Tag: charles dickens

MEDITATION 84

As I sit here beside my candle, while the day dissolves into an early winter twilight, I am thinking about ivy. This is not connected with the traditional Christmas Carol ‘The Holly and the Ivy’ as you may be thinking. Perhaps I should be thinking about fir, pine or spruce at this time or about laurel, in honour of dear Marcus Aurelius, who is the inspiration for these meditations. Emperors were after all crowned with laurel leaves.

Actually I am thinking about The Ivy, the famous show business restaurant in West Street in the heart of London’s West End. A recent conversation has brought back memories of my occasional, indeed rare visits there. Of course I have always enjoyed my visits there with friends because of the theatrical ambiance. So many theatre stars have dined there since it first opened its doors in 1917. Photos of some of them adorn the walls. There is still also the possibility of spotting a celebrity or two, which adds a frisson to the occasion. It is also a very comfortable restaurant as there aren’t too many tables. The restaurant has a distinctive Art Deco decor including dark green leather seats (to represent ivy) and Art Deco stained glass panelling and the original cocktail bar.

I haven’t been there for quite a long time so I was quite excited when a friend said he would try to book a table as a late birthday and thank you gift combined. Unfortunately the restaurant was booked out: well restaurants are always busy between Christmas and New Year. So we have settled for one of The Ivy’s branches in Covent Garden. For quite recently The Ivy has become a chain or rather its branches have spread, as real ivy does. Not only are there several branches in London and its environs but now across the country in major towns. Sadly though you can replicate the menu, you can’t replicate the atmosphere of the original. Dear me, I am sounding ungrateful and snobbish perhaps. I don’t intend to be. I am sure my friend and I will have a wonderful evening and it is very kind of him. It’s just that there are occasions when I become rather ‘grand’.  Sometimes it makes me sound unintentionally churlish.

This was the case on a visit to the York branch a few summers ago. I remember the restaurant was packed as it was a Friday evening. The York branch is in a square, St Helen’s Square, and there were some tables outside the restaurant on the pavement for drinks if I remember rightly. My friends and I dined at a corner table with a window looking out onto the square. I must admit it was genuinely rather cramped inside as there were too many tables, unlike the original Ivy. I mentioned this and became rather grand again, commenting that it’s not like the original or words to that effect. It became a kind of joke.

Looking out of the window I noticed that a mobile soup kitchen for the homeless was setting up in the square. Several people were beginning to queue up, waiting for it to open. I have a feeling that the soup van was a fixture in the square before The Ivy was established there . Those drinking at tables outside were virtually an arm’s length away from those queueing up for food. While I was eating, my eyes kept returning to the window and the mobile soup kitchen. Needless to say, the view quietened me down. From playing grand I felt quite small. 

My view out of the window was poignantly incongruous. Here were we in the restaurant, eating and carousing along with all the other diners there, effectively feasting, while others outside were patiently waiting for food. The contrasting scene was worthy of Dickens. I think I said something to that effect to my friends.  A moment from a movie flashed through my mind. It was a scene from David Lean’s marvellous version of ‘Oliver Twist’: a scene early in the film in the Workhouse where Oliver is born. The child paupers are huddled together at a window, their noses enviously squashed against the window panes. For the window looks down on the managers of the Workhouse feasting from a table laden with a magnificent banquet of food.

When we are enjoying our festive celebrations or our Christmas meal, although it is highly unlikely that we will be able to see a mobile soup kitchen through the window or the envious faces of ragged urchins with their noses up against the window pane as in some Dickensian scene, perhaps we should spare a thought or, even better a penny or pound or two for those less fortunate than ourselves, of which there are likely to be many more than usual this Christmas.

We should also remember that at the heart of our frenetic festivities is the stillness of the Christmas story, at the centre of which are parents with a new born child who are homeless for a while and because of a life-threatening political situation, become migrants from their own country.

Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas!

Ave atque Vale – until the next blog.

If you are enjoying my blog, and have not already done so, please sign up below to receive notification of each new blog by e mail. Just add your e mail to ‘Follow’ as it pops up.

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Many thanks

Neilus Aurelius

PS: While I have been blogging, Henry Riley, who posts these Meditations for me, has been jogging! He is in training for the London Marathon on Sunday April 23 (Shakespeare’s birthday) . He is running for Global’s Make Some Noise, which supports hundreds of small charities across the UK – everything from food banks, to mental health and domestic abuse helplines, to carer support, and much more…

If you would like to support him here is the link:

LINK: https://2023tcslondonmarathon.enthuse.com/pf/henry-riley

MEDITATION 72

Before I began this meditation I was looking at the wooden flooring in my lounge. So much more healthy than a carpet for an asthmatic like myself. I have been prompted to look at my floor because I was thinking about another kind of floor: a stone tiled floor. Marcus Aurelius, my namesake, would walk on stone tiled floors in his villas of course or marble or mosaic ones. In imitation of him, I have a stone tiled floor in my small bathroom and marble effect walls in the shower. In the corner is a terracotta amphora (a large urn) which someone gave me as a birthday gift several years ago. I also have some facsimile tiles on the walls from the baths at Ostia Antiqua in Rome, when I visited there. A little touch of Ancient Rome in New Malden!

The reason I have been musing about stone floors is that someone from my youth has recently contacted me via this blog. We have have not been in touch for many years. Paul Cook was a school friend of mine – we were in Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest’ together when we were 15 years old. When Louis Maidens, (our English teacher who directed the school plays) left the school after our ‘O’ levels ,we both joined a new drama group in our local area – Teesside Youth Theatre – at the start of our Sixth Form in 1970! A long.long, time ago. How the years flow by.

