We are all Artists Now

Without the parties, festivals and shopping trips to Christmas markets to buy unusual German sausages or ‘Snow in a bottle’, we are finding new ways to spend the time.

Cards

Last week was a feast of artistic endeavour. I made dozens of cards, hand decorated with sunflower seeds and thoughtful spatters of glue. Some apparently arrived unsigned and many are still here, maybe never to be sent because it’s boring writing out addresses. But the cards are Art.

Online Shopping and Wrapping

We are hunter gatherers at heart and the challenge of finding a thing, that somebody didn’t know they wanted, is irresistible. We acquire the skills of prop buyers or set dressers to seek out ‘stuff’. Shops are too full of people breathing so everybody in this house has decided shop online at once. It is a full house, so delivery people are back and forth like flies.

I keep wondering which ones are professional delivery drivers and which ones are redundant airline pilots or actors. But I’m too shy to ask. You can’t generally ask a delivery driver if they were an airline pilot once. It doesn’t sound right. Either way, stuff arrives and then we become gift wrap designers. We have to, because wrapping paper is Bad and wondrous things can happen with potato prints and newspapers if you think about it.

Lights

It is happening everywhere, especially in this village. Driven by boredom, competition, wanting to cheer everyone up or desire to become a Lumiere artist. In this genre, anything is allowed.

Some houses have just got it. They know they are beautiful. It is all about icicles and curves.

And on the new estate, a daytime vista of concrete and half hearted landscaping, this looks like something from Home Alone.

Some people are really tidy. They can’t invite you in to show it to you, but they can express their tidiness in lights.

And other people are artists all year round. So their houses always look amazing.

Next are the lucky people who have a snowman. Nobody else in the village has a snowman and many of us are secretly jealous.

And the next day you find out what a dead snowman looks like.

It is a festival of batteries and plastic.

In the olden days we would marvel at stars, moons, fires and phosphorescence.  If this carries on we will be plunged back there one day. But for now, as long as those containers keep coming from China, we are having a hell of a lot of fun.

Festivals

I don’t even know if this was legal but, this week, for one glorious hour, Santa was dragged through our streets by an illuminated traction engine to the tune of Little Drummer Boy. The street became a tear jerking vision of families, lights and music. Whoever directed this is worthy of a job at FUK* 2022. Minutes later they were gone and it was like that moment when the snow has melted. It was there, it was beautiful and it will come back one day.

Music

The musicians might be out of work but they are still making Christmas songs. Enjoy this from Nick Van Tintern of the Cut Capers and our very own Molly Miranda King.