Out to a Christmas party on Friday night; drinks, a meal, a disco. My disco days are over, especially with the present sciatica; careless movement would lead to a wince at least, a cry of pain at most. But let's focus on the positives....
Pudding was a small pot of chocolate; thick, rich, intense. And no bigger than a tin of shoe polish. Not that I could have managed more at the end of a three course meal. And the small pot came not the blandness of a chocolate bar or some chocolate mousses, but with real taste.
It caused me to reflect on that adage 'good things come in small packages'. Somehow our world-view sees disaster and tragedy, as I see it reported, in screen-filling terms. SHOCK! scream the headlines. Good is somehow smaller and quieter, a filler on the back page. The neighbour who day after day fetches a pensioner her paper; the folk who week after week, without fuss, put something in the food-bank trolley at the supermarket, who turn out to make tea at the disabled club. Good, in small, unsung packages.
Chief of these, in my view, is the birth of our saviour at Christmas. Just a baby, among so many babies. Small, born at night, in an out-of-the-way place, in a third-rate province of the Roman empire. Who would have guessed he would change the course of the world? A small quiet package, as it were, but rich, intense, far from bland, a shock to the system with his taste. Dig in, and savour!
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