New Year 2010

The house smells of hyacinths. A rich and cloying smell.

Six plants, brought back from Neil's wedding on the Wirral. Representing games and sports, playful joy (and rashness); also, sometimes, rebirth. Dedicated to Apollo, and named for the legend of Hyacinth.

The blue stands for constancy, the pink for recreation and playfulness, and the white loveliness ('I'll pray for you').

You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;
'They called me the hyacinth girl.'
—Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.
Od' und leer das Meer.
(The Waste Land)

Outside it is the first day of a new year and a new decade, 2010. Cold and sunny; clear blue skies over the Rye.

A random set of words and phrases characterising 2009 might include: Credit Crunch, Recession, Michael Jackson, iPhone, Twitter, Obama, swine flu, Large Hadron Collider, Boyle, Callow, Climate Change, J.G. Ballard, Woolworths, Claude Levi-Strauss, Afghanistan, Iraq, Plinth, Lumley and Gurkas, BNP, Expenses and Duck House.

But these are only the big public things.

I could produce a list - and of course, a more meaningful one for me - around the smaller-scale things:- school exams, juggling notation, various books I've read, crosswords, braces, concerts, the Christmas Lectures, the Picos and Madness.

And for a similar view of the decade? Well, for the majority of the time, I worked at the British Museum, and it feels strange that at the start of 2000 the Great Court was still under construction, and Suzanna Taverne was MD.
It finally opened on December 7th 2000, with a big event - I ended up sharing a table with the Bottomleys, amongst others. She of 'I'm an evil Tory bigot' fame - and he was just creepy.

Also at the Museum, the Virtual Mummy was cool and Terracotta Army amazing.

But it was also a decade in which the children grew big (bigger), we acquired a new kitchen, the sheen on the Labour Government wore off and my 50th happened at me. Shucks. A slew of holidays and parties.

New year 2000 was spent in the upper part of Telegraph Hill park, watching Mayor Ken's "River of Fire" fireworks spread from Tower Bridge to the London Eye; from where we stood (and possibly from nowhere else) it looked good and seemed to work.
Looking wider and less personally - 9/11 in 2001 obviously, and the bombs in Madrid, and 7/7 in London, 2005. And Ken's moving speech from China, where he had been helping to win the Olympic Games for London (Paris? Pah!). The Google beta launched in early 2000. Foot and Mouth arrived in 2001. G W Bush elected in 2001 (hanging chads, remember?), Dr Who returned and was spiffy, the code for the human genome was cracked. Horrible Boris whiff-whaff became Mayor of London. Planets were discovered orbiting other stars, and Pluto was downgraded. The Tsunami in 2004, and hurricane Katrina. The Euro. Columbia disaster. Kyoto. The Lord of the Rings films were just about good enough

I can recall sitting down to watch the first of the trilogy with eldest at the cinema in Peckham; we'd just finished reading the books together. Just a few seconds in a large man leaned over and told me, in no uncertain terms, to stop making so much noise eating the popcorn we'd just bought. He clearly cared so much, and wanted the experience of the film ('...at last they've made it!') to be so perfect, that he couldn't take any little imperfection. Like me crunching popcorn in the background. This was Important.

I felt something similar about the Dr Who relaunch. But I didn't just want it to be great, I wanted the children to like it also - which they did of course, but I can remember being somewhat tense as the music started up ('Yes! they've kept the music! It's all going to be OK after all...') .

Too much perfection, or too much desire for it, is a very dangerous thing...