When does your mind turn to Christmas Dinner? In my case it was when I opened my diary on the 1st of August and read, ‘Phone Neil re, birds!’
Neil is my supplier of Christmas chickens and I first came across him some years ago when Richard my previous supplier gave up his business because he could not make it pay. He grew ½ million birds annually and was introduced to me by an even earlier supplier who gave up when the economics of producing ¼ million birds proved unprofitable.
Neil however produces a million birds and tells me that, although times are getting tough, he is just able to support his family. He supplies Sainsbury’s and ASDA but could not survive on what they pay him, and so his wife goes out to work and his mother gives free help in the home and business.
Neil took over the business when his father died and he is trying hard to rid his mind of the nagging thought that he has customers who seem to believe that he (Neil) exists merely to provide chicken meat at a price lower than last year. He tells me that the broiler chicken has now been bred to the point where it is slaughtered at 35 days of age and is on the supermarket shelves three day later.
He reckons that my birds are the lucky ones as they get to live on grass and eat a varied diet. In fact, my birds which dress out at about 15+lbs (the biggest last year was 23lbs long leg) are fed a diet of grapes, apples, wheat, maize, milk and organic pellets in addition to what they pick up from the field. Such is the self-evident quality of these birds, that since I was encouraged to raise them by Allan Evans an old farmer friend, eight other local men now share in raising them. They also supply the odd bird or so to discerning neighbours. We may not meet the so-called standards of the supermarkets but, as our neighbour Deirdre once said: “Them folks in town thinks we’re thick, but we eats well.”
The month of December is not just about the Christmas Dinner however. December also reminds me of an old dictum that, ‘the anticipation of something is often more exciting than its realisation.’ Or, to put it another way: ‘The journey beats the arrival!’
When we are young, our minds have a wonderful ability to create an ephemeral future which we somehow then hope will become a real pleasure and lasting satisfaction. This may be because youth is full of anticipation and has no thought of disappointment and no sense that the ’moment of realisation ’ is fleeting or that once it has passed it has gone forever.
As we grow older our sense of anticipation reduces but all is not lost. This is because our pleasure in the reality increases. We seem better able to temper anticipation and find it easier to enjoy life in the moment. Nowadays, I do not so much anticipate a good time during Advent but simply know that I shall enjoy each day as it comes. Especially the pleasure of walking the lanes around Brand Green and Pool Hill whilst carol singing, and the friendship of those kindly folk who lay-on hot pies and punch.
To end this year’s View from the Pew, and despite my earlier distinction between anticipation and reality, I must confess that I do anticipate the joy I shall feel at that moment in the Christmas morning service when the organ sounds the tune Adestes Fidelis and the village sings O come all ye faithful:
Yea Lord we greet you, born this happy morning!
View from the Pew 