At PostDesk, we celebrate Christmas with our ‘What they want for Christmas’ project. This year, it’s over at http://postdesk.com/christmas2011. There you’ll see what 200 high profile people in technology, gaming, business and politics would like for Christmas this year.
Among those who participated are 42 British MPs, alongside 65 high profile business founders, and many CEOs, journalists, bloggers, authors, web designers, typographers, musicians, and comedians. We also asked a number of television personalities and celebrities what they would like for Christmas. All in all – quite an eclectic mix, but the entire list makes for a highly interesting, and at times thought provoking, humorous and insightful read.
Here is what I wrote as my contribution: Click on photos to enlarge
What I want for Christmas...Escape from care mainly...
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In the Kampinoski Forest near Palmiry village about 30kms from Warsaw. The author is attempting to forget in his own way the place nearby where 1,700 Poles and Polish Jews were executed by the Nazis. This part of Aktion AB was intended to 'secretly' destroy the intellectual fabric and cultural base of the country - doctors, engineers, pilots, Members of Parliament, lawyers, mayors, actors, an Olympic athelete (a runner), priests, civil servants, policemen, students, scout masters, writers, even a chess grand-master were shot and buried in concealed mass graves here and in the forest round about.
The new museum very recently opened adjacent to the cemetery is both moving and informative concerning the executions. Many Poles and Polish Jews were previously imprisoned in the notorious Pawiak prison in Warsaw or tortured by the Gestapo in the basement of their headquartes in Aleja Sucha. A visit here is indsipensible to understanding the miracle of Poland's present independent existence not only as a sovereign country but as a member of the European Union.  Period photographs taken by Nazis of their devilish work in Kampinoski forest near Palmiry - note the full face blindfolds In a perverse way I am rather glad that petrol prices are forcing cars off the road and making people think twice about unnecessary journeys. I want to continue enjoying the pleasures of motoring as it once was, something almost forgotten in the hell, rage and pollution of our modern traffic treacle.
The photograph is of myself enjoying a late summer pic-nic with excellent provisions and wine one Sunday afternoon in a deserted Polish birch forest near Warsaw together with my 1949 MG TC and superb Polish lover (out of frame but certainly on the rug).
My fondest (albeit I agree shamefully hedonistic) desire for Christmas and the New Year 2012 is for more opportunities like this to enjoy the unique pleasures of the motor car as it used to be, a pleasure machine and an escape from care.
But fear not. I am not as superficial as all that. I have my reasons. Driving in the old style with the hood down and windscreen folded flat provides me with such a welcome, even forcible, distraction from the clinical depression that grips my heart as I view the disintegration of moral and ethical values within our society. As I motor through a cool green avenue of trees, adjusting the notorious Bishop's Cam steering of the TC this way and that, such a relief it is for a soul to forget, tortured as it is by the wilful ignorance and lack of respect for the cultural values of other civilisations as we huddle together nightly and shout at our little or large glowing screens. These the very screens that provide us with indelible images of maimed children, stinking death and the horrors of war. Oh how wonderful it is on the open road to feel the wind in your hair, breathe deeply the perfumes of Nature and hear the birdsong, fully preoccupied with the actual process of driving a beautiful and recalcitrant machine. What a welcome escape from the current Old Testament worries attendant upon the frankly boring, obsessive adoration of the golden calf, the ubiquitous emotions of financial envy, the crippling religion of economics that besets us.
Heeding the innocent call of the open road and more blissful escapist excursions in the fine weather of any season to pic-nic by stream or in forest or remote field, experiencing the careless joys of true motoring as it used to be…that is my Christmas wish this year.
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