He has been putting together information about Ormesby Hall, the local National Trust property, just outside Middlesbrough. The Youth Theatre would often rehearse there on Sunday afternoons. We used to rehearse in the large stone floored kitchen, which was presumable where the servants dined in times gone by.  It wasn’t ‘below stairs’, however but at the side of the house. He has been asking me for memories of rehearsing at the Hall and the kitchen and its stone floors came to mind. Since being in touch with him by email the other day, the memory of those kitchen rehearsals has lingered. 

My first memories of rehearsing there were in the winter of 1970-71 when we were devising a modern version of Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Carol’. The final script would be written by another member of the Youth Theatre, Robert Holman, who eventually went on to be a successful playwright and sadly died last December. The production was to be performed at various venues in the area.

I remember the kitchen was freezing cold, because of those floors. This was very appropriate for our production – we soon got into character! We had to light a fire in the big fireplace before we started rehearsing, I remember.  The high-ceilinged room soon warmed up from the fire, however, and we warmed up by moving around in rehearsal. We wanted to get up from our chairs as soon as possible to get warm so reading through scenes was brisk!

The kitchen soon became cosy and Christmassy and even though we were rehearsing a modern version of Dickens’ famous opus, the Victorian surroundings helped us get into the atmosphere of the story. At least I thought so. I was playing Bob Cratchit and I remember rehearsing the Christmas dinner scene on that stone floor and surrounding brick walls, feeling as if I had one foot in 1970 and the other in 1843! We were definitely in 1970 when we performed the scene for real:  the Christmas dinner we had to ecstatically enthuse over consisted of cold tinned vegetables (including potatoes) and the Christmas goose was substituted by slices of spam!

Being in the kitchen was so very different from rehearsing at my school, St Mary’s College, which was a fairly new building with polished floors or at Kirby College in Middlesbrough, where we had opened their brand new theatre with ‘The Fire Raisers’ the previous September. But that draughty kitchen, because it was such an unusual place to rehearse,  became ‘our space’, our den, our club house over the months we were there and I have fond memories of it.

The place inspired me too: my first production at my school, in 1984, was my own modern version of ‘A Christmas Carol’. My two years at the Youth Theatre helped to form me as any specialised Youth group should. Not only did I have the chance to act, but also to direct and write scripts too and  to be with other people who were generally as committed to performing as I was. There was no Drama at my school once Louis Maidens left and no A Level Drama either. So the Youth Theatre was my lifeline.            

In the following summer, we rehearsed Shakespeare’s ‘Measure For Measure’ there for performances at Middlesbrough Little Theatre in September. The kitchen remained cool even in the summer months! We did rehearse outside though on the lawn sometimes and I also remember rehearsing on the lawn for my final production, ‘Progress in Unity’ another one devised by ourselves and written by Robert Holman, about the history of the area. That production was performed at Middlesbrough Town Hall in September 1972 just before I went to university.

My special memory of being at Ormesby Hall with the Youth Theatre was performing a one act play in the drawing room. This was as part of an arts evening as far as I remember. We performed an Edwardian comedy ‘Playgoers’ by Arthur Wing Pinero. It was about an aristocratic lady unsuccessfully trying to rehearse her servants in a play. I played her equally harassed husband and I think I may have directed it too. The drawing room was the perfect setting for the play and we used some of the sofas and armchairs at one end of the room for our scene with the audience sitting round us in a semi-circle.  It was like begin on a film set in away or in an episode of ‘Upstairs, Downstairs’, which was on the TV at the time. And it was warm of course!

Ormesby Hall has been owned by the Pennyman family since 1599 and when Jim Pennyman died in 1961, it was bequeathed to the National Trust with his wife Ruth being allowed to remain living there. Jim and Ruth Pennyman were great supporters of the Arts and Ruth had been a poet and playwright herself. She had generously loaned us the huge kitchen for rehearsals. I think she provided the logs for the fire too. Sometimes she would wander in with a tray of homemade sausage rolls and cakes or they would be left out for us. She was very welcoming and interested in us but never intruded. Ruth was a very generous supporter of the Youth Theatre and therefore of the artistic development of its members.

In the 1940’s she was also an active and generous supporter of the early days of Theatre Workshop, led by Joan Littlewood, which eventually settled at the Theatre Royal Stratford East in London. In the 40’s they appeared at the early version of the Little Theatre but were billeted at Ormesby Hall. This led to an annual summer school there. Years later, at Stratford East, Joan Littlewood produced many innovative productions including ‘Oh What A Lovely War’ and a number of actors’ professional careers were nurtured there, including Barbara Windsor. I wonder if they rehearsed in the kitchen in the ’40’s just as we did in the ’70’s.

These days we are used to corporate and government patronage and subsidy of the Arts on a large scale and very important it is too, essential to the cultural life of the country and our own well-being. Such sponsorship was also occurring when I was a member of the Youth Theatre, of course, but then as now, there were individuals like Ruth Pennyman who generously and quietly supported local Arts groups and even professional ones in embryo like Theatre Workshop. And not only financially. -Ruth gave us premises to rehearse in and, at times, perform in. Not to mention her homemade sausage rolls and cakes! 

