Christmas is a time that makes me nervous. I am suspicious of the amount of fun and cheer we are all supposed to have. I am uncomfortable about the excesses. And I realise I am ashamed of all the waste.
As a result I have attempted to streamline gift-giving. These days I usually make presents for family and friends. It gives me enormous satisfaction to knit, say, a hat that the poor giftee has to wear whenever we meet for quite a while after the event. The scope for bad taste here is only fantastic, and I hope to exploit it more fully as the years go on.
I even have plans for a knitted Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Mankini for some poor unfortunate male friend or foe (the unlucky subject has yet to be chosen). Well, you’ve got to have a bit of mischief in your heart.
While planning plans and plotting plots for festive offerings, it occurred to me that what’s actually taking place here is recycling. I use some yarns to make something else and pass the something else on to someone else, and it begins a new life elsewhere.
I recycle as a way of life now, really, and what a way it is. I adore a charity-shop bargain, and the whole idea of buying a unique, preloved item, with the proceeds going to a good cause. The satisfying clink of depositing used bottles into a recycling bins is tremendous.
The actor part of me is always pretending to be other people. I sometimes pop in a little habit or tic I have seen in someone to flesh out a character. This homage is really recycling, in a way: using one trait to make another.
The writer part of me might retell a heard story, remoulding it in the process, shaping it for a new life.
In my early 30s I spent a summer as a single woman working in London. A producer friend remarked one night that my age probably meant I would end up dating divorcees, which planted the notion in my head that divorce is recycling, too. Incidentally, I did not date any divorcees, but I went on two disastrous blind dates and ended up thinking I’d never meet anyone ever again for the purposes of romance.
I reuse the bits of my brain that store lines for roles I play. Once the show is done, I shed those stored words and replace them with the next lot. The brain is a fabulous place. Have you ever had an old memory crop up apparently at random? Well, I have heard the theory that this could mean that part of your brain might be packing up, so it puts the stored memory out there for another part of the brain to grab and hold on to, and the elegance of this is both sad and quite lovely to me.
I am performing in Cymbeline at the Globe in London now, and my journey to work is a magical one. There is a busker in the Tube station. He is a blind man who simply stands and whistles, beautifully. Today he performed a medley of Christmas carols, and suddenly Christmas wasn't so awful a prospect any more. I get out of the Tube by St Paul's Cathedral and cross the Thames on the Millennium Bridge, looking right to see Westminster and the London Eye, straight ahead to see Tate Modern and left to see Tower Bridge. It is an area steeped in history and stories ready to be retold. So I decide I will recycle my journey and tell that small story here.