January
Ok, so I had planned to start this blog tomorrow as a New Year type thing but I’ve started it today as I’m ill therefore I’m bored (and I can’t eat cheese! No cheese at all cause of the stupid tablets. Harrumph) and I greatly dislike being bored and having nothing to do - as you’ll probably gather form my blog!
So, January, the month the Roman’s dedicated to Janus with his two heads, one facing the old year one facing the new, their god of gates, doors, endings and beginnings. How appropriate. January is always considered the time to start afresh and make new years resolutions. Mine:
I shall chew my food properly.
I shall not buy more books than I have room to house.
I shall not slouch.
I shall eat more seeds and pulses
There are lots of traditions surrounding New Year but the main one we always seem to honour is ‘first footing’. This originated in Scotland and involves being very careful about who you invite to your house after New Year. If your first visitor after the New Year is a dark man (tall and handsome also always appreciated) then you’re in for a lucky year (you don’t say?!) he’s even luckier if he brings with him a lump of coal, some bread or money. If however the first person to arrive at your door is blonde, red-headed or (perish the thought) a she, then don’t open the door! They’ll bring you bad luck and you don’t want to start the year like that!
Important days in this month:
1st – New Years Day – Bank Holiday (wooo)
Gantan-sai – Shinto
2nd – National Science Fiction Day
3rd – The Festival of Sleep
5th – Guru Gobindh Singh birthday – Sikh
6th – 12th Night – celebrates the three wise men reaching Jesus. (Take all your
Christmas decorations down today if you haven’t all ready bad luck for them to
still be up)
8th – World Literacy Day (‘i before e . . . .)
11th – Mahayana New Year (3 days) – Buddhist
International ‘Thank you’ day
17th – Pig Day
20th – Cheese day (more wensledale Grommit?)
21st – Hugging day (I’m not making these up, I promise)
26th – Chinese New Year
27th – Wolfgang Mozart’s birthday
30th – National Croissant day
Fact of the Month: In every single cell in your body you have approx. 3m of DNA
Quote of the Month: “People are so worried about what they eat between Christmas and the New Year, but they really should be worried about what they eat between the New Year and Christmas”
Book Review 1 – My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell
I wanted to start with this book firstly because it’s my favourite book and secondly because, set on a sunny island in Greece, it’s the perfect antidote to January gloom. My family and other animals tells the story of the five year sojourn the author made to Corfu with his family when he was ten. He originally intended it to be a description of the natural history of the island, but instead it’s a humorous account of his eccentric family and the mayhem his animal obsessions reeks across the island. All the anecdotes he describes about the island and its inhabitants are true, though at some times it’s very hard to believe this. I think the reason I like the book so much is that Gerry’s so free and the island’s so safe that he can just wander through the olive groves and myrtles without a care in the world and it portrays such a lovely childhood. Also I think the book reads so well because of perceptiveness with which the characters are written.
Durrell has a real knack for describing eccentricity in a charmingly hilarious way, every character is made loveable and relatable from Spiro, one of the few English speaking inhabitants who takes the family under his wing like a ‘great, brown ugly angel’ to Larry’s many peculiar friends. What's more the characters are fabricated so well with the extraordinary ear for dialogue Durrell possess, a sweetener that only comes form memoirs, that I’m sure as he was writing he could each of them telling him what to write.
I think sweetness is a word that really sums up the book; it’s sunny and heart-warming and will feed your soul in this cold wintry month.
If you read this and enjoy it then Gerald Durrell has written plenty of other books but there are 2 sequels to My family and Other Animals that recount the stories he was unable to accommodate into his first book: Birds, Beasts and Relatives and The Garden of the Gods.
Enough for one day I think.