Where have the years gone, I ask myself, as I gaze at the candle beside me. I have begun to perceive that there are far more years behind me than are left to me – even if I become a centenarian! If so, will I still be blogging?  Or what digital format or platform will I be using over thirty years from now. Old and decrepit as I may become, perhaps I will be able to beam down into your homes (if you are still around too) and deliver my blog in person.

Marcus tells us in his Meditations (Book 6): ‘The whole of present time is a pin-prick of eternity. All things are tiny, quick-changed, evanescent’. He also describes Time as a ‘violent stream’ in Book 4. Tine does move quickly and our lives change quickly as a result. We do not see that when we are young. I am beginning to see it now.

Ave atque Vale! Hail and Farewell.

 If you are enjoying my blog, and have not already done so, please sign up below to receive notification of each new blog by e mail. Just add your e mail to ‘Follow’ as it pops up.

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I would also value any feedback on nzolad53@gmail.com or my Facebook page or Twitter.

Many thanks

Neilus Aurelius

MEDITATION 70

‘Tis the season for New Year’s resolutions,’ I think to myself as I sit here beside my candle and begin to write. A New Year’s resolution might be a change of habit, or it might be taking on something new or reviving a good habit that has fallen by the wayside. It is traditionally a time to pull ourselves up short, take stock and see how we can better ourselves in the year ahead. It therefore involves a little reflection: to be resolved about something means that you have thought it through first. It is not some vague plan but a definite course of action. To be resolved also means you have to be determined to carry it out, to see it through (even though that initial determination may eventually dissipate, human nature being what it is!).

Vague courses of action may be all we can manage at present. We have all been living unfocused lives because of the lockdowns and unpredictable (and usually unwanted) changes in our daily routines. Also plans for the future have been necessarily tentative. This lack of focus has been further exacerbated by our greater reliance on our IPhones, the internet and streaming. We are bombarded with choice. We are presented with too many alternatives. So we dissolve into the ‘I might do this or I might do that’ syndrome with the result that we probably end up doing nothing at all!

I am sure that it is possible to find examples of New Year resolutions on Google. Perhaps some people may get their resolutions from there: ‘This one one looks good and suits me. Yes I might do that one. Or should I have a go at the one underneath?” scroll, scroll etc. Perhaps in these desultory times it is good to have a few resolutions or even just one. It might help us to focus, to get a stronger grip on our lives, to plan our day and our leisure time better.

Our dear friend Marcus Aurelius would approve of New Year’s resolutions, I think. As I have said in these pages, his own Meditations were a private document and addressed primarily to himself so they are littered with discreet resolutions of his own. The above paragraphs in this meditation of my own are addressed to myself too, as well as yourself, dear reader, of course!

Marcus was definitely one for being focused as he says in Book 4: ‘No action should be undertaken without aim, or other than in conformity with a principle affirming the art of life.’ This focus derives from a personal urgency: ‘No you do not have thousands of years to live. While you live, while you can, do good.’

Yes we can all resolve to do good in 2022. Or on a more personal and practical level, to be kind to others. In his poem ‘Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey’, William Wordsworth mentions:

                        ‘the best portion of a good man’s life,

                        His little nameless unremembered acts

                        Of kindness and of love.’

(My apologies to modern sensitivities: as Wordsworth was composing the poem in 1798, he writes of ‘a good man’s life’ rather than ‘a good person’s.’)

These lines of Wordsworth are quoted in a recent biography of Dickens by A.N. Wilson, ‘The Mystery of Charles Dickens.’ A.N.Wilson makes an excellent attempt to analyse the psychological seeds of the author’s prodigious imagination. He devotes a chapter to Dickens and Charity, which inevitably centres on ‘A Christmas Carol’, Dickens’ most famous novel. He points out that though Dickens actively supported numerous charitable institutions and campaigns in his lifetime, he felt that personal acts of charity and kindness were more important, perhaps because he received so few in his own deprived childhood.

In the closing scenes in ‘A Christmas Carol’, it is the reformed Scrooge’s acts of kindness towards the Cratchit family on Christmas morning that we remember more than his donations to the Charitable Gentlemen he had snubbed on Christmas Eve or even his reconciliation with his nephew Fred for that matter. In the novel, over the course of the visits of the Ghosts, Scrooge learns what Marcus Aurelius advocates: While you live, while you can, do good.’

So let us resolve to be kind to others in the coming year. But also, in view of the difficult times we have experienced over the last two years, let us also be a little kind to ourselves. By that I do not mean self indulgence, but by looking after ourselves a little better and trying to understand ourselves a little better too. To be a little merciful to ourselves, if you like. From that greater understanding of ourselves, other, perhaps deeper, resolutions may emerge.  

As Marcus writes in Book 7: ‘Dig inside yourself. Inside there is a spring of goodness ready to gush at any moment, if you keep digging.’

Wishing you a Happy New Year, dear reader.

Ave atque Vale! Hail and Farewell.

 If you are enjoying my blog, and have not already done so, please sign up below to receive notification of each new blog by e mail. Just add your e mail to ‘Follow’ as it pops up.

And please do pass on the blog address to others who may be interested.

I would also value any feedback on nzolad53@gmail.com or my Facebook page or Twitter.

Many thanks

Neilus Aurelius

Meditation 62

As I sit here and begin to write beside my candle, I am not thinking about Marcus Aurelius, the inspiration for this blog. Instead, my thoughts have drifted towards another Roman emperor.

