I wish you a merry Christmas

Dear readers,

The festive season is well and truly upon us now. I have already written of the need to hasten the commercialisation of Christmas. We should not overlook the fact that this is a religious double whammy, since, unusually, Hannukah begins at sunset on Christmas Eve. As an agnostic as well as an apostate Jew (and a hypocrite), I will be celebrating both in my own inimitable style, largely through the medium of over-indulgence. In that respect, at least, I am a traditionalist. It is said that the average Briton consumes 7,000 calories in food and drink on Christmas Day, which sounds about right. I may not quite hit that, as I don’t eat as much as my physique would suggest, but I will do my best.

Funny thing, Christmas Day. It resembles in one sense an airport terminal, in that it suddenly becomes acceptable to drink at any hour of the day. (It can’t just be me; we’ve all had a refreshing 9.00 am pint while waiting for a flight.) Similarly, champagne is often the order of the day on rising at Christmas, sometimes diluted into a buck’s fizz. This has always seemed something of a cop-out to me. If you’re going to hit the bottle as soon as you wake up – and, God knows, I am not the man to stop you – don’t pretend it’s healthy or vitamin-packed by adding a slug of orange juice. (I am reminded of a story told by the late Cecil Parkinson, who, as a newly-elected MP, was taken for a drink by Spencer le Marchant, a Tory whip. Le Marchant favoured goblets of bloody Mary, but, after one, Parkinson was reeling a bit. His companion wanted to press on. Parkinson protested weakly that he couldn’t, as the tomato juice was too acidic for him. Quite right, le Marchant concurred, and ordered neat vodkas. They don’t make them like that any more.)

I must pause here parenthetically (it’s my thing) to discuss for a moment sparkling wine. Champagne can be lovely, and is sometimes a justified excess. A good friend of mine, who knows better than most whereof he speaks when it comes to booze, insists that there are times when you simply have to “drink the label”. Much of the time, however, it is overpriced and overrated, and prosecco and cava are going great guns in the sales wars, often for very good reason. (I once had the opportunity to fly Virgin Upper Class with work, and I preferred their excellent Crémant de Limoux to the champagne on offer. Thanks, taxpayer.) On one point, however, I am clear: nomenclature. Given that it is not always genuine champagne, one must have a catch-all term for it. “Champers” is out, likewise “shampoo”. “Bubbles” is too mimsy. The only word I have found which is accurate and which doesn’t make me want to vomit is “fizz”. “Would you like a glass of fizz?” is a phrase to which I will warm, as opposed to reaching for my revolver. Anyway.

Christmas is also the preserve of sherry. Sales of the stuff have dropped in recent years, after a brief revival about ten years ago, but, for some reason, it is broken out for the festive period. Now I like sherry. I like all sorts of sherries, from a bone-dry manzanilla (excellent with smoked fish) to a sweet and nutty oloroso (try it instead of port with cheese). (True fact: Harvey’s Bristol Cream, over ice, was my tipple of choice at the beginning of my drinking career all those years ago.) However, it has been noted by some, unkindly, I think, that I will drink pretty much anything. This is not entirely true. Rum I cannot take outside a daiquiri, and tequila makes me feel ill at the first sniff, let alone sip. I also once nearly got into a fight in Edinburgh after drinking tequila, but that’s a story for another day. Anyway, where was I? Yes, sherry. Why is it that we so intimately associate the drink with Christmas? Is it just habit? We have, after all, as a nation, been drinking sherry for a long old time (and the Poet Laureate receives sherry – it was originally Canary wine – as part of his or her remuneration). It is part of the warp and weft of British, and particularly English, drinking, along with claret and warm beer. Perhaps it is the sweetness and warmth of dark sherry in particular which makes it an appealing winter drink. It may also be the fact that sherry is sometimes the one alcoholic indulgence which some older people allow themselves.

Each family has its own Christmas traditions and rituals. For me, as the product of what I understand is now called a “blended” family, it has long consisted of a two-stage process: turkey and trimmings plus presents with my father and stepmother on Christmas Eve, then repeat the process with my mother and stepfather on Christmas Day. As a child, I found this a very satisfactory arrangement. Friends at school and well-meaning teachers would fret about my being the product of a “broken home” (divorce was, I suppose, unusual among the parents of my peer group), but I saw two sets of presents and thought I was getting a good deal. Thankfully, my parents had been sensible enough to disabuse me of the terrible Santa deception at an early age. They were reluctant to let some old reprobate with a beard and a sleigh get the credit for their exertions.

