wonder whether the conversation is worth having if all we do is regurgitate viral clichés.

There is a lot of cultural appropriation that goes on. Notice how many black faces there are in Gifs compared to other media. Is this a move towards equality or another form of subjugation? Black men are often portrayed as sex symbols or comic figures. Search for older women and you get the eccentric wrinkled faces wearing outlandish clothes. These women are not a celebration of age, instead they are used to ridicule. I am not comfortable with these portrayals; however benign they may seem.

Gifs are popular because they fit so easily into our frantic lifestyles. We can multitask, message several people at the same time as we work on a report. It just takes a click and we have sent a quick response. Easy, right? Yet we can waste precious time trawling for the perfect Gif.  Especially if there is something at stake. We want it to get to the heart of our message, to show exactly what we mean. I wonder whether our communication wouldn’t be clearer and more personal if we spent that time looking for the perfect word instead. After all, there are over 170,000 to choose from in the English language.

Diary Obsession

Each year, I spend countless hours hunting for the perfect diary, and for most of my adult life, each diary has disappointed. I’ve tried them all: A4 and palm sized, a page to a day and a week to an opening, dated and undated, horizontal and vertical, a page with notes, to-do lists, calls to make, and shopping lists. I’ve created my own using Day Timers, Debden and Filofax. I have ordered ridiculously expensive diaries from the States and Canada, and this year, I’ve gone Japanese with a Hobonichi diary.

I admire people who year in, year out, order the same page a day diary and find it adequate for their needs. For me, this diary has never worked. I need to keep my appointments apart from the many lists I inevitably keep. I don’t like my to-dos to morph into one large messy list which is visually overwhelming in a diary format. And I really can’t be bothered rewriting lists. The result is that I inevitably come up with a new system at the beginning of the year which I follow for no more than a month. If I am lucky. Then, the expensive diary sits on my desk, glaring at me for a year while I look back at it with remorse. I am finally relieved of feelings of inadequacy at the end of December, when I throw the thing in the bin and begin to scroll the internet rabbit warren for a new, improved model. In fact, the only diaries I have kept are from my twenties. Each year, I bought a Tasmanian Wilderness diary with Peter Dombrovskis’ sublime photos. I wrote down when essays were due and the odd appointment. That was all I needed.

Does this mean that I have been doomed to a life of disorganisation since my twenties? Well, no. Over the years I have found what works for me and what doesn’t. A single notebook or diary can’t do it all. The following is the best system I have been able to cobble together so far.

I carry with me a distinctive notebook where I keep a Master List of everything I want to get done. This is a random collection of things ranging from books I’d like to read through to reminders that the cat needs booster shots. Then, a small number of items from this list is transferred to my daily tasks.

At work, I use the calendar function in Outlook and that works well for appointments and time blocking for projects. I keep a paper to-do list each day and have experimented online with Trello which uses the Kanban flow principle (an interesting way to keep track of work if you would like to follow it up). At home, I have a daily to-do list which I cross off with a highlighter. I get the same satisfaction as crossing out items with a black texta but this way I can see what I have achieved. For appointments in 2022, I intend to use my small Hobonichi diary which fits into my handbag. I only ever use a pencil to jot down appointments as a change in plans is inevitable. This is a habit I have kept up for years, both for diaries and address books.

I am not saying this is the best way to do things. Far from it. All I can go on is what hasn’t worked in the past and what has. We are idiosyncratic creatures. What works for one person may or may not work for the next. And what works now, may not work later. In the end it is all trial and error until we find something that works – at least for a while.

I’ll let you know if the Hobonichi survives into February.

