Happy Christmas from an airhead!

Last year’s modest but delicious Christmas lunch.

Yesterday, a few minutes after sending out this newsletter, I got an email from a reader. That reader is Steven Isserlis, one of the world’s leading cellists. His recording of the Bach cello suites is a masterpiece. He has even written a book about them. But what he said in his email chilled my blood.

“Ode to Joy”, he said, “is not by Bach” and followed this with an awful lot of exclamation marks.

As soon as I saw the email, which went on to say some very kind things, I felt blood rush to my cheeks. I write a newsletter called Culture Café but had made a statement that was the musical equivalent of saying that Hamlet was the hero of King Lear. I also felt worried. I know “Ode to Joy” is Beethoven. (I didn’t know the words were written by the German poet and playwright Friedrich Schiller, as another reader pointed out.)

My father used to play Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony on the old wooden gramophone in our sitting room. Its fourth and final movement, “Ode to Joy”, became the anthem of the EU in 1985 and remains for many of us a symbol of Europe and of so much that we hold dear. But for one moment, when I wrote the newsletter, my brain told me it was Bach.

I presume this was the part of my brain that allowed me to leave the kitchen tap on for the whole of Saturday night. And the part of my brain that allowed me to climb into my own car in Italy this summer and find that something had gone wrong with the clutch. Spoiler alert, dear reader. The car was fine. But I’ve driven a manual for almost all my adult life and my brain told me to put my left foot on the left pedal. (Please don’t try this on an automatic. It will scare the living daylights out of you.)

Anyway, the most positive conclusion I can draw from these “brain fades” is that my brain is feeling a bit overloaded and I’m not getting any younger. The least positive is somewhere I don’t want to go. It may also suggest that it might be a good idea to cut back on the negronis, but that is also somewhere I don’t want to go.

It’s just a fact that none of us is getting any younger. As Barbara Trapido said in her wonderful novel Brother of the More Famous Jack, “what is life but a progression from pimples to wrinkles if not for the getting of wisdom?”

I certainly had the pimples when I was young, and even when I was not so young. I’m also getting the wrinkles and the jowls. But I have - we all have - accumulated a bit of wisdom along the way and I hope that will comfort us as we all begin to lose a few names, memories and facts.

For many years, Christmas was a bit of a headache for me. I was single till I was 51. Spending Christmas with my mother and brother made me feel like a middle-aged Bridget Jones. Spending it with friends with families made me feel like an orphan. I sometimes spent Christmas on my own, which felt surprisingly fine.

Last Christmas, as lunchtime approached, I decided to ditch the Christmas dinner and have cheese and wine instead. It was delicious! We’re grown ups. We should be able to do what we like.

This year, we’re going to lunch with friends who feel like family. I’m really looking forward to it, but would also be happy to collapse in front of a film with a huge bag of crisps. That’s what I did instead of going out for dinner on my birthday in Stockholm two weeks ago, and it was perfect.

Wherever you are, whoever you’re with, and if you’re on your own, I wish you health and happiness at the end of this year. Take this, in fact, as my very own Ode to Joy.