The key to success on Christmas Day is to pace yourself. I remember (vaguely) one year, within the last ten, when I found that by noon I had finished a bottle of sherry and lunch was still a dot on the horizon. By mid-afternoon, I was beginning to wilt, and I count myself a seasoned campaigner. Of course, people react in different ways to daytime drinking. Some say it makes them terribly sleepy. I find the problems only arise when, or rather if, I stop; much better to plough on until the evening. Nonetheless, even I take it reasonably steadily if it’s an all-day project. Variety helps, too. Start with fizz, if you like, or sherry. Perhaps a cocktail or two before the big meal, whenever that comes. Then wine with the meal, and red or white is a debate for another day, assuming you are having fowl. After that, it becomes trickier. Stick with wine? Switch colours? Maybe a digestif? (Brandy is good, but my personal favourites are Benedictine and green Chartreuse, appropriate drinks, I think, for a monastic historian, and very settling for the stomach.) A great deal depends on when you eat the Great Meal. My Christmas lunches have tended to be quite early, certainly finished in time for Her Most Britannic Majesty’s annual appearance, so there is still a fair chunk of the day to go. Some people prefer to eat later, which may make the choice of refreshment easier.

The evening of Christmas Day can be oddly anti-climactic. The presents have been opened, you are bloated with food, sozzled by drink. The television will offer up delights for some, but I tend to find the festive fare pretty uninspiring, certainly on the main channels. There is, I note with dread, a Christmas special of Strictly Come Dancing, but I’d rather eat my own legs. (Would that some of the competitors had done the same.) Board games will entertain some, though they are a particular horror to my mother and therefore will make no appearance for me. For me, though, the evening is a great dilemma: choosing between a comfortable slide into dozy incapacitation at an outrageously early hour, or gritting the teeth and oushing on because once you go to sleep that’s Christmas over for another year.

I don’t think I’m alone in having assumed from childhood that one’s own rituals – Christmas or otherwise – were universal, and being surprised when presented with evidence to the contrary. Christmas, as a festival steeped in ritual, both religious and secular, is perhaps a time when we can learn from each other. Something about the course of the day niggling you? Try changing it. When I was at university, it was said that if something happened twice, it was a tradition. The author of said epigram came to regret it deeply. It does make you think, though, that your routine is not immutable. So The Sybarite’s Christmas message is one of, oddly enough, change. Try something different. Have sherry with your cheese. Eat an hour later. Add or delete orange juice to or from your morning fizz. Who knows, you might even enjoy it. Joyeux Noël.

Wasted youth (in IKEA)

Dear readers,

One of the most agreeably mad news stories of the year (and, Lord, what a year 2016 has been for mad news stories) appeared on the BBC website today. The management of Scando furniture peddlers IKEA has appealed to teenagers across Europe to stop sneaking into its stores and having what are described as “non-sponsored” sleepovers (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-38390497). Apparently, the “craze” – if “craze” it is; the word can often mean a few people having done it and posted something vacuous on YouTube – was started by a pair of Belgians in August, and has since spread. It started me thinking.

Now, I hold no brief against IKEA. I remember when its only UK outlet was in Warrington, and what a revelation to the British shopping public it was. Here was cleanly-designed, stylish, affordable Swedish furniture which came in flat-pack form. It was Habitat for the masses, with not a Conran in sight. It was no surprise that the brand caught on and grew like topsy. It appealed particularly to one demographic, in my experience: rental landlords. I recall flat-hunting in Edinburgh ten years ago and more, and everywhere we went, every flat we saw, there was the same furniture. Smart, reasonably durable, easily replaceable. IKEA had struck. At the back of your mind – if you’re anything like me – was the safety net of “If we break something, we can replace it and no-one will ever know”. Added to this was the whimsically amusing names of its products: Billy the Bookcase, Kassett the Media Storage, Noggin the Nog.

