Lots of ground to cover today, so let’s get started.

First up: I took a certain amount of (albeit muted) flak from one or two people the other week when I made a passing reference to the fact that Esther is pregnant. They were surprised that Bernice and I had not told them earlier that Esther and Ma’ayan are expecting; Esther is due in mid-March. So, my first New Year’s Resolution for 2022 is to tell people earlier when we are expecting a grandchild.

This is actually very exciting, because this is a resolution which I am able to keep, within the first week of the new year. I’m delighted to tell you that Micha’el and Tslil are also expecting. Tslil has just completed her first trimester, so we are looking forward to somewhere in early July. 2022 is already shaping up to be a busier, and better, year than 2021.

If we’re already talking about Micha’el, Tslil and Tao, then you might like to know that they have a new, 30-minute(!) video on their YouTube channel, which will take you through the whole process of what they have been doing on their land over the last year or more, with a particular focus on all the work involved in erecting the tipi. (As you can see, I still can’t decide how to spell ‘tepee’. I must say, using a variety of spellings makes me feel rather Shakespearean.) You can find the video here. (And for those of you who are less interested in teepees than in Tao, he features as well.)

But, getting back to resolutions, the end of January will mark four years since I retired – or approximately 9500 working hours, but who’s counting? Reflecting on those four years, I remembered the witty little ditty I composed for my farewell party at work, in which I shared some of my plans for retirement. I’ve just revisited the poem, and I’m afraid it looks remarkably like all those New Year’s resolutions I used to make before I made a New Year’s resolution not to make any New Year’s resolutions (which is, unsurprisingly, just about the only New Year’s resolution I had ever kept until just now).

I planned, for example, to finally read Ulysses. I dutifully bought the book, although I did not help my chances by choosing, from the various options, the Oxford edition that reproduces the original 1922 text, typographical errors and all. What I hadn’t realised until the book arrived was that this copy also faithfully reproduced the original font, in its original size. This makes the actual physical task of reading, in your 70s, just a little more of a strain. If there’s one thing you don’t need as you wade through Ulysses, it’s a little more of a strain.

This volume also boasts multiple aids to reading, prepared by the scholarly Jeri Johnson: a 50-page introduction, three appendices, and 218 pages of explanatory notes. A point can be reached where the distinction in meaning between ‘reading aids’ and ‘reading impediments’  becomes blurred.

Not content with that, I also bought, as recommended, Harry Blamires’ excellent The New Bloomsday Book, and then, when I found a second-hand copy of Anthony Burgess’ legendary guide to Joyce’s work, Here Comes Everybody (albeit hiding under its American title of ReJoyce), how could I resist it?

I made a noble start. I read Johnson’s 50-page introduction, then decided, on the basis of recommendations online, to tackle the novel not from Page 1, but, rather, by cherry-picking the more accessible chapters first. I started at the end, with Molly Bloom’s famous monologue (whose driving rhythm I rather unfairly hampered by flicking to and fro between text and notes).

After another chapter, I decided that I would actually prefer to read from beginning to end, and managed to negotiate four or five chapters. This involved prepping from Burgess and Blamires, and keeping one finger in Blamires’ notes and another in Johnson’s, while reading the text.

Around this time, I discovered RTÉ Radio’s 1982 dramatisation of Ulysses. Broadcast to celebrate the centenary of Joyce’s birth, it is widely regarded as the definitive adaptation of the work. It is faithful to the text, being basically a dramatized audiobook, rather than an adaptation, with actors taking the parts of the narrator and the various speaking characters.

Having come across it, I wrestled for a couple of weeks with the philosophical question of whether hearing a book read constitutes reading the book. Having decided that it did – good heavens, I have read several books this last year to Bernice, and she certainly qualifies as having read them – I now find myself liberated.

I am ingesting Ulysses through my ears rather than my eyes, in a far more authentic Dublin accent than my imagination could ever conjure. (I’m currently reading Shuggie Bain aloud to Bernice – another laugh-a-minute novel – and my working-class Glasgow accent makes even me wince.)

I highly recommend the experience of the radio dramatization. The Irish national broadcaster RTÉ offers a very spirited performance of the book, with very few distractions from the words themselves. You might want to pay it a visit (as long as you have 29 hours and 45 minutes to spare, for that is its total running time). At this rate, 2022 may well be the year of War and Peace, if I can only find an unabridged reading.

Another of my self-assigned post-retirement projects was to explore in depth Schubert’s Winterreise – Winter Journey, a cycle of 24 songs for voice and piano that reflect on the last stage of life and the movement towards death. (Oh yes! We love our light comedy!) It took me a long time to grow fond of classical song, particularly for male voice. Decades ago, I bought Bernice a CD set of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau singing Schubert lieder, including Winterreise. It is only in recent years that I have started listening to it.

I then learnt about the phenomenon that is Ian Bostridge, an Oxford history professor, who transitioned from academia to professional singing in his thirties, bursting onto the scene with an acclaimed Wigmore Hall performance of Winterreise (a work which has fascinated him since his youth). He is a very dramatic performer, fully playing a character rather than simply singing the song.

So, I downloaded Bostridge’s Winterreise, and also bought his highly praised study of the work, Schubert’s Winter Journey – Anatomy of an Obsession. (You may be detecting a pattern here: ‘first buy a book’ is the part of every project that I can manage without any difficulty.) I fully intended to work through the cycle, song by song, comparing Fischer-Dieskau’s interpretation with Bostridge’s, and accompanying each song with the relevant chapter from Bostridge’s book.

I still do fully intend to do that, and in fact I’m tempted to make that a 2022 resolution. If I aim to explore one song every fortnight, I should finish the cycle by the end of the year.

As I talk about it here, part of my heart soars at this exciting prospect. Bostridge writes beautifully: his translations of the poems are poems in their own right, and his exploration of his own reflections is fascinating. In addition, the two singers, Fischer-Dieskau and Bostridge, have such contrasting styles that listening to them in tandem will be a wonderful way of helping me determine what I feel is the essence of each song.

At the same time, another part of my heart sinks. I can’t escape the feeling that I am setting myself up to disappoint myself again. I am reminded of Che Guevara’s words (although I may have slightly misread the quote):

“The resolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall.”

But who knows? Perhaps 2022 will be the year when I really, finally, manage to shake the resolution tree hard enough for lots of apples to fall.

Either way, 2022 is a year I intend to embrace with both arms. (Can you embrace with one arm? I wonder how Nelson managed with Lady Hamilton. But I digress.) Whatever! I close by wishing you all a wonderful 2022. May you always feel confident in your own skin; and remember: what looks like a pile of dirt might turn out to actually be fine-sifted soil perfect for your tipi floor.