It seems rather ironic to me that November has within its
thirty-day span each year two days that are specifically designated as being
ones that we have to remember.
There’s a whole day (sometimes two if the dates don’t
coincide upon a Sunday) dedicated to the
act of remembrance, which is, of course, a good thing, and another date a week
earlier which we are also poetically reminded that we ought to remember, or
rather “remember, remember…” and, as far as I am aware, this is the only month
for which such culturally deeply carved reminders are deemed to be strictly
necessary.
We don’t seem to need reminding in our nursery rhymes that
Easter is on its way, or Christmas, or Mother’s Day, or St Valentine’s Day, perhaps because the supermarkets are
full up to the brim with the various “essentials” for each of those for much of
the previous quarter year. A few of us might need the odd nudge to remind us
that birthdays, and maybe the other odd events like anniversaries, are looming
over our personal horizon, but those dates are usually very specific to the
individual and are seldom seen as national days of celebration or commiseration
depending upon how you feel about these things.
But then, when it comes to both of those memorable dates in
November, the poppies and the fireworks are also all out there and available
for weeks beforehand, too, so that theory doesn’t really hold up.
It’s almost as if, historically, the entire month has been
one that we’d all rather choose to forget, but somehow it sneaks along anyway
and we all have to endure it rather than doing the sensible thing, like a lot
of the other mammals do, and hibernate the hell out of it.
It might seem ironic that a notorious insomniac is thinking
about hibernation, but there you go.
After all, a chap can dream, can he not…? (Actually... not...)
Ironically, however, it seems to be a month which brings
along with it so much that we seem very able to so easily forget. It’s that
month which is given to us as the launch pad for the yuletide season and allows
a bit of breathing space for us to start to get things done and yet, at the end
of it, many of us are left with so much that we still have to do and a sense of
having far too little time left in which to do it, as well as discovering when
the month does finally come to an end,
that there is far, far too much that we’ve also managed to completely
forget to actually do.
Perhaps it’s because, at least in this part of the world,
November is the classic “inbetweenie” month with nothing much going for it
after the final disappearance of summer and the festivities ahead in its more
glamorous neighbour which we call December…? It offers us little other than
thirty days in which we know that we ought to be doing more, but with the added
misery that we’ve been plunged into the darkness and the cold for a few months
and is the very first month up in the sequence that gets to remind us of this.
It sits there as something that you simply have to endure,
like that stubborn and not very interesting guest who refuses to leave despite
the fact that you’ve been demonstrably looking at your wristwatch and remarking
upon how late it’s getting, theatrically yawning away like mad for hours, and
have even come back downstairs wearing your pyjamas, switched off the lights
and drawn the curtains, and then asks you if there’s any chance of another cup
of tea…
I used to be so much more organised back in the days when I
still used to care for the festive season. The gifts would be ordered,
delivered, or, if necessary, bought from wherever I had been to in order to get
them, and they would be wrapped and tucked away in preparation. When I used to
send such things, the cards would be written and stacked waiting for the off,
but now November arrives and does its thing and fails completely to motivate me
into any form of action, perhaps because it’s the only month which begins with
an almost emphatic “no” in its name…?