We are all Scandinavians now, of course. If you don’t have a pullover like Sarah Lund, if you can’t hold forth on the nuances between the British and the Swedish versions of Wallander, and if you don’t embrace hygge, then get the hell out of Dodge. I haven’t fully succumbed to the Scando-noir phenomenon, though I do have the first series of The Killing on DVD somewhere. Friends tell me all of these dark, gloomy, bitter police procedurals, and associated acts like Borgen, are excellent, and I’m willing to believe them. But there is only so much time in the day. We also hear how Scandinavian children start school much later than tots in the UK, and end up much better educated and performing more strongly in exams by the time they are 18. And of course Nordic society is revered, especially on the left, for its cohesion, its generous welfare and its general cosiness.

It is not for me to be the fly in the ointment. We can gloss over the high levels of alcoholism and suicide, and the cracks appearing as immigration becomes a talking point. There are also questions to be asked about whether the performance of flaxen-haired young Viking moppets at school is solely down to the age at which they start, and whether we could replicate it over here. These are weighty matters for people other than me.

I want to return to IKEA. It certainly fills a profitable niche. It is, after all, the world’s largest furniture retailer. Clearly, it is doing something right. (We will draw a veil over its rather complex corporate governance arrangements, with registration in the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Liechtenstein. This is definitely not to reduce its tax burden. No sirree.) There is certainly no sin in supplying affordable, handsome, easy-to-construct furniture to a wide audience.

There is, however, one major stumbling block. That’s getting the damned stuff. Things may have changed now, but the last time I tried to have furniture delivered from IKEA, it was an absolute mission; the delivery charge was high, arranging the delivery was complicated and we had more than one false start. Clearly, IKEA wants you to go to one of its sprawling, cavernous stores. And that’s where it all starts to fall apart.

I have sampled several IKEA stores over the years: Warrington, Edinburgh, Wembley Croydon (the last was particularly traumatic: long story). They are – and I’m sure this is deliberate – pretty much interchangeable. You are led round a pre-ordained path of mock bedrooms, living rooms, dining rooms, studies, wherein are displayed all the wares IKEA has to offer you. Come on, they seem to say. Wouldn’t this look great in your house? OK, you don’t think you need a new TV stand, but you do really. It’ll make you happier. So far, so good. Any self-respecting retailer will try to sell you stuff you don’t need.

But there’s something about IKEA stores. Maybe it’s the lack of natural light. Maybe it’s the sense of being on a conveyer belt – you feel guilty if you break away from the approved route or somehow shortcut it by looking at Frida the Dining Table and missing out a whole section of her friends. Of course, it is an especial hell at weekends. Families seem to regard it as a kind of recreational activity, to push their increasingly heavily-laden trollies around, scribbling numbers and names on a piece of paper to collect their items in the warehouse section at the end. IKEA, dear readers, is where relationships go to die. When you go in, you might imagine you are the greatest love match since Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. An hour later – an hour if you’re lucky – the husband is a sullen, unreceptive boor, and the wife is a shrill, nagging harpy. The children will be largely feral by now. Every ounce of affection will have been sucked out of the union, and she will have realised that, actually, the way he pronounces “IKEA” is really, really annoying, while he will be reflecting that her habit of putting one hand on the handle of the trolley while he’s pushing makes him want to slap it away. One of us is doing the pushing, right? You or me. I don’t care which. But not both.

Eventually, of course, the ordeal will end. The money will be paid, the purchases piled up again, and the dread of assembling it all will settle in. First, though, Swedish meatballs! Yes, after at least 60 minutes of hell and existential self-loathing, what you want is a plate of meatballs, or a hot dog. The children certainly will. (If children today are anything like I was many years ago, they will regard it as a cardinal sin to pass a food outlet without buying something. It may only be 11.30 am, but a Fancy Dog – that’s what they call them, I’m not making this up – is just the ticket for a seven-year-old boy.)

That is your IKEA experience. We will gloss over the later assembly experience. By some standards, it could be much worse. The instructions are generally OK, though sometimes you wonder if there is a step missing in the pictograms. You may also be left with some additional screws, which will cause you to wonder if you’ve done something wrong. (They are not completely impossible to misunderstand: the former Mrs Sybarite once stood back proudly from a bookshelf to discover she had nailed the backing panel of plywood over the front of the shelves. We eventually resolved it.)

So I return to these teenagers who are secreting themselves in IKEA stores across Europe for their “non-sponsored” sleepovers. Why on Earth would you do that? You’re teenagers, for God’s sake. You’re supposed to be playing on your Xbox or drinking cheap cider in a park. You have no business in IKEA. That will come later. For now, save yourselves. All right, the “craze” was started by Belgians, who might not have had much else to do. But it’s no way to spend your teenage years. If, in ten years’ time, one of your anecdotes begins “Remember that time we hid in IKEA…”, then truly you have wasted your life.

