In her Christmas speech, the queen spoke about the centrality of children to our celebrations at this time of year. She quoted the carol 'Little Town of Bethlehem': "the hopes and fears of all the years are met in Thee tonight" - the Christ child at the heart of the magic and mystery. Especially by candle-light, children seem like spirits stepping into a liminal world - a place of potential and vulnerability. They flicker in the draught as a door closes on the old year and opens on an unknowable new one. Seamus Heaney's poem, 'Postscript', describes our lives shot through with uncatchable 'earthed lightning': You are neither here nor there, A hurry through which known and strange things pass With those things in mind, I scribbled somebody else's child's face on the back of an envelope, ready for tomorrow's painting. Carpe diem. |