One Hundred, and Eighty

Darts commentator Sid Waddell was one of the "celebrities" on the last Celebrity Mastermind of the Christmas holidays, last night on BBC ONE. Not that he seemed to have much idea of the rules of the quiz, mind you, as he kept interrupting questionmaster John Humphrys with his answers. Nothing like enthusiasm, but this is England, old boy, where you have to play the game, play the game, there's a good chap.

Mr Waddell may not shine at marginally challenging quizzes, but at least he has scored his claim to fame by his elongated exaltation when someone at the oche hits the Bullseye with the perfect score. Numbers are the name of the game for him.

However, I digress, since tonight's excursion is not to a world of smoke-filled bars but to family memories on what would have been my dear Dad's eightieth birthday, had he lived another six years or so- which he might well have done had he been able to quit the evil weed rather than succumb to emphysema.

Some time this year, if the government has its way, smoking in many public places will be banned, just as it has been in Ireland now for a year or so. The massed ranks of libertarian puffers will of course be out in force to cry "foul", but the most foul thing about our society's continued tolerance of tobacco hitherto has been the air that non-smokers so often have to put up with in pubs and restaurants (which, actually, are probably about the only public buildings which haven't banned smoking already). Everybody should have the right to enjoy clean air and somebody else's "liberty" should never be allowed to compromise the health of others.

And the One Hundred? Well, it's the time of year for remembering anniversaries, isn't it, and this year will have its fair share of course. Last year brought us many military-related ones; this year we may not have that so much, but there will be reminders a-plenty of Britain's past engineering greatness with the bi-centenary of Isambard Kingdom Brunel's birth, while on the classical stage all lights will be shining on the memory of Mozart.

Worthy figures of commemoration both, for their contributions to the growth of the railway system in the UK and the musical enrichment of generations respectively. But for my part, I'm turning my thoughts back to a relative now gone who was as much a celebrity to my younger self as any wannabe starlet on today's TV might be to others- and much missed still. 30th December last year marked the 100th anniversary of the birth of my maternal grandmother, to whom I was close- and without her of course, well you wouldn't be reading this, I guess.

Indeed, when I interviewed my grandma for an English project in the third year of secondary school, not only was my best English teacher, Mrs Dudley, most impressed but I added a few more coins to the precious currency which is my memory bank and learnt just a little more of the earthy, human side of history. It's the stories of real people, told by real people, that make the study of the subject so enjoyable- and important.

Grandma Wallace meant much to me, and I sigh that longing sigh of temps perdu, if I may borrow from Marcel Proust, as I think of her lovely house, built for a railway worker and his growing family in the thirties, which the short-sighted council housing policies of the seventies saw demolished. But at least I and grandma's surviving relatives have a point of reference to return to should we so wish, a still-standing house in a neighbouring road which was at the bottom of grand-dad's much-loved garden.

Time without reference points, personal and communal, becomes meaningless. For everything, there is a season, said the writer of Ecclesiastes, sometimes the biblical equivalent of Marvin the Paranoid Android. The trouble is, in our world where our own actions, it would seem, have so upset the natural order of things, it can be hard to spot the marker posts of each season's coming and going. It's no longer a straightforward task to know when to sow and when to reap, and who the sowers and reapers are.

Certainly in my personal life, I'm wrestling as to whether I should try to sow a new seed in my current workplace, or accept that the time has come to be plucked up from there after a six-month season, before I become a "weed" through inadequate capacity to serve as well as I would wish in my present role. It's the sort of question maybe many are asking at this time of the year too: January is apparently a peak time for recruitment and therefore, logically, for people to change jobs. Maybe I need to reap my harvest elsewhere. It's not easy,though, as there are folk there who have become really treasured examples and friends to me and who I do not want to lose- just as I wished I'd never had to lose my loved ones. Likewise, there is much I think I could still offer and do to help my current employer thrive. But wanting and having are not always mutually compatible, just as some plants will never thrive in acid soil and yet blossom in alkaline.

Thank heavens, then, for one who knows the times and seasons far better than we do, and yet can be relied on as the faithful gardener who knows exactly what needs planting, or should that be who, and where, and when. Alan Titchmarsh may currently be working his way through the gardening year on TV, but God's been working as the gardener supreme through the generations from Abraham to Jesus. 42 of them in fact, which according to Douglas Adams, was the supposed answer to life, the universe and everything.
Strange such a significant number should come from a non-Christian mind in a work of science fiction, but numbers are far more significant, perhaps, than we give them credit for. Maybe Thirty Three years, the lifespan of a young man called Jesus, who knew the seasons far better than we and used many a horticultural example in his timeless teaching, is the number that matters more than any other. And the life- and more significantly, death and resurrection- that should be remembered every day of every year, not just once every one hundred and eighty or so.