It's Christ-maaaaaaaas!

It is a cliché to say that it is a cliché that clichés are clichés because they are true. (Keeping up so far?) However, there is a fallacy particularly prevalent at this time of year with which I wish to deal, in the hope of ending its reign at the top of the cliché charts. The idea I want to tackle, and to disprove, is that Christmas “nowadays” (I word I hate anyway) is “too commercial”. Nonsense. Christmas isn’t commercial enough.

Let’s get the theology out of the way first. This “Jesus” chap is rather sketchy. We know he existed as some kind of itinerant rabbi, possibly preaching a rather doomsday-based cult to some disaffected Judeans. But the rest of the family history is improbable: very trusting father (“Yes, dear, of course I believe you’re pregnant with the offspring of the Lord”) and a literally immaculate mother, the trek to Bethlehem for a census of which there is no historical record, the arrival of some wise, gift-bearing men from the East (“Well, what are you doing creeping around a cow shed at two o’clock in the morning? That doesn't sound very wise to me.”). Don’t get me wrong, I’m prepared to be generous. Big marketing campaigns require some kind of totem or symbol, like Ronald McDonald or Colonel Sanders (a genuine colonel, by the way, if only an honorary “Kentucky Colonel”). I get that. So we can tolerate the Jesus figure for the time being. Hell, go the whole hog and make him Colonel Christ.

It is the oldest of vieux chapeau to say that many Christmas customs pre-date Christianity or are purloined from pagan ritual and behaviour. It is true nonetheless. We should not judge too harshly in this matter. Most religious festivals are ones of development and synthesis rather than springing fully-formed from the ether. Think of the way that early Christians, particularly in the Roman army, borrowed heavily for imagery and worship from the cult of Mithras, a mystery religion of Persian origin, or of the linkages between Christ and the ancient sun-gods. What are the chief features of Christmas in the 21^st century? I freely admit that there are some – a minority, I think – for whom it is the celebration of the birth of the Saviour of Mankind, and, in an extension of that sense of joyful enthusiasm, a warm family occasion when people try to recognise how lucky they are. I have friends like that. Indeed, as the old saw goes, some of my best friends are Christians. For them, Christmas is a hugely significant part of the liturgical calendar, and wrapped in theological importance. Good luck to them. For most people, though, Christmas is about presents and Having A Good Time. I will consider the second part first.

We all like a good party, don’t we? (Well, actually, no; some of my nearest and dearest are deeply anti-social creatures and would rather be smeared in honey and tipped into a nest of fire ants than go to a Christmas party.) But, as that inveterate libertine Aristotle said, man is by nature a social animal, and the festive season allows for that in spades. It is not always a success. In a previous incarnation I attended my first work Christmas party in the deathless atmosphere of “Conference Room E” (there was no A, B, C or D), which consisted of: senior colleagues trying, with various degrees of sincerity, to appear jolly and welcoming; blood-temperature wine; a half-hearted stereo playing the usual Christmas fare in one corner; and some lacklustre dancing. I gave it my best, because, at a fiver a ticket for someone of my junior station, I knew I’d be making a profit on the wine, but I think everyone was fairly pleased when it came to an end and those who had had enough could go home while the rest of us sought an alternative venue to continue (or even start) the jollity, which in my case turned out to be an office upstairs where there was a stash of more wine and colleagues willing to share it with me.

Grim though it was (I have been to better work Christmas parties since), it was at least self-contained. It mattered not a jot that one colleague had to find an open office and be sick into the occupant’s wastepaper basket – there’s recycling for you. And it was, as I have said, cheap, especially for neophytes like myself. Not every workplace has the ability to keep things within the ramparts, and some choose not to. Now is the time when pubs, bars and restaurants begin to fill with ominously large groups of obvious workmates, pretending they know each other better than they do and determined to have a good night. There are few worse experiences – OK, I accept cancer’s probably a bit of a pisser, but bear with me – than being on the outside of such groups in a social setting. As if to represent a particular form of slow torture, the groups often build gradually, celebrants first arriving in ones or twos of threes, before you realise the full horror of what is happening. But you can usually spot the signs. A minority of the women will have changed into a “party frock”, and may be carrying a pair of more sensible and less glamorous shoes with them. The men will have loosened their ties an inch, to show they’re relaxing and are definitely no longer at work (the rebels). Someone, and there’s always at least one, will have donned some kind of humorous costume. (I had a (female) colleague who every year would dress an an elf for the works drinks party.)