I have recently visited the city of York and in the square in front of the cathedral there, York Minster, is a bronze statue of the Emperor Constantine. He sits on a throne looking appropriately powerful and commanding. His gaze seems to go beyond the square to take in the centuries since he reigned (306-337 CE). Perhaps this was intended by the sculptor, Philip Jackson, as the statue was officially unveiled in 1998. It was a millennium project I suppose, suggesting that Constantine transcends the millennia, (as does Marcus, not least, I hope, in my humble blog!).

There is a small marble bust of Constantine dating from Roman times in nearby Stonegate, an altogether more modest image but with that commanding stare nevertheless. When I was in Rome, I saw the fragments of a colossal statue of him (including a very large head with a more mellow gaze and and a hand pointing upwards) in the entrance to the Capitoline museum. It must have been a massive edifice and would have dwarfed all around it. Should my school decide to place a statue in my honour outside my dear Drama studio, I would be quite happy with a small marble bust. In reality, I am happy with nothing at all (just as well, you may say!) as you only have to stand in the centre of the studio and look around you to see my monument!

It may seem strange but Constantine was actually crowned Emperor in York which was then a Roman settlement called Eboracum. There is a large stone column from that time quite near to the statue on the small square. Constantine had served in the army under his father Constantius since 305 (having fled from the reigning Caesar, Galerius, to serve the army in Western Europe). When his father died he was declared emperor by the army. It is appropriate that the statue is situated in front of the Minster as Constantine was reputedly crowned near that spot, and also because eventually he became the first Christian emperor.

York is a city steeped in history: it not only has a Roman past, but also was a Viking settlement and was a thriving medieval town around the Minster. There are also some elegant 18th and 19th century buildings and some beautiful city gardens and parks. I very much enjoyed staying with friends in York and having a little city break – my first break since last autumn and my first major venture out of the lockdown stockade. It was heartening to see the streets busy, not with international tourists of course, but with visitors from the UK. The city seemed to be going about its business in a relaxed way, unlike my visits to London last summer where the streets were virtually empty and a tense atmosphere pervaded the metropolis. There was a gentleness about the place which I hope won’t be swept away when lockdown ends (possibly) in a few weeks. At the moment in this hopefully last stage of lockdown, we seem to be in a gentle and quite relaxed phase. I wish this could be the so called ‘new normal’ and that we do not return to a frenetic or even frantic lifestyle once lockdown ends. I hope we do not forget what we have learnt from lockdown.

My first reason for travelling up North was to be with my sisters and family in Leeds. I hadn’t seen them since last August and was so very pleased to be with them, especially as we were unable to spend Christmas together. So we had Christmas in June instead! I travelled on the train with my Christmas gifts for them, like a Santa who had lost his way on Christmas Eve and had spent six months trying to find his way home! We exchanged gifts and had a turkey dinner and hats, crackers and games and it was a wonderful festive occasion especially as we hadn’t seen each other for so long.

It has been wonderful that families have been able to get together at last over the last few months. I imagine not a few have also re-celebrated Christmas, with all the family together at last. At the end of Charles Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Carol’, the miser Ebenezer Scrooge is a changed man and the narrator comments that ‘it was always said of him that he knew how to keep Christmas well’ and hopes that ‘may the same be said of us and all of us.’ Well my family and I did our best last month. They had already been together last December 25 and celebrated without my being with them but, nevertheless, the spirit of Christmas was present among us on June 24!

On that trip to Leeds and York, I came to realise that I never travel light. I always have too much stuff with me. I suppose I had a good excuse this time as I was carrying presents for seven people as well as clothes for a five day stay up North. Also I must confess to being quite nervous about travelling even though I have made the journey so many times before. I think the pandemic may have made us all nervous at times about the most ordinary things (especially travel). I spent the day before I travelled packing and repacking and deciding what to wear (as the weather is so changeable at present) and what else to take with me: books, I Pad, headphones for my music etc. My bag was heavy enough without my personal accessories.

Of course I was forgetting that I would be spending most of my time in the company of my family and my friends. I would have little time to read or play music. They weren’t important. My bag wasn’t much lighter either once I had emptied out the gifts in Leeds and gave them to my family as I received gifts too from them to take home with me. As I trundled along station platforms with my large tunnel back at my side and my backpack

on my shoulders and heaved myself onto trains for my journeys from London to Leeds then from Leeds to York and later back home again from York, I slowly began to realise that I was literally weighed down with possessions. I came to the conclusion that I need to live lighter let alone travel lighter.

I had also forgotten one of the lessons I had learnt from the lockdown last year: that people are more important than possessions. And more especially from our days of isolation, that the company of others is very precious.

Yes, I hope we do not forget what we have learnt from lockdown.

Ave atque Vale – Hail and Farewell – until the next blog!

If you are enjoying my blog, and have not already done so, please sign up below to receive notification of each new blog by e mail. Just add your e mail to ‘Follow’ as it pops up.

And please do pass on the blog address to others who may be interested. I would also value any feedback on nzolad53@gmail.com or my Facebook page or Twitter.

Many thanks

Neilus Aurelius

MEDITATION 51 (CHRISTMAS SPECIAL)

I am sitting here beside my flickering candle contemplating a very different Christmas from last year. We are in another lockdown in all but name, which has been announced as suddenly as the first one in March. Therefore Christmas is likely to be a quiet and subdued holiday and a muted festival. Like many other normal events in the last months it will seem rather strange, no doubt, and unusual. 

