Long term readers will know that every Christmas I try to get my photo taken in front of a different Christmas tree somewhere in London. Sometimes I’ve chosen a tree in a new haunt: one in the Boogaloo pub, one in the London Library, and last year one in Birkbeck College. This year has been synonymous with the London Olympics, of which I’ve had only a cursory interest and certainly didn’t attend in person. However, I did enjoy the sense that the city really was at the centre of the world during the summer of 2012. That, and the added niceness that was in the air. There was no repeat of last year’s riots, and though it was hardly a Richard Curtis-like utopia, London did often feel like quite a nice place for a person to be in.

It was a year when I did a spot of personal ‘winning’ myself, finishing the first year of that English degree I’d always meant to do, ever since I dropped out of A-levels at school. This summer my final year marks were all Firsts. This by itself might seem like an item from one of those tiresome round-robin newsletters, a boring and ugly boast that one should keep to oneself. But in my case I have something of a history of giving up on projects and jobs, and of being late on deadlines, and of just trying to get out of doing work full stop. So I feel obliged to note what really did feel like a personal highlight. And I highly recommend adult education for anyone who needs a renewed sense of worth.

This year’s tree is at St Pancras station- another haunt which in 2012 became a rail connection for the Olympic village. The station has installed a ‘golden’ tree, which has rather an ingenious design. It’s made up of huge Olympic gold medals, one for each of those won by the British team, and they look just enough like traditional tree decorations too – specifically chocolate gold coins. Forming the body of the tree is a gold-coloured spiral strip, which I presume represents a medal ribbon. Then there’s the usual lights, but they’re inside the spiral, forming the tree’s core. I love how it’s such a simple idea, and how it’s kept simple, too. No overt branding. One aspect of the Olympics that put a lot of people off – at least in the run-up – was the sense of overly intrusive sponsorship.

From the people who won the medals, to the volunteers who participated in the ceremonies and who helped to direct visitors, the lasting legacy was, in the end, a celebration of people first, money second. This attitude seemed to last, too: I never thought I’d see a Conservative government criticising corporations for avoiding taxes, berating executives for six figure pay-offs, and campaigning for gay marriage.

So for 2013, I wish for more of this sort of thing. More concern for humanity, less concern for profit. More kindness, but also more accountability. More striving to make a unique contribution to the world, less striving to criticise the contributions of others. More sharing but also more empathy. I also wish that more people (by which I mean me) resist the temptations of Twitter and Facebook more often, particularly if they’re letting the need to be ‘Liked’ or ‘Re-tweeted’ go to their heads.

And I wish more people would take their free newspapers home rather than leave them cluttering up buses and Tube trains.

(Oh! And he was doing so well…)

A Very Merry Christmas.

St Pancras International, December 24th 2012.

I’ve written an article for the New Escapologist magazine, issue #8. It’s about the increasingly troubling nature of how to be happy when you’re a fortysomething non-conformist man (for want of a better epithet), via the Beach Boys, Stewart Lee, and Top Gear. You can order it here:

http://newescapologist.co.uk/2012/12/07/issue-eight-your-help/

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Recent outings: Saturday 8^th December was spent visiting the Queer Zine Fest in Kennington. I was surprised that paper fanzines were produced at all in 2012, never mind zines with queer and feminist themes. As I discovered, there’s plenty of people making such zines, and plenty more keen to buy them: there was a healthy amount of attendees at the festival.

I wanted to buy and read pretty much all of the zines on display. Even though some of them were quite old – 90s back issues of Girlfrenzy for example – the majority of offerings were written and printed in the last year or two. So I decided to implement a rule: try and buy the latest zine on each stall, until I run out of money. My favourite is probably the Patricia Highsmith zine, Strangers In A Zine, but I also liked the concept behind Binders Full Of Women, a womens’ poetry anthology in the shape of ring binders, each with a different handmade cover. The title was a reference to a rather infamous statement made in October by the Presidential candidate, Mitt Romney. I loved the contrast between this seemingly redundant format of expression – the paper fanzine – and the quotation from the world of 2012 politics.

For more on Queer Zine Fest (which will return next year), go to:

www.facebook.com/lgbtqzinefestlondon

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Today: am struggling under a heavy cold that I’ve had on and off for three weeks: possibly two different colds in tandem, if such a thing is possible. The work required for the college course has become particularly intense. I’ve found that as soon I’ve got to grips with the reading for one of the three concurrent modules, I’ve trespassed on the time I should have spent on the reading for the other two. The second year of a course is akin to a Difficult Second Album phase: the novelty has worn off, the freshness has gone, and one is left trying to remember how to do it – whatever ‘it’ is – all over again.

In the first year, the course felt more like a single concern that happened to be made up of three modules; now it’s like trying to juggle three demanding projects at once. And then write essays on top of that. I also have a couple of projects that are meant to be my ‘real work’ at the moment: a little book on Polari someone else has asked me to write, and a book I’ve asked myself to write. But time leaks away at the cruellest of speeds whenever one wants more of it. I find I barely have enough time to do the college course. Or at least, do it well.

Tuesday 11th December: Along with some fellow students, I attend a production of The Tempest, at the Lion And Unicorn Theatre in Kentish Town. The venue is new to me, despite having lived up the road for eighteen years. It’s certainly invisible from Kentish Town High Street: one has to walk down a quiet residential road and look for a pub, then look inside the pub for a theatre.  The company, Grassroots Shakespeare, gets its actors to direct themselves; there’s no single director. This means Prospero seems to be from one imagined production (Northern gangster – a kind of whispering Yorkshire De Niro), Ariel from another (loud, wacky, Batman costume, a bit Jim Carrey), while Miranda could be in a more traditional BBC Shakespeare in the early 80s, and so on. Still, it’s never dull, and when the song Full Fathom Five is followed with a rendition of Lionel Richie’s Three Times A Lady, no one is in the least bit surprised.