We went to a friend's house for lunch today, and I forgot to post anything before going out, which means I will have to break my normal rule never to press the Publish button on a computer, or indeed Send, after having a drink. However, since the two glasses of red were five hours ago and accompanied by roast lamb, cheese, and apple crumble, I'm probably fairly safe.
We listened to the radio in the car on the way over, and dear old Bing Crosby was singing White Christmas. I'm not with Bing on that one. When you are trying to get to lunches and suppers and concerts and see people as one does at Christmas, and you would like the delivery van to make it up the farm lane with any last minute Amazon orders, and want to get to the shops to buy the ingredients for Christmas lunch, and would like the shops to have some fresh vegetables in them and not have run out of chipolatas or cream, a White Christmas is frankly a damn nuisance. Give me damp and 12 degrees any time.
Listening to the Christmas songs on the radio reminded me that it really is time we started working our way through our collection of Christmas music, or we're never going to play most of it. The Watersons' strange pagan offering is a fixed item on the schedule, and will come out on the evening of Christmas eve. Then we have not just one but three discs of carols from Saint Pauls. The first one I bought has staples like Once in Royal David's City and Away in a Manger, but then I branched out and the most recent addition is on the Hyperion label and includes tracks by Byrd and Gibbons.
There is a sort of Watersons lite offering by a more recent folk ensemble, which is quite good but lacks the elemental wildness of the original, more Lady Audley's Secret than Wuthering Heights. Then there is a very good Christmas album by folk stalwart John Kirkpatrick. He has been around since the 1970s, and picked up the BBC Radio 2 Folk Musician of the Year Award in 2010. His album has a splendid song about making the Christmas pudding, and another which is a sly take on the nativity story of the stable animals being able to speak. There's also a Christmas offering from Thea Gilmore, including the track That'll be Christmas which is getting air time again this year. She is one of those singer-songwriters who don't fit neatly into a musical category, whose fans say they should be more widely known. Despite liking her Christmas CD I still haven't bought any of her others.
We've got the Pogues Fairytale of New York. I bought that last year as a surprise. Then there's a box cryptically labelled Christmas Album, which must contain something we copied to CD ourselves, but I can't remember what. I bought A Peter Warlock Christmas on the strength of loving Bethlehem Down, though the Systems Administrator tends to get rather restless being made to listen to that much Peter Warlock. Finally there are three albums from the New College choir, which is probably rather a lot. I think I liked the track listings on all of them, and they were cheaper if you bought them as a set.
That should keep us happy. Better press that Publish button and start listening.
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