Opinion

Traditionally, December calls for reflection, does it not? Profound musings on the past year beckon, solemn conclusions wait to be drawn on what it all meant. Care for some of that? No, I thought not. I mean, holy moly, where do you start? In any event, those of us with birthdays this month are quite familiar with the whooshing by of passing years, thank you. Without going full Stephen Hawking, how we calibrate time is a conundrum too abstract for me. Maybe this is why it’s sometimes simpler to measure it, not in seasons or years, but with pictures. Sure, the clock and the calendar might tell us where we currently sit but it’s images of the past which tell us the route by which we came. Photography is life’s rearview mirror. I recently happened upon some vintage photographs of Argentonsur-Creuse, the pretty market town near our home. In the oldest one, a postcard dated August 1907, the Place de la République throbs with activity. Outside the corner café donkeys haul carts past a stack of barrels while women in long skirts and dapper men in suits chat in the evening sunshine. Everyone wears a hat. Our modern world is adorned with everything technology can offer. But on that summer evening in 1907, so was theirs. They too were the front row to history; the most modern humanity had ever been. There’s a poignancy in these images because we know what lay ahead. Watching them now is fascinating yet hard to bear. Every time Mrs W and I sit outside that same café in that same square, I see those men and women in that moment so long ago, strolling in front of us. Their evening shadows remain. Photography exercises a powerful influence on our perception of the past. A personal example: it’s a tale of two snapshots. The first was taken in the last days of a marriage in 1989. It’s a desolate image, I look like my own X-ray. I’m wearing a Miles Davis T-shirt, although I soon abandoned it to a drawer somewhere due to its association with that picture. However, this summer it suddenly reappeared in a WhatsApp photo from my daughter. It’s her own daughter waving goodnight. And (lump in the throat) Sophie is now wearing that same Miles Davis T-shirt as her nightie because she feels “closer to Grandad France”. Dark memories wiped in an instant - one of my year’s best moments. I’ve always been effortlessly ‘hip’, even teetering worryingly once or twice on the edge of ‘groovy’. Nevertheless, time’s winged chariot thrusts maturity at us all and I’ve long since reconciled to the allure of the garden centre. I now realise, though, this was merely the gateway to the hard stuff. For in 2021 (gulp) we began keeping a secret stash of Werther’s Originals in the car. I know. Too old to Rock’n’roll, too young to . . . anyone? Further change came to Chez White this winter: the end of the spine-warping fun of shifting several tonnes of logs into the house in instalments. Our new pellet burner has made redundant my daily macho task, (“Stand aside, dear, this is guy’s work”); instead, I now faff about each morning with a small vacuum cleaner. On the plus side, however, I’ll no longer greet the spring walking like a gibbon. So, nature’s kaleidoscope clicks round again, the reds and golds of autumn give way to silver mist. In our small woodland shadows float back and forth, wraith-like,

Photography exercises a powerful across the greying light; garden furniture snoozes under its covers, the tractor mower hibernates in the barn. Napoléon,influence on our our mighty banana plant, six metres tall in perception of the past the summer, is cropped and wrapped, awaiting spring’s call to “Gentlemen, start your engines!” Gardens will slumber on until nature – like my old Tshirt – relaunches with a new and vibrant purpose. Thus, another year cranks round. Fully jabbed against life’s nasties, (three for Covid, one for the ‘flu, plus my annual one for Country & Western music), I’m prepped and ready. Friends will once again huddle in corner cafés which reverberate still to the echoes of a thousand customers past. On and on it goes, although, as William Faulkner wrote so memorably, “The past is never dead. It isn’t even past.” It’s been a privilege to share my random thoughts with you this year. Whatever and wherever your Christmas is, may it be what you choose it to be. I wish everyone a peaceful and enjoyable one.

Brian White lives in south Indre with his wife, too many moles and not enough guitars