Welcome to Letters from Quotidia 2025, Weekend Supplement 12. The twelfth month and twelfth weekend supplement for 2025. The winter solstice approaches in northern climes but here in sunny Quotidia it’s the longest day of the year! A common response to so many of life’s questions is, it depends!
In this case, it depends on where on earth you are standing as to whether you are shivering or sunburning. And as the end of the year approaches and before we begin to formulate what are probably futile resolutions for the New Year, we should- if we are open to reflection- revisit the main events and decisions of the year past and have an accounting of what we have done and what we have left undone.
Fifty-one years ago one of Britain’s folk luminaries, Ewan McColl, wrote The Ballad of Accounting and I will present this as my first Yuletide offering. But I did promise in the last letter to strike a more cheerful note, a contrast to the gloomy drenching you had to endure for November’s supplement. A man sent his friend a cryptic Christmas card. It said: A B C D E F G H I JK M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z. The recipient puzzled over it for weeks, finally gave up and wrote asking for an explanation. In July he received the explanation on a postcard: “No L.”
Is this supposed to be better than the gloom? I hear you ask- or is that just the echo of my thought as I typed the joke out? Believe it or not, it was the best of the lot from my- admittedly brief- trawl through the internet for examples of Christmas humour . However, a resort to jokes is not the only way to lighten the mood.
The impromptu Christmas truce of 1914 where Allied and German troops set aside hostilities to exchange gifts, play football in no man’s land and bury their dead showed the human decency of the ordinary men involved. The High Commands on both sides made sure there was no large-scale repetition of such a truce for the rest of the war. More’s the pity, eh?
So, in a last attempt to lighten the mood, I’ll fall back on the limerick, a couple of which I regaled you with at the end of November’s weekend supplement. Here’s one for the aspiring poets among you which proves the dictum that less is often more, A crafty young bard named McMahon, / Whose poetry never would scan, / Once said, with a pause, / It’s probably because, / I’m always trying to cram as many additional syllables into the last line as I possibly can.”// Sorry, couldn’t resist!
Now, what can I say by way of introduction to the first song of the last weekend supplement of the year, The Ballad of Accounting by Ewen McColl? In the Letters to date, I’ve covered five McColl compositions. My first encounter with him was through The Dubliners gun version of The Shoals of Herring, sung by Luke Kelly in 1967.
I heard The Ballad of Accounting when Ewen McColl and his wife Peggy Seeger performed in a memorable concert at the Town Hall in Wollongong in 1975. Like all songs of quality, its relevance does not date. If anything, its cautionary verses are more relevant today that when they were written back in 1964.
This rendition, though, is a fair distance from the McColl original which uses only acoustic guitar and voice, and it clocks in a two and a half minutes. My version is twice as long, but I felt the power combo of bass, drums, electric guitar, piano and synth pad was a better fit for the contents of the lyrics for today’s more apocalyptic times. I think McColl, a dogmatic purist from what I have read about him, would not have approved! [insert song]
Clouds: As a kid I was fascinated by them, their shapes, how they varied and vanished if you looked away and then tried to find the original cloudscape. I’m not Robinson Crusoe there, I know. Prince Hamlet has fun at Polonius’s expense when he says, Do you see yonder cloud that’s almost in shape of a camel? Polonius-ever the eager courtier responds- By the Mass, and ‘tis like a camel, indeed. Hamlet, Methinks it is like a weasel. Polonius, It is backed like a weasel. Hamlet: Or like a whale? Polonius, desperate to please: Very like a whale.
And then there is Aristophanes’ Cloud Cuckoo Land in his play The Birds. According to Wikipedia, Cloud Cuckoo Land is a state of absurdity, over-optimistic fantasy or an unrealistically idealistic state of mind where everything appears to be perfect. Someone who is said to “live in cloud cuckoo land” is a person who thinks that completely impossible things might happen, rather than understanding how things really are. It also hints that the person referred to is naive, unaware of realities or deranged in holding such an optimistic belief. I think this reference still applies to so many today, don’t you?
