The Norwegians Have A Word For It

The week between Christmas Day and New Year's Day - it's a bit like limbo: no one seems to know if it is a normal working week or a holiday. Most of the shops are open some of the time, but not all of them are open all of the time. Some companies shut down, some don't. Public transport enters into the holiday spirit by organising games that involve potential travellers having to guess what services will be running and when, and those people unlucky enough to have to work normally generally resent the fact that they are standing at the bus stop on dark, cold December mornings while it seems everyone else is having a nice lie in. This period, unlike Advent, or Lent or Ramadan or the like has no official name - well, not in English anyway - although the Norwegians have a word for it, it's Romjul apparently.

The City can be quiet this time of year...

Strangely enough, I generally enjoyed working during the few days between Christmas and New Year. Virtually empty trains - when they were running, which meant some alterations to my commute - a similarly quiet City of London, offices half empty as everyone who could take the week as holiday did so, nearly silent phones, few emails and the opportunity to get all those housekeeping jobs done that had been put off during the year. Things like tidying cupboards, sending old papers off to storage and generally pottering about. In the event that, at some point during the day, a phone call or an email comes in that demands immediate attention, this is of course much resented - the cheek of it, someone actually wanting something done, this week of all weeks!

...but the West End will be packed.

While the West End may be chock-a-block with tourists and shoppers, in the hiatus between one holiday and the next, the City can resemble a ghost town. Wander about at lunch time and there are few people abroad; many of the pubs and sandwich bars are closed - in fact the few places open are the banks, the building societies and other financial institutions. It's quite eerie, but I always like the feel of the City in this particular week: because everything was quieter and calmer than normally, there is less rush, more opportunity to talk to people who you would just nod to the rest of the year.

This week is often used as a time for taking stock, for looking back over the last twelve months and looking forward to the new year. And for many people, the striking feature looking back at 2016 is the staggering number of celebrity deaths that there have been. Arguments rage over whether there have been an excessive cumber of celebrity deaths this year or whether our perceptions are flawed: whether, in fact it is confirmation bias in action. But looking at some numbers produced by the BBC it seems that 2016 was a bad year for famous people, with the corporation running forty-two pre-prepared celebrity obituaries, up from thirty-two in 2015 and considerably more than in previous years. It was in the first three months of the year that the number of celebrity deaths soared to unprecedented levels: twice as many notable people (twenty-four in total) died in this period of 2016 compared to the same period in 2015, and five times as many as in 2012.

BBC's Obituaries Editor Nick Serpell, who compiled the data, thinks that the increase is no surprise, since now, fifty years after the explosion of TV and pop culture in the 1960s, there are considerably more people who we define as celebrities. It seems unlikely therefore that 2017 will buck the trend and sadly, we'll need to prepare ourselves for yet more celebrity deaths next year.

High speed boat trip in Cyprus.

Taking a personal look back at 2016, some highlights have been our family holidays to Cyprus and Center Parcs, some great shows at the BBC - Sarah Kendall's Australian Trilogy was a particular pleasure, although Val's unexpected contribution to Women Talking About Cars was another highlight - and watching Pointless being recorded - twice. There was watching Andy Murray at the O2 in the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals and meeting Lee Child (author of the Jack Reacher series of books) at a book signing. 

Andy Murray (nearest camera) at The O2

Me and Val with Lee Child at Waterstone's in Tottenham Court Road

Some lovely walks along the Thames and through the countryside. There were gigs at the Royal Albert Hall and the O2 Islington - Yes and Frost* respectively, happy away days watching Romford win at places like Cray Wanderers, Bury Town, Horsham and AFC Hornchurch. There was meeting up with old friends like Paul Calvert and Keith Markham and reminiscing about old times over good food and drink, and there was seeing our younger daughter embark on her university studies. But somehow there never seemed to be enough days in the week or hours in the day to do all of the things we wanted to: how I ever managed to get anything done in the days when I still worked is a mystery to me - a mystery that seems to occur to everyone who retires!

I'm not one for making predictions, so I'll say nothing about how I expect 2017 to pan out, and I'm also not one for New Year Resolutions - any I've made in the past have rarely survived the night, let alone the year - so I'm making none of them either. See you next year!