It’s Old Twelfth Night, ‘Twelvey’, 17th January, the date of Twelfth Night in the old Julian calendar before they played catch-up in 1752 to reclaim those accumulated days that we’d lost through miscalculation, or was it just carelessness? This is the traditional day, down ‘ere in the West Coun’ry anyway, when we do our Wassailing – treating the orchard trees to a hullabaloo of singing and saucepan bashing to drive away the evil spirits, Continue reading
Category Archives: Story
Twelfth Night Tales, 12: plus or minus a few
Anyone who’s followed these posts will have probably assumed there were to be twelve Twelfth Night Tales; although some included more than one item I only posted 11. There were a few more tales queuing up that I’d planned to tell, however, a few stories just didn’t make it for a variety of reasons. Here are some that got away or never quite arrived. Continue reading
Twelfth Night Tales, 11: Alebrijes – Mexican Mystery
This mysterious, Christmas-coloured creature was a present from our younger son brought back from a gap year visit to Central America when he was 18 In the early 2000s. Continue reading
Twelfth Night Tales, 10: Szopka from Krakow, Poland
This glittering souvenir, called, I have recently discovered, a ‘Szopka’, was brought back from Krakow in Poland by my partner when he visited the city for a theatre festival in the early 1990s. Continue reading
Twelfth Night Tales, 9: Provençal Santon
On a visit to some friends who live in Montpellier in the south of France we were taken to the extraordinary medieval village of St Guilhem le Désert where we visited a museum that included a 3D miniature landscape tableau. This spectacle was a closely observed Continue reading
Twelfth Night Tales, 8: family silver – fables, fakes … and foil
In the economically uncertain 1930s it seemed that if you were blessed with a little extra money you might begin collecting modest pieces of silver-plated tableware. Both my grandfathers (unknown to each other at this stage) had started their working lives (one aged 14) as lowly clerks prior to the First World War but after they were demobbed they resumed their occupations and Continue reading
Twelfth Night Tales, 7: The Nutcracker
A visit one early winter in 1984 with my young son to a performance of The Nutcracker ballet at Bristol’s Hippodrome (first ballet for both us) was perhaps over-ambitious, or just a tad premature for a 3 year old and left us both struggling with the complicated story (without the benefit of words at the ballet, obviously), a story which is also a little odd… Continue reading
Twelfth Night Tales, 6: Green Man
This chimerical mask is made from fired clay, created some years ago by my partner along with some companion pieces; he’s a permanent fixture on the wall above the fireplace, but as a result of a midwinter custom we invented, over the years he’s become a kind of homage to the Green Man. We accidentally initiated this custom out of (mild) despair about 25 years ago in the second winter of living in this house while it was being pulled apart by builders.
Twelfth Night Tales, 4: Euro decs
Delft decs
For five years in the mid 90s I had the (mostly) good fortune to accompany some graphic design students to Amsterdam for a week in mid November. The first trip was also my first visit to Amsterdam and I fell in love with its wintery charms. Christmas was a big feature especially celebrating Sinterklaas, Saint Nicholas, Continue reading
Twelfth Night Tales, 3: Bought and found.
On holiday in Budapest one torrentially rainy day in August in 2010, that happened also to be my birthday, we made our soggy way across town between museums and passed a water feature set into an area of grass and shrubs beside a main road. Lodged amongst some rocks in the stream was this lonely glass tree; a birthday present from the city to me?! We brought it home and it’s now part of the Christmas set.
Liz Milner 