Traditionally it is a time for families and friends to get together, as we well know.  Many people make great efforts to travel to be with their loved ones. But with new travel restrictions and restrictions on how many people can meet in one place, this is not really possible this year. Some will be spending Christmas alone for the first time. Christmas is the time of good cheer but this year that cheer will inevitably be tinged with sadness, especially for those who have lost loved ones to the pandemic.

Yesterday afternoon, I was wrapping gifts for my family, gifts that they will not be received tomorrow as I am now not able to travel to Leeds for our own family Christmas celebration. But rather than leaving the wrapping-up operation until whenever I will be able to travel to see them, I thought I would cheer myself up by doing it now while watching a Christmas old movie. It did cheer me up or rather I  felt a twinge of real Christmas cheer in my veins. 

The movie was a very old one -you know how I love my old movies – the 1933 version of ‘Little Women’ based on the 1868 novel by Louisa M. Alcott. The opening scenes are set at Christmas in New England and several winter scenes follow with deep snow covering pine and spruce trees, paths and gates and snowmen carefully crafted. It is a cosy opening, like a Christmas card and ideal Yuletide viewing.  

But the dramatic situation is not so cosy or comfortable underneath. For we are in the midst of the American Civil War and the March family (who are the central characters), though dwelling in a large rambling house,are living in genteel but straightened circumstances. The mother (Marmee) and four daughters (Jo, Beth, Amy and Meg) are also coping with the absence of Mr March, who is away fighting in the war. 

There have been three later film versions (including one this year) and all in colour of course. But this venerable black and white version, perhaps because it isn’t in lush colour, somehow captures the shabby atmosphere of the house and the family’s near genteel poverty the best. Led by Katherine Hepburn as the tomboy and would-be writer Jo (who gives one of her best and most natural performances in a long career), the actresses playing the family are a real ensemble and really convey their love for each other and their enjoyment of each other’s company.

From the opening moments, there is a sense of money being short. They are almost improvising Christmas, giving each other little gifts which mean so much because each one has meant a sacrifice of some kind or other for each of them. They are making an effort as best they can and are able to be charitable too, sharing their Christmas breakfast with a poor family down the road and spending Christmas morning with them.  

I remember this scene from when I was a child in junior school. Our teacher read it to us just before theChristmas break during story time at the end of the day. I remember the snug warm classroom, as daylight was dimming through the windows. I giggled at the wrong moment and she said to me, ‘Neil you are like a champagne cork popping.’ I had no idea what she meant as I didn’t know what champagne was, of course.Needless to say, I have rectified my ignorance on numerous occasions since! Starting with hunting in bags of wine gums, when still a child, for the champagne ones! 

The Marches remind me of the Cratchit family in Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Carol’ and Alcott, like Dickens, advocates charity to others, especially at Christmas time. No doubt she was influenced by his novel, which was published 25 years earlier.

The Cratchits are a larger family than the Marches and are much poorer. But, like the Marches, there is a real sense of them appreciating each other and everything about Christmas Day and the Christmas meal. It would be their most substantial meal of the year and Dickens is at pains to point out that they ate every scrap of the goose. A goose would be a low income family’s Christmas bird in the 1840’s. Turkeys were for more prosperous families and beef only for the wealthy. It is interesting that, after his change of heart, Scrooge buys the largest turkey for the Cratchits to replace their goose on the Christmas table. 

This year, because of the unusual situation we are living through, we are also improvising Christmas to some extent, like the Marches. But the basics of the celebration are still there even if we may not be able to see everyone as usual in person and will be using zoom or Skype or whatever platform to share their company instead. In that sense it will be a digital Christmas this year! 

There hasn’t been the opportunity for socialising, parties, and eating out. Or seeing a Christmas show or going to the movies.  It is a quiet and subdued Christmas this year, as I said at the beginning of this meditation. It is also an opportunity for us, like the Marches and the Cratchits to appreciate each other, to enjoy each others’ company, whether real or digital, and every moment of the Christmas celebration and everything about it.  For example, I have never appreciated receiving Christmas cards so much as this year.  

We must remember too that the event at the centre of our celebration, the birth of Christ, was itself a quiet and subdued affair. ‘How silently, how silently, the wondrous gift is given’ says the Carol ‘O Little Town of Bethlehem.’ 

With the new strain of the virus and numbers of those afflicted increasing, we are once again reminded of how fragile and vulnerable human life is, as fragile and vulnerable as the babe of Bethlehem. Yet that babe is our hope and our light. And the candles we light this Christmas are a symbol of light and of hope for a better New Year.

As Tiny Tim says: ‘Merry Christmas and God Bless Us Everyone!’  

Ave atque Vale – Hail and Farewell – until the next blog!

 If you are enjoying my blog, and have not already done so, please sign up below to receive notification of each new blog by e mail. Just add your e mail to ‘Follow’ as it pops up!

And please do pass on the blog address to others who may be interested.

A selection of previous meditations is also available in audio form as ‘Meditations of Neilus Aurelius’ ASMR on YouTube. 

I would also value any feedback on nzolad53@gmail.com or my Facebook page or Twitter.

Many thanks

Neilus Aurelius

The flame I am gazing at is very steady this evening as I begin to write my meditation. However, now that we have entered the seventh week of the lockdown, my emotions have been far from steady. I take solace that Marcus Aurelius’ emotions weren’t either. From his own ‘Meditations’ it appears that he had a quick temper and could be quite impatient with others. At least he recognised these failings and was unhappy about them. I am sure that writing his meditations in his tent at the close of the day helped him to calm down. Writing this is helping me to calm down too.

