As the year rushes to an end, a few thoughts.

Today and yesterday have been fine and even sunny, on and off at any rate. Good days to be out and about, bearing in mind that we have a long way go before Spring comes along.

Veganuary is about to be upon us, that New-Year’s-Resolution month, when people decide to try being vegan. It makes a change from Dryanuary, when you don’t drink. Of course, it might include that because someone is bound to come up with something in wine production that goes against vegan philosophy. I read about one ardent vegan who walks to his destination if it is doable in an hour, “to avoid accidental crashes with i sects or birds that may occur when taking a bus”. Similarly, he will not use the new bank notes as they have been manufactured using animal products. Thus he elevates a dietary thing into something akin to religion. Each to his own!

I wonder what that vegan makes of the story of Jolyon Maugham QC, a prominent Remainer lawyer, who apparently clubbed a fox to death on Boxing Day. Rather an extreme thing to do, in my view. The fox was seemingly trying to get at the chickens the lawyer keeps in his garden (it’s what foxes do) and got trapped in the netting. The lawyer phoned the RSPCA after the event. Why did he not phone them beforehand and have someone come and humanely remove the animal from the netting? Surely that was possible and a much better outcome than taking a baseball bat to the poor creature, who clearly had not managed to access the chickens.

On the radio yesterday I heard part of a programme where people talked about what had been the cultural highlight of their 2019. One person selected the Sorolla exhibition in London: a roomful of Spanish sunlight on a grey London day, she said. We saw that exhibition and I would totally agree with that assessment. I discovered Sorolla in an art gallery in Havana, Cuba, when an old friend and I went on girls’ adventure to that country. We had never heard of him before and were quite blown away. Perhaps I had never heard of him because Batista had kept so many of the paintings for himself.

I also like Goya, a much more ancient Spanish painter. Now, according to this article a whole lot of what we think are Goya works were not actually done by him. And I find myself thinking, does it really matter? If it looks like Goya’s work, if it is worth looking at, then let’s appreciate it anyway. After all the great man isn’t going to lose any money that way. And, after all again, we watch Disney cartoon and know full well he had a team of people drawing his creations for him and nobody starts to cry, “This is not Disney!”

 Okay, not on the same level of art but even so...