10 worthy New Year’s resolutions

  1. Be grateful. ‘The root of joy is gratefulness… It is not joy that makes us grateful; it is gratitude that makes us joyful.’ – Brother David Steindl-Rast, my inspiration (gratitude.org).
  2. Say ‘thank you’ for everything; the good and the bad. As Meister Eckhart (1260-1328) said, ‘If the only prayer you said was thank you, that would be enough.’
  3. Be generous. ‘Sometimes when we are generous in small, barely detectable ways it can change someone else’s life forever.’- Margaret Cho, comedian.
  4. Stand up to injustice.  Martin Luther King Jr., amongst others said, ‘No one is free until we are all free.’ This quote makes us realise that we are all diminished by injustice, not just the person or people who experience it firsthand.
  5. Be aware of the deep interconnections we share. Our lives are linked at every level, from the air we breathe to the planet we inhabit as well as the way we treat each other. Olympian Hannah Teter expressed this clearly when she said, ‘The earth is one big, interconnected entity. If you hurt a piece, you hurt the whole. If you hurt the people, you hurt the environment.’
  6. Be aware of your biases; we all have them!  I quote Tara Moss, ‘We must all acknowledge our unconscious biases, and listen with less bias when women, and others who are marginalised, speak out. A lot of change is possible by just acknowledging unconscious bias – that exhaustively documented but unpleasant reality many would rather ignore – and listening with less bias and acting on what we then learn.’ Or as Oscar Wilde put it, ‘whenever people agree with me, I always feel I must be wrong.’
  7. Notice beauty. Viktor Frankl, a concentration camp survivor who went on to become a well-respected neurologist and psychiatrist said: ‘As the inner life of the prisoner tended to become more intense, he also experienced the beauty of art and nature as never before.’ If people can find beauty while in the worst possible surroundings, so can we. Maya Angelou put it brilliantly, ‘Life is not measured by the number of breaths you take but by the moments that take your breath away.’
  8. Make time for art and play. Albert Einstein famously said, ‘Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.’ Give it the space to bloom.
  9. Slow down. Kirsten Gillibrand (Democratic Senator) had this to say about rushing: ‘The biggest mistakes I’ve ever made are when I’ve been rushed. If I’m overwhelmed, I slow down. It’s more effective.’ It reminds me how Gandhi on a very busy day exclaimed, ‘I have so much to accomplish today that I must meditate for two hours instead of one.’ We would all benefit from slowing down.
  10. Find the humour amongst it all – it will stand you in good stead. The last word goes to the inimitable Joan Rivers. ‘Never be afraid to laugh at yourself; after all, you could be missing out on the joke of the century.’ 

Night Owl

I have always been a night owl. Always. My mother attributed this to giving birth just after midnight. According to her, my body clock never readjusted. While I don’t believe this explanation, I have often wondered what makes 20% of us who are naturally nocturnal swim against the tide in those dark and murky waters of the night. 

I secretly admire morning people. They wake up, get out of bed, and start their day. I wake up, prise open my eyes and exhaust my daily allocation of self-discipline just to haul myself out of bed. No wonder I am unable to resist any temptation after this mammoth effort; I have nothing left in the willpower tank by 8am.

Yet I can get up if I must. I spent a year in Switzerland getting up at 5:15am so I could catch the 6:03 bus to work. However, I still got my second wind at night and never went to sleep before midnight. Even then, I had to force myself to go to bed because I knew the price I’d pay in the morning. There were plenty of nights when my carriage turned into a pumpkin as I crawled into bed past any sensible bedtime. I still refer to midnight as pumpkin time and do my best to get to bed by the stroke of twelve.

The moment holidays arrive, my body clock reverts to its preferred circadian rhythm. I can happily stay up and be productive until one or two in the morning. If I am in a state of flow, I can keep working into the wee hours without feeling tired. I love the quiet of the night and the inky black view from my window. Neighbours as well as their dogs are asleep and rarely does a car disturb the peace. The only sounds I hear are the ticking of a clock, the occasional train in the distance and that damn mosquito after my blood. 

Sometimes I feel like a left-handed person in a right-handed world. Everything is geared towards morning people. Most of our jobs, schools, shops, and any admin tasks that require talking to a real person have to be done within ‘business hours’. Admittedly, I can do my banking at four in the morning, but I would find it hard to buy stationery at that time. And then, just to rub it in, there are those super-efficient, maddening people who schedule meetings at 8am. They turn up not only wide awake but are also coherent. Meanwhile, I am slumped over a cup of tea, grunting and nodding my head at what I hope are appropriate moments. As a rule, I’m monosyllabic until 10am.