Patience has never been my forte either! I am impatient for this lockdown to be over, as is everyone else, I imagine. I also seem to be suffering from inertia now and a lack of focus. I have discovered that inertia is exhausting, more so than intense activity! Everything can be done tomorrow. But then the world is in a hiatus at present. We are all in one long intermission, one long theatre interval. Except that we are not allowed to congregate together in the theatre bar to await Act Two!

Marcus teaches us that one way of coping with this lockdown is to connect with Nature and to exercise our innate powers of contemplation. That has been helpful, I must admit. I should be writing this seated at the table in my garden but the evenings are too chilly at present for that. Also to some extent I have stoically accepted the situation as he would try to do. But I think my stoic acceptance is now wearing thin after all these weeks.

Marcus also tells us to ‘take pleasure in all that is presently yours’, in other words to enjoy the moment. I mentioned in my previous meditation, that this is what Mr Micawber in Charles Dickens’ novel ‘David Copperfield’ is eminently able to do: to enjoy the moment and enjoy the company he is in, despite his continually desperate financial embarrassments. I have succeeded in enjoying the moment myself at times: listening to my music, sitting in my garden, reading and writing, watching movies and tv and streamed filmed theatre performances (especially productions I have missed). Most of all I have enjoyed distance walks in the company of a few friends in the local park and woodland which I have, to my shame, just discovered.

But despite these lovely moments, there is still that lingering unease, which is ever present and which we all feel. It is forever at the back of our minds, or fluttering in the pit of our stomachs. We are anxious for the lockdown to end and most of all for this horrific pandemic to cease. Like Mr Micawber, who was ‘hourly expecting something to turn up’, I am optimistic for the future and am sure this lockdown will end soon. But optimism does not take away that gnawing unease I have mentioned. Nor did it dissolve Mr Micawber’s unease either.

My impatience and unease are of course all wrapped up in the uncertainty of the future. Because of the pandemic, we have all had an acute awareness of the unpredictability of the future forced upon us. Also personally I am cast adrift in the uncharted waters of retirement, having finished finally in February. I do not possess an adventurous spirit (except artistically) so I must confess to being rather perturbed – or in the words of the Rodgers and Hart song, ‘Bewitched, bothered and bewildered’.

But then, we have to admit that the future has always in reality been uncertain. We have been so used to planning our lives because now we can book holidays and other leisure events so quickly and easily in this digital age. And of course our employment has to some extent planned our lives for us too. Yet we begin to think we are in charge of the future, dare I say it, masters of the future. This pandemic and the resultant lockdown have reminded us that we are not.

The young people I have taught and helped have always been aware of this uncertainty as their future steps have depended upon examination grades. This year with GCSE and A level formal exams cancelled, their anxiety is even more acute. Even though now officially this is none of my business and I am no longer involved, I do feel for them.

In my case, my school career has, in a way, been a series of projects leading to productions and fortunately for me, my final project was completed in February, which I count as a blessing. But now the holidays I had planned – to Italy and Paris) – will not take place, nor will several theatre and opera visits. I have come to realise how much I have over planned my own life in recent years in my semi-retirement. I hope that is one lesson I have learnt from these last weeks.

But how should we view the future now, in these days of uncertainty? Should we, like Mr Micawber be optimistic? Yes: or how else will we get through these dark days? Which brings me to another possible approach to this lockdown. So far we have explored the Marcus approach and the Micawber approach, as summarised above. Now I am going to explain the ‘Martin’ approach.

Martin Luther (148-1546) the theologian, priest and father of the Reformation was also originally a monk. Being a good monk he kept a garden and apparently an orchard. The story goes that someone asked him, ‘What will you do if you know that the end of the world is coming soon?’
He replied, ‘I will plant another apple tree.’

In that reply there is not only optimism, but hope. Hope expressed in a positive act.

So I have bought myself an olive tree for my garden. And in a beautiful notebook from Budapest, which a friend gave me, I have made a list of possible plans for my retirement.

I may share these with you in future blogs.

Meanwhile: Be optimistic, or even better, hope. Hope in the future. Do something positive each day.

Above all, stay safe and well!

Ave atque vale – Hail and Farewell! Till the next blog.

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Many thanks
Neilus Aurelius

Once again I am seated here beside a candle beginning my meditation. We are still in lockdown. The candle is still burning with a steady and bright flame. However, my own flame and that of some friends I have been speaking with, is flickering a little. This is because we are now into the fourth week of the lockdown and I am feeling a little flat, a little empty (as are my friends). It is not exactly boredom, but something deeper than that. A kind of ennui. And a feeling of ‘When will this end?’

In my last meditation, I suggested how Marcus Aurelius, the philosopher emperor and inspiration for this blog, might approach this lockdown. I imagined that he would try to accept the situation with equanimity in line with his Stoic philosophy. He would encourage us to make the most of the present moment, to connect with Nature and develop our contemplative powers. I called this ‘The Marcus Method.’ Now I am going to explore another possible approach, which might, incidentally help with the feelings I have described in the first paragraph.

I have recently been re-reading ‘David Copperfield’ by Charles Dickens. One of my retirement aims is to work my way through Dickens’ novels. At least those I haven’t already read, studied or dramatised! But, as I am ever one to be distracted from my aim, I decided to re-read’ Copperfield’ first. In January I saw the new film of the novel by Armando Iannucci, which was very entertaining and which made me want to go back to the original (as the film was a rather superficial reading of the novel in my opinion).

