Letters from Quotidia 2025 Episode Zero

Letters from Quotidia Revisited 2025 Episode Zero. Be advised that Quotidia is that space, that place where ordinary people lead ordinary lives but where, from time to time, they encounter the extraordinary. Quotidia is a construct where the Irish concept of the crack is highly esteemed. Crack (craic) may be defined as that most Irish of nouns which may encompass news and/or gossip and/or entertainment, and/or enjoyable conversation and/or music and song.

My hope is that the 282 Letters, each of which was an amalgam of music, literature and anecdote, touched some of the bases mentioned above. But let me now explain the reasons for naming this first of the Letters of 2025 Episode Zero.

First, unlike all the others, these is no song or songs associated with it so for that reason alone it doesn’t deserve a positive integer. Second, it provides an explanation for some of the calendrical oddities that will be encountered in the following thirteen months and one week. I hope what follows, now, is an example of an amusing anecdote. I asked the AI in the Edge browser to come up with the adjective of calendar.

Do you remember my use of calendrical just seconds ago? Usually, when I ask my resident AI something, anything, even when it requires a multi-part complex response, it is back within seconds with more information than you can poke a stick at! But it considered for a minute or more what I thought was just a simple request. I wanted to know if I had made the word up, for a start. Lewis Carroll of Alice in Wonderland fame in his poem Jabberwocky was prone to this sort of thing, as I will demonstrate now:

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves/ Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:/All mimsy were the borogoves,/And the mome raths outgrabe.//“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!/The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!/Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun/The frumious Bandersnatch!”//He took his vorpal sword in hand;/ Long time the manxome foe he sought—/So rested he by the Tumtum tree/And stood awhile in thought.//And, as in uffish thought he stood,/The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame/,Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,/ And burbled as it came!//One, two! One, two! And through and through/The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!/He left it dead, and with its head/ He went galumphing back.//“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?/ Come to my arms, my beamish boy!/O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”/ He chortled in his joy.//’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves/ Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:/All mimsy were the borogoves,/And the mome raths outgrabe.

And that’s the literature base touched! Oh, and by the way, AI did not satisfactorily give the derivations of the calendar adjective I was seeking. A small victory such as this I find gratifying in a petty but active compartment of my heart.

My final reason for this Zero Letter is that it provides an apologia for rolling out the Letters again. And here the apologia begins: The Letters originally were blogs I put together in 2016 to help assuage the boredom I felt after retirement. I had 120 songs, written and recorded over previous decades. I had also recorded music and songs from the folk tradition of the English-speaking world- Irish, American, Australian, Scottish, Welsh, English- many with the folk group Banter formed in Western Sydney in 1993.

These also numbered 120. So, when the pandemic struck, I used them as the basis for a podcast I started rolling out. This was after writing the scripts to accompany them and after recording lots of stuff during the pandemic year, 2020. So, I had the material for thirty weeks ready by January 2021 and that accounted for 150 podcasts.

After this, my output was not as prodigious. From five posts a week I could manage only one a week for the next 20 Letters. Then I mined some earlier work I had completed years before and the pace picked up to 14 Letters out of 15 weekdays. Then back to one a week for 16 weeks.

And so, it continued with the odd special thrown in on particular days such as Remembrance Day, Anzac Day (which is observed in Australia and New Zealand) and New Years Eve. Between January 2021 and December 2024, these special days provided opportunities for Letters to mark the occasion.

When I decided to reprise the Letters, I just numbered them 1-282 and reposted them in order five days a week, Monday to Friday. So, the calendar for 2025, January 2026 and the first week of February 2026 will not align with specific-day references found in the original posts. I’ll give an example, My New Years Eve post for 2022 will be reprised on 24^th November 2025.

On the off chance that previous listeners to the Letters may wish to hear again one or more of the 282 original podcasts, or, who knows, a new seeker of Quotidian inclination may stumble across the Letters and wish to follow the series, I have decided to play them again; to give them another shot; to gift them another lease on life. Yeah, another lease on life which can mean, an opportunity for renewed enjoyment in, enthusiasm for or appreciation of one’s own life, OR, to make someone feel happy or healthy after illness or sadness, OR, to improve or refurbish something that is worn or old.

Am I referring to the Letters or to myself? Or both? I’m not sure, uncertainty rules as Heisenberg would tell you. Here endeth the apologia. Start revisiting from 6 Jan.