I have tried to readjust my body clock, I really have. I even bought two years’ worth of morning journals! As I am a self-help junkie always looking for a quick fix, I haven’t quite given up, even though I am onto my third iteration of the journal. According to conventional wisdom, it takes 66 days to start a habit, but I have been going for well over 180 days without success. I have listened to podcasts, read the Miracle Morning and other classics in the oevre, but my body refuses to yield. I am sure these books were written by the 80% who cannot fathom what the problem is in the first place.

Luckily for me, we have reached the Christmas holidays. I give my body permission to do what it does best, namely fall back into ‘bad habits’. I look out the window and see moths do-si-do on the glass pane. Like me, they are attracted to my desk lamp. It is a completely calm night, nothing stirs outside. Once more, I become aware of the clock ticking. Blissfully quiet hours have passed. And so it is Christmas. There is no better way to celebrate than to sing a hymn to honour the magic of this night.

Stille Nacht

Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht,
Alles schläft; einsam wacht
Nur das traute hochheilige Paar.
Holder Knabe im lockigen Haar,
Schlaf in himmlischer Ruh!
Schlaf in himmlischer Ruh!

Silent night

Silent night, holy night!
All is calm, and all is bright
Round yon Virgin, Mother and Child
Holy infant so tender and mild
Sleep in heavenly peace
Sleep in heavenly peace

Books

The library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means, mortgage rates, and the currently tight real-estate market allows you to put there. Umberto Eco

My lifelong love affair with books started with non-other than Noddy. I was six years old and had just learned to read. The little Noddy books were sold cheaply at newsagents and were more like tiny, stapled magazines using large print than real books. Still, I treasured my hero with his blue hat driving his red and yellow car. I read the same stories over and over under the doona when I should have been asleep. My torch was stowed under my pillow and was retrieved the moment I thought the coast was clear. There was something delicious about my clandestine reading, like sucking on a boiled sweet and making it last as long as possible.

I didn’t have many books as a child, and I treasured each one I was given. Within them, I could go to faraway places, join a heroine on her quest and experience a life completely different to my own. Movies were fun but they ended far too quickly. I liked to savour the story and let my imagination take me places. I loved that I could travel in time, forwards and back and sometimes to magical kingdoms where laws of nature didn’t apply. I could be swept away on a magic carpet, see a genie emerge from a bottle or be brought back to life by a kiss.

Even back then, I dreamt of having my own library. My first attempt to make this dream a reality came when the librarian at Elwood Central culled some books at the end of the year. She sold them at $5 a box. I scraped together my pocket money and carted my haul home. I don’t remember much about the books but there was one on African animals that had an elephant embossed on the front cover. I ran my finger over that elephant as if I were reading Braille.

In my 20s I was lucky to work in a bookshop for several years. I remember my first pay packet. Half of it went back into the till, notwithstanding the 10% staff discount. ‘Don’t worry, this happens at the beginning. You’ll become more discerning,’ my boss Margaret said, as I walked away with an armful of books. She was both right and wrong. I did become more discerning but that didn’t stop me from spending money on the books I loved.

Later, when I went to university and read German authors, I yearned to add their books to my shelves. I began to go overseas regularly and always came back with a large number of books. Back in the 1980’s, I posted them using a now defunct postal discount that applied to printed matter only. It made sending books anywhere in the world affordable. Once back in Australia, I collected parcel after parcel of books I had found in bookshops or flea markets. Opening these boxes, after a twelve-week journey by sea, was always a delight. I could barely remember what I had packed in the boxes and surprises always awaited me.

Like Umberto Eco, I haven’t read every book in my library. I often buy a book because I know, one day, I will want to read it and by then it may not be readily available. I have an eclectic taste in reading and love that I will never run out of reading material or ideas to explore. Like Umberto Eco, I value my unread books as they symbolise infinite possibilities and remind me of just how little I know.

Blue Dog

Blue Dog painting by Tracey Mackie

When parents label children, they live up to their expectations. My sister was considered artistic. She could paint and draw, and I couldn’t. In my family I was joking referred to as the Blue Dog Girl.

It all goes back to an incident in grade one. My teacher gave the following instruction, ‘I want you to draw a colourful dog.’ She walked past the desks handing out art paper. ‘You may get your pencils out once you have your sheet,’ After these scant instructions, she returned to her desk on a raised platform at the front of the class.