One of the characters in the story is Wilkins Micawber. When David is a boy, he is sent to London by his cruel stepfather, Mr Murdstone, and put to work in a wine bottling factory (which Murdstone partly owns). He lodges with the Micawber family, though usually has to find his own meals. The Micawbers are constantly in debt and avoiding their creditors or putting valuables into pawnbrokers’ shops to get ready cash. David helps them on several occasions.

‘David Copperfield’ is Dickens’ most autobiographical novel and Mr Micawber is based on Dickens’ own father, John Dickens. In real life Dickens worked as a boy in a boot blacking (boot polish) factory putting labels on the jars. This was because his father, like dear Wilkins Micawber, was constantly in debt and money was urgently needed. The Dickens family moved house on numerous occasions because of their constant flimsy financial situation when Charles was a boy (as do the Micawbers in the course of the story). In fact John Dickens, like Micawber was in the debtor’s prison for a while in the Marshalsea near London Bridge and Dickens, like young David, visited him there. The Marshalsea and its inhabitants are the centre of a later novel, ‘Little Dorrit.’

This was the most traumatic time for Dickens and he kept this period of his life secret except to his close friend, John Forster, who had permission to include it in his biography of Dickens after his death. Whenever Dickens strolled near the site of the blacking factory (by Hungerford Stairs, near what is now Charing Cross railway station) he would walk on the other side of the road or avoid it completely. But he did eventually find the courage to face his trauma by putting it into a novel.

Despite all that Dickens’ father put him through as a boy, his fictional alter-ego Mr. Micawber is affectionately drawn and appears as a larger than life and entertaining character. In a way he is a kind of philosopher himself, forever making long speeches and writing long, verbose letters (often of the begging variety). In total contrast to Marcus, he is a highly theatrical philosopher. His expounds his philosophy of happiness to the boy David:

“Annual income twenty pounds: annual expenditure nineteen pounds, nineteen shillings and six pence, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds: annual expenditure twenty pounds, nought and six, result misery.”

From these words you will probably notice the contrast between Marcus and Micawber: Marcus tried to live out his philosophy, whereas Micawber makes little attempt at all.

Sometimes he expresses his despair. ‘In short I am forever floored,’ he says. And yet, he is also the eternal optimist. Though he is forever unemployed, forever selling his possessions or pawning them and forever having to avoid his creditors (by literally running away, assuming false names and decamping his family) he is always ‘hourly expecting that something will turn up’ to alleviate his disastrous financial affairs. And after several appearances in the story, he eventually does get a regular post in a law firm in Canterbury and is the one who unmasks the devious Uriah Heap near the end of the novel.

Through all these trials and tribulations the family somehow stay together for as Mrs Micawber frequently says: ‘I never will desert Mr Micawber!’ One minute Micawber is very low and will weep because of his misery and then the next he is dancing a sailor’s hornpipe or, red-faced, preparing his special hot wine punch.

At the moment, in this lockdown, we are experiencing the mixed emotions that the Micawbers feel as a result of a very different crisis to theirs. We may feel unsettled, uneasy and even low and depressed every now and then and then cheer ourselves up with music or binge TV or other online entertainment. Because of social media, even though we are physically in isolation, despite distances, we are able to cheer each other up with messages, video calls and we can even have parties and games together online.

In the novel, the Micawbers, because of their precarious finances, make the most of the moment. They enjoy themselves in the moment as should we. And they enjoy their family and whoever else is with them in the moment, as should we (whether they are physically or virtually present in that moment). This is another way of ‘taking pleasure in all that is presently yours’ as Marcus urges us to do.

Enjoy the moment, enjoy each other’s company (physically present or through social media). And, like Wilkins Micawber, be optimistic for the future, that this lockdown and, more importantly, this most horrific pandemic will soon end. I would call this ‘The Micawber Method’ to surviving the lockdown. I will explore another method in my next blog.

Stay safe and well dear readers!

Ave atque vale – Hail and Farewell! Till the next blog.

If you are enjoying my blog, and have not already done so, please sign up below to receive notification of each new blog by e mail. Just add your e mail to ‘Follow’ as it pops up!

And please do pass on the blog address to others who may be interested.

A selection of previous meditations is also available in audio form as ‘Meditations of Neiulus Aurelius’ ASMR on YouTube.

I would also value any feedback on nzolad53@gmail.com or my Facebook page or Twitter.

Many thanks
Neilus Aurelius

As I sit here by my solitary candle, I am not gazing at its steady flame but at the lights on my Christmas tree, which is standing in the corner of the lounge opposite me.

Christmas is my season. I suppose now that I have white hair and a beard of sorts and have begun to look ‘Santa-esque’, it should be my favourite season. I have certainly always preferred it to the forced festivities of New Year.

Even though I live alone and spend most of Christmas week with my family up North, I still decorate my lounge and make a lot of fuss over the tree. On my travels in recent years I have collected trinkets and baubles to adorn its branches. Every year I try to put the decorations up around the first Sunday of Advent (generally the first Sunday in December) and leave them up until the official end of Christmastide (the feast of Epiphany on January 6). They are a cheering sight in these bleak and dark days of winter, especially when I arrive home from my family after my Christmas visit, to my solitary residence again.