And then there are the clouds we find in popular music: people of my generation remember Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides Now, I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now, where she uses clouds as a metaphor for change and life’s bittersweet nature. The Rolling Stones’ Get Off Of My Cloud, I wore done as a 45-rpm single where the line, Hey you get off of my cloud/ Don’t hang around cause two’s a crowd emphasised the 60s elevation of personal freedom as a guiding principle of life. Carly Simon sang the line Clouds in my coffee from her hit, You’re So Vain as a metaphor for life’s fleeting moments and confusion. Lots of clouds in the Bible too! Here’s my song A Great Cloud, [insert song] I hope the clouds part for you in 2026 and the sun shines through in your life. The roll-out of the Letters continues into the New Year.
The Ballad of Accounting (words and music by Ewan McColl)
Am E7 Am
In the morning, we built the city
C G Em
In the afternoon walked through its streets
Am Em E7
Evening saw us leaving
Am E7 Am
We wandered through our days as if they would never end
Am G Am Em
All of us imagined we had endless time to spend
Am G
We hardly saw the crossroads and small attention gave
Am E7 Am
To landmarks on the journey from the cradle to the grave,
E7 Am E7 Am
cradle to the grave, cradle to the grave
Did you learn to dream in the morning?
Abandon dreams in the afternoon?
Wait without hope in the evening?
Did you stand there in the traces and let ’em feed you lies?
Did you trail along behind them wearing blinkers on your eyes?
Did you kiss the foot that kicked you, did you thank them for
their scorn?
Did you ask for their forgiveness for the act of being born,
act of being born, act of being born?
Did you alter the face of the city?
Make any change in the world you found?
Or did you observe all the warnings?
Did you read the trespass notices, did you keep off the grass?
Did you shuffle up the pavements just to let your betters pass?
Did you learn to keep your mouth shut, were you seen and never heard?
Did you learn to be obedient and jump to at a word,
jump to at a word, jump to at a word?
Did you demand any answers?
The who and the what and the reason why?
Did you ever question the setup?
Did you stand aside and let ’em choose while you took second best?
Did you let ’em skim the cream off and then give to you the rest?
Did you settle for the shoddy and did you think it right
To let ’em rob you right and left and never make a fight,
never make a fight, never make a fight?
What did you learn in the morning?
How much did you know in the afternoon?
Were you content in the evening?
Did they teach you how to question when you were at the school?
Did the factory help you grow, were you the maker or the tool?
Did the place where you were living enrich your life and then
Did you reach some understanding of all your fellow men,
all your fellow men, all your fellow men?
A Great Cloud (words and music by Quentin Bega)
based on Hebrews 12
A great cloud of witnesses round me cheering and urging me on
The finish line far in the distance, they’ll give me the strength to go on
This I’ve been told is the real deal so why do I feel so downcast
Now nothing’s around me but silence as I run along this dark path
Told all along it’s the story true as it ever can be
The narrative ends in God’s glory and it can include even me
I was so hopelessly tangled in what life could offer to me
Especially if it was easy and if it appeared to be free
Faces and forms from my past life running beside me tonight
Showing what hurts I have dealt them with no way I can make it right
Told all along it’s the story true as it ever can be
The narrative ends in God’s glory and it can include even me
Now running past the dread mountain burning with fire and sound
Of a trumpet blast threatening death to anyone touching that ground
Where can I find that forgiveness that rescues the wretch from his sin
Ahead is the city of Zion and Someone is calling me in
Told all along it’s the story true as it ever can be
The narrative ends in God’s glory and it can include even me
And it can include even me
And it can include even me
Credits: All written text, song lyrics andmusic (including background music) written and composed by Quentin Bega unless otherwise specified in the credits section after individual posts. Illustrative excerpts from other texts identified clearly within each podcast. I donate to and use Wikipedia frequently as one of the saner sources of information on the web.
Technical Stuff: Microphone-songs Shure SM58; (for the podcast spoken content) Audio Technica AT 2020 front-facing with pop filter); Apogee 76K also used for songs and spoken text. For recording and mixing down: 64-bit N-Track Studio 10 Extended used; Rubix 22 also used for mixing of microphone(s) and instruments. I use the Band in a Box/RealBand 2023 combo for music composition.
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