            I slowly slid the zipper over the interlocking teeth along the edge of my pencil case and took out three coloured pencils. I sharpened each one in turn and laid them out in a row in front of me. The lingering spicy smell of the wood mingled with lead shavings made me feel giddy. I wanted to surround myself with this luscious scent.

‘Stop making a mess on your desk,’ the teacher called from her seat as she looked over her glasses that had slipped down her nose. I sunk into my chair. When I felt the danger had passed, I let a breath escape slowly. I then looked at my three pencils and, on a whim, chose the blue one.  Heads down, we were completely absorbed in the task. The only sound was an occasional rustle and the high-pitched legato scrape of pencils on paper. 

            I have always loved dogs but wasn’t allowed to keep one in our small flat. To be asked to draw a dog in class was treat. I loved the freedom my teacher gave us to choose the colours for ourselves. I liked that I had coloured the head blue. I decided to add blue ears and, for good measure, a blue body. After that, the legs were also coloured blue and when I came to the tail, I let my pencil glide in long strokes to give the dog the bushiest blue tail ever. I leaned back to admire my creation from a distance. I smiled at the crazy creature that peered back at me with one eye. 

‘What’s this?’ the teacher’s voice boomed. ‘What were you thinking? Well? Have you ever seen a blue dog in your life?’ I opened my mouth to answer but no words came out.  ‘What is going on in that head of yours? Tell your mother I want to see her!’ She shook her head, turned on her heels to clippety clop her way back to her desk. 

            At home, through tears, I tried to explain. ‘But she said to draw a colourful dog and I did. Besides, I like blue.’  My mother laughed and laughed. I couldn’t see what was so funny. ‘Our Blue Dog Girl, you’ll never be an artist,’ she said. This story has been retold many times over and has passed, embellished, into family lore. I had become the Blue Dog Girl who couldn’t draw.

            On the wall of my current study, I have a picture of a blue dog. It was painted for me by Tracey Mackie, a local artist who lives in the Central West of New South Wales. It is one of my favourite paintings. I love the way Blue Dog looks at me quizzically, flaunting his red bandana. This dog commands attention and won’t let anyone mess with him. Best of all, I finally wear the mantle of Blue Dog Girl with pride.

Advent Calendar

I don’t remember ever having an Advent Calendar as a child, but I always loved the countdown to Christmas. The days were short in Europe, and winter had set in. Every house looked festive and there was a sense of expectancy in the air. The best day by far was the Feast Day of St Nicholas on December 6 with its promise of good things to come. Well-behaved children could look forward to St Nicholas to fill up their boots with delicacies such as chocolate, nuts, Spekulatius biscuits and oranges. Oranges all the way from Jaffa – a delicacy in the middle of winter! Of course, naughty children would not be rewarded. They were threatened with St Nicholas’ offsider, Krampus, a devil like figure dressed in black who carried a carpet beater to give them a thrashing. Krampus would also stuff coal into the boots of these naughty children.

Every child in Austria looked forward to St Nicholas Day but at the same time feared the arrival of Krampus. Nobody could make it through the whole year without getting into trouble. All one could hope for was that St Nicholas would turn a blind eye to small misdemeanours. My boots were filled with nuts and sweets but there was always one piece of coal to remind me of my failings.

When my daughter was born, I continued the tradition. I made my own Advent calendar with pockets for each day and found little treats for each one. When she was four, I gave her a wooden railway track and train, with each piece of track tucked into a pocket all the way to December 24. By Christmas she could build the complete track and run the train. Of course, I also made her polish her boots and put them outside on the eve of St Nicholas Day to be filled to the brim with delicacies I knew she loved. I never told her about Krampus though. I had no desire to make her fear a mythical figure and emotionally scar yet another generation.

I continued this tradition with the Advent calendar right through her teenage years. Some of the pockets were filled with hair ties, lip gloss or a pair of socks. When she went to university and moved to another city, I tried to see her before the first of December to stuff her Advent calendar. Then, when I could no longer guarantee to get there in time, I came up with an innovative way of continuing the tradition. I embraced the twenty-first century and went virtual. Each day in December, I now transfer her $5. For one month of the year, her morning coffee is paid. It’s ingenious. I get to hold on to our family tradition and she gets to enjoy her adult version of Advent.