Last week I took a friend to the Charles Dickens Museum in London. It is a tall townhouse in Doughty Street, in Bloomsbury, not far from Russell Square. The house was the first marital home of Charles and Catherine Dickens. They lived there from 1837 – 1840 and during that short space of time, raised the first three of their ten children there (Charley, Mary and Kate). There Dickens finished ‘The Pickwick Papers’, wrote ‘Oliver Twist’ and ‘Nicholas Nickleby’. And it was there, in his late-twenties, that he very quickly rose like a comet to international fame.

Though now a museum, there is a homely atmosphere as you walk through its rooms. There are also mini exhibitions on display and, as might be expected, at present, there is one on ‘A Christmas Carol’ which Dickens wrote only a few years after he moved (in 1843). This is the best time of year to visit the museum as every room is festooned with Christmas decorations in early Victorian style, including, in the corner of the parlour, a Christmas tree. I am honoured to think that my own tree is likewise in the corner of my own parlour! The tree’s branches have colourful ribbons on them and small thin candles (tapers) . There were no flashing electric lights in those days or electric light at all and in the gloom of the parlour, lit only by candles or oil lamps and the fire in the grate, the tree’s candle lights must have been as warm and spectacular as our own electric ones are now.

Charles Dickens virtually invented Christmas, through ‘A Christmas Carol’ and his other annual Christmas stories.

However he was only bringing together traditions that had existed for years before, even if some may have declined by then. Just as Shakespeare created our image of Ancient Rome in his play ‘Julius Caesar’, so Dickens, in his novel, creates the heartwarming image of Christmas that is now indelibly etched in our national (indeed international) consciousness.

However, we must remember that he wrote ‘A Christmas Carol’ spurred on by his own acute social conscience. Ever the champion of the poor, as he was only a few steps from abject poverty himself in his childhood, it was the plight of children born into poverty that abhorred him most. At the centre of the book is the scene where the Spirit of Christmas Present, as he is about to leave Scrooge, opens his cloak to reveal the children of Ignorance and Want, who beset Scrooge with outstretched hands.

The book was written in Dickens’ despair at the conditions of children living on the London streets and on the streets of other major cities, heightened by the current economic depression known as the ‘Hungry Forties’, where the failure of two successive harvests left many walking the streets in starvation. He was also sickened by the use of child labour in the mines and rather than petition Parliament, he decided to write a short work of fiction instead, exposing the ignorance of the wealthy and powerful classes to the ‘want’ of the poor.

What would Dickens have to say about our own Christmas in 2019 with its own child poverty, a growing homeless population, food banks, ineffective universal credit scheme, and children slipping into drug abuse and knife crime? And successive governments that are not ignorant but refuse to see and act. What indeed?

And what would he make of the last three years of political machinations and parliamentary drama around Brexit? He would have seen huge opportunities for comedy I am sure. And what of our new Prime Minister? Dickens loved creating eye-catching names for his characters and took his time over inventing them. I fancy he might have dubbed him ‘Mr Boris Brexit Bombast’. And yet, having seen our new leader so often in the news recently, despite his attempts to be Churchillian, he does not appear to be a 19th Century Dickensian figure either, as his voice and manner are more those of a licentious 18th Century Tory. Indeed a periwig would sort out his uncontrollable hair.

Dickens wrote a story about a Christmas Tree, which he calls the ‘new German toy’ as the practice of a tree at Christmas had been introduced into our country by the German Prince Albert, the young Queen Victoria’s consort, a few years before. His tree has ‘glittering tapers’ (like the one in the museum), miniature doll’s furniture and musical instruments, imitation fruits and sweets and a host of other trinkets, including rosy-cheeked dolls hiding behind the green leaves.
What of my own tree? Yes there is a string of lights like glowing icicles and a host of different baubles and trinkets, some purchased here and many from my travels. I must admit to an aversion to Christmas trees in stores, bars or hotels that have identical baubles: all gold or blue or red or whatever and often with fake gift boxes at their base. They look so unimaginative and half-hearted. But better a tree than no tree at all I suppose.

In the Dickens story, as he looks at the tree he is gradually reminded of ghosts from the past. What am I reminded of? Well places that I have visited and the dear friends who were with me. I have decorations from Paris, Rome, Florence, Assisi, Venice several from Budapest of course, San Francisco and other places in California like Monterey, San Simeon and L.A. and Vancouver. There are even several from the Vatican – but I didn’t steal them! And there are those that were given to me by family and friends. And, like Dickens, one or two trinkets remind me of one or two friends who are no more.
The Christmas Tree is a light bearing tree. To those of us who are of the Christian Faith, it symbolised the coming of Christ into the world, the light that lightens all people. For Dickens it is a ‘commemoration of the law of love and kindness, mercy and compassion’ reminding us to think of others and help them at this time.

The evergreen fir tree has links with the winter solstice and so to the tree of life which is common to so many faiths and cultures. So the Christmas tree is also the Tree of Life. It is a perennial symbol of light in the darkness. And of hope too.
As I look at my own tree I see all those things. Yes my tree is a tree of life. My life.

As Tiny Tim says in ‘A Christmas Carol’:
‘Merry Christmas and God bless us everyone.’


If you are enjoying my blog, and have not already done so, please sign up below to receive notification of each new blog by e mail. Just add your e mail to ‘Follow’ as it pops up!

And please do pass on the blog address to others who may be interested.

A selection of previous meditations is also available in audio form as ‘Meditations of Neiulus Aurelius’ ASMR on YouTube.

I would also value any feedback on nzolad53@gmail.com or my Facebook page or Twitter.

Many thanks
Neilus Aurelius