As if starting to search for Christmas songs almost as soon as the last over of the Cricket season has been bowled isn't madness enough, I also like to impose some utterly pointless rules here at the Calendar.
Sundays, for instance, always need to be a Carol and the first day is always more seasonal than an outright Christmas song. This gives all those who moan every year about it all 'starting too early' time to get up into the loft and start moving the excess rolls of carpet to find the tree and the boxes of baubles, and that God-awful moose head you swear you'll throw out every January but never do.
Not that I think we need a sweetener this year; I've noticed even the TV studios that usually only get decorated on the 1st, were all given the make-over a week ago. Probably time to scrap the rule.
But not just yet...
I have a box set called 'Midwinter - the folk music of Christmas & the Turning of the Year'; a four disc set that starts with a superb reading by American poet Robert Frost of his beautiful 'Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening' which then segues into folk singer Steve Tilston's version of the traditional song 'Roving on a Winter's Night' sung with his then-wife Maggie Boyle.
The traditional version can take many forms but the Tilston version is a sparse, bitter tale of lost and unrequited love; sad and haunting, it strikes just the right amount of chill for a freezing December night, enhanced as it is by Frost's equally bleak poem - What promises has he to keep and where does he have to go? Is he Snow? Or death? - meaning only this version and the segue will do for me. As soon as I play it, Christmas has started and I'm searching for the Eggnog and brewing the mulled wine.
Unable to find it anywhere else, I've loaded it up to YouTube myself with some personal - and pertinent - pictures.
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