This year, she will be with me for St Nicholas. I won’t have to remind her, I’m sure of that. Her boots will be polished and left outside for Mother Nicholas to fill. My daughter is twenty-five now, a young woman living her own life, making her own decisions, right or wrong. So, I wonder. Is this the year to learn the lesson of the piece of coal? After all, none of us can claim to be perfect.

Christmas Pudding

Remember to soak in brandy and flambé!

I am the sole heir of a Christmas pudding recipe handed down through the generations. While Margaret was alive, she referred to it as her family’s secret recipe and I was the only person with whom she shared it. Over the years, I have faithfully followed the recipe and have delighted many friends both in Australia and overseas with this traditional Christmas treat.

I always think of recipes in terms of the person who shared it with me. Each time I make a dish, it is infused with love for, and memories of, the person who was kind enough to share their skill and knowledge with me. It is a true act of friendship to hand someone the gift of a great recipe. I hardly ever use commercially printed cookbooks, but I always return to the scraps of paper with scribbled recipes that friends have shared. Not only does it bring joy to think of people who have accompanied me at points in my life, it also brings joy to the people who are in my life now. A recipe is a gift of paying it forward.

I have never cared much for keeping secrets. Now that I am the sole guardian of Margaret’s Christmas Pudding recipe, I wonder about the felicity of the secret. Imagine if our forebears had kept recipes for bread or wine a secret. Would we have national cuisines if all recipes were fiercely guarded or just family feuds over the best dishes?

I don’t want to be the last in line to make this adaptation of a great Christmas pudding. The recipe is too good for that. My apologies darling Margaret but the secret is out.

                                                Christmas Pudding

6 oz breadcrumbs
2 oz flour
4 oz butter
½ lb sultanas
½ lb currants
4 oz raisins
2 oz glacé cherries
1 tsp nutmeg (freshly grated)
½ tsp mixed spice
½ lb brown sugar
2 eggs
¼ pint stout
½ cup grated carrots
1 tsp marmalade
½ cup warm milk
Juice and grated rind of 1 lemon
1 tsp bicarb

Mix butter and sugar until smooth. Mix all dry ingredients except spices and bicarb. Dissolve latter in warm milk, add lemon juice, rind and add beaten eggs and stout. Mix all ingredients together. Cover and leave. Stir again and if dry, add more milk and stout.

Cook for 5 hours in buttered pudding container with a tight lid, lined with grease proof paper. Serve hot.

Gosling Creek Reserve

“The path reveals itself once you start walking.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Aşkanjali: The Sufi Sermon

The grass is long after all the rain. In parts of the reserve, it reaches past my shoulder. Rivulets of water course down the slopes to form boggy marshland and the creek runs fast and free to pool in a small pond. These are the things I forgot to mention when I invited my friend, Penny, for a walk with her two dogs. I have sensible walking boots; she wears flat slip-ons. Our dogs run wild while we jump across puddles or find grass tufts that take our weight as we cross the great wet expanse. Her shoes squelch and slide, but we make it across the worst of it with our balance intact.

Birds twitter in treetops and we hear a stream burbling not too far from us. As we approach a small bridge, the type you would find depicted in a Monet but without any of the charm, water rushes past us as if in a hurry to make it downstream. One of her dogs leaps in and lets the deluge wash over him. We can’t help but be swept along with his exuberance. After a while, he joins us on the path shaking the water off his loose skin, seemingly in both directions at once with a whip-flick motion that drenches us as he runs past. We laugh at his joie de vivre and watch the dogs bound through the high grass.

As we reach a well-trodden path around a pond, we hear a chorus of frogs in the tall reeds. Looking closer, we see a mother duck with five tiny ducklings drift towards the foliage for protection. The dogs haven’t noticed them. They are much more interested in a larger version waddling on the path ahead of us and make a half-hearted attempt to run after it. The duck launches itself into the pond and elegantly glides away. None of the dogs have an appetite for a serious chase, especially one that involves the effort of swimming. They are already running zigzag, following a new smell that has caught their attention.

On the other side of the pond is a park bench. We head towards it for a rest. The bench is dedicated to the memory of a girl called Mel, the same age as my daughter. She would have been 25 when she died. I think of her family and friends and the unspeakable loss they must continue to endure. My heart breaks for these nameless strangers. I wonder how this young woman died and why the seat was erected here. I can’t help but imagine various scenarios and fill the gaps with conjecture, but I will never know her true story.

We take a seat, but the dogs start barking and beseech us to keep moving. After a couple of minutes, we give in to their demands and begin our walk back. I decide that the asphalt track does have its merits, especially as we feel the first drops of rain, first on our arms and later, on our shoulders. Tree roots have cracked open the surface of the path and we tread carefully to avoid tripping on fissures and craters. At the same time, I’m glad nature is winning the battle here, and consider it likely that the trees will outlast the asphalt.

The path is suddenly steeper. We see hemlock growing up to two metres and it has invaded large tracts of the grassland. The plant is highly toxic and there is no antidote to hemlock poisoning. We call the dogs and make sure we don’t brush against it. This section of the reserve looks neglected, and we are aware that there may be snakes in the weedy vegetation. Best move on swiftly.

A galah flies across our path while a magpie struts in the next field, head bobbing forward and back until it sees our dogs. Begrudgingly, it flies to the nearest branch and keeps a wary eye on these bumbling, ground-sniffing predators. The birds, as ever, win against these domesticated, well-fed, and pampered dogs.

We reach a plateau where large fallen limbs of tress are neatly placed along the verge of the path. No doubt a storm has raged here not long ago. Some of the branches are horizontal while others lean precariously on the trunk of a tree. In time they will offer shelter to ground dwelling creatures and their sacrifice will not be in vain. Further, there are trees with protruding branches at crazy angles that remind me of some Halloween prank. They look almost human with one or two additional limbs waving in the wind. We marvel at their shapes and pick up our pace. We can feel the steady drops of rain on our faces now and head for the car.

The dogs have one final crazy dash across a field. They sprint in circles just as though they were running on an invisible racetrack. We call and they return, tongues to one side, panting and spent, content to go home. We laugh at their antics and know we must come again soon. At the carpark, we say our goodbyes and stomp to remove the mud from our shoes.

Fire

I turn off the TV after the 7 o’clock news. The thought of watching another twee English ‘who dunnit’ with a meddling vicar is exasperating. Instead, I brave the lashing rain and Antarctic winds to get wood from the backyard. I peel back the tarp to find a dry stack and begin to load up my left arm with four or five logs, nowhere near enough to last the night. I repeat the process, cursing under my breath as l lose my footing and slip forward onto my knees. I drop the bundle and have to start all over. My right knee smarts and my jeans are now wet.

Tonight, I couldn’t be bothered with the careful assembly of paper and twigs to make sure the fire starts. Outside, it is six degrees, and I am cold. Impatiently, I shove pieces of cardboard into the fireplace, break up a cube of Samba firelighters and build a tepee of kindling around it. Thankfully, the fire catches and I slowly add larger pieces of wood.

I stare into the fire for a long time, watching the flames engulf the wood. The strong winds must be helping to draw the fire up. I watch mesmerised as the flames lick the back and then the sides of the log. The underside is glowing a crazed orange with hairline cracks developing in the structure of the wood. I can’t stop watching this dance of the flames and soon I notice that I am no longer cold.

The dog stretches out in front of the fire box and falls asleep. Her fur becomes hot to touch but she remains there, contented. I keep watching, unable to take my eyes off the log as it turns from brown to yellow to orange with tinges of blue. The fire now consumes everything I care to feed it. It has turned into a crackling, hungry beast.

In Greek mythology, Prometheus, against Zeus’ wishes, took fire from the gods to give to his beloved mortal beings. This knowledge gave humans not only the means of survival, but it was the cornerstone that enabled civilisation, culture, and the arts to flourish. Zeus’ punishment was to nail Prometheus to a mountain and send an eagle to devour his liver. As Prometheus remains immortal, his liver regenerates, and the eagle feeds evermore.

I am grateful for the warmth still left in the glowing embers. But I do think about poor Prometheus. Looking at tonight’s culmination of culture on TV, I wonder whether he has since regretted giving humanity the gift of fire. I’m not sure I would have bothered.