Now, it is not my intention to deprecate excess and indulgence at any time of the year, let alone at Yuletide. I – ahem – like a drink or two, and there are occasions when getting hammered in the company of congenial workmates is simply the thing. I enjoyed one Christmas party which began with wearing 18^th century court dress, progressed with the addition of plastic reindeer antlers to the outfit and concluded with breaking a toe. Happy days. But the world of hospitality is simply not thinking of the collateral damage, the bystanders, the civilians. This is why I say that Christmas is simply not commercial enough.

Imagine the scene. It is in the teens of December, probably on a Friday, and you and a group of friends (assuming you have any – it may just be you) decide you’d quite like to go for a drink and have a good natter about life, the universe and everything. The moment that decision is made, you are already in considerable danger. Assuming you can find an agreeable hostelry with a free table or perching ledge, further challenges lie ahead. The bar will be populated by people placing incredibly elaborate mass orders, which, as time goes on, they will be increasingly unable to remember (“Was is two Smirnoff Ices and a Disaronno and Coke?”). The noise levels will be loud, and they will get louder as chatter competes with the fourth playing of Sir Paul McCartney’s timeless/deathless classic “Wonderful Christmastime”. By the latter stages of the evening, I guarantee – guarantee – that there will be a woman in the corner crying. (I mean that in no misogynist spirit: the male equivalent will be a man getting slightly choked up, gently punching a male colleague in the chest and saying “You’re all right, man. You’re all right”.) Worst of all, however, is the peril of being dragged into the festivities. It doesn’t take much. A reveller of either gender, on the outside of more booze than they can comfortably handle, will bump into you at the bar, apologise and laugh hysterically; or yell “Merry Christmas!” at you at a volume you neither expected nor desired; or, as you navigate your way to the bathroom across what has spontaneously become a dance floor, you will be press-ganged into a conga line on the grounds that It’s All A Bit Of A Laugh, Isn’t It?

There’s the clear and present danger for everyday boozers. So why don’t publicans recognise and, more importantly, monetise that fact? It wouldn’t take much. More radical landlords could declare their premises Christmas party-free (like the excellent Dove in Hammersmith refuses to admit children; it is an oasis). That doesn’t mean there aren’t lesser steps. A three-drinks-or-fewer queue at the bar would be a start. Or a designated no-Yuletide area, like a no-smoking area (before they banned it altogether, about which I am deeply conflicted, and which was in some tiny, tiny part my fault). You could even charge a premium for these services, like Amazon Prime. I know I’d pay.

(A sidebar: one of my favourite pubs in London, The Speaker in Westminster, has signs above the bar declaring: “Place your order at the bar or talk on your mobile: IT’S YOUR CHOICE”. Clearly someone had annoyed the bar staff.)

Then there is gift-giving. This is the big one at Christmas. It is also the most nakedly commercial aspect of the festival. Here, again, though, I think retailers are missing a trick. Imagine how much money Marks and Spencer must spend manning their returns desk during January. Unwanted comedy boxer shorts, sweaters that are (insultingly) too large or (flatteringly) too small. An outlay for no return, which makes no financial sense. Yet the solution is obvious.

One of the greatest inventions of civilisation in at least the last few centuries is the wedding list. It works both ways. The happy couple doesn’t end up with 48 fish forks and a single napkin. And they have the delicious experience of picking the things they want. I recommend it. I went to John Lewis, God bless ’em, and was armed with a list of potential items and a scanner to put them into the system. The future-former-Mrs Sybarite was so caught up in the excitement that she started hyperventilating and had to sit down. We picked a houseful of desirable items and, by and large, received them, though the size of the flat we moved into after the wedding was not entirely proportionate to the amount of stuff the John Lewis van delivered a few weeks later. Even better, the gift-givers could leave little messages next to their purchases on the list. One friend, a very methodical German economist who bought us a fish steamer, left the simple and slightly plaintive inscription “I have no idea what this is”.

So, as they used to say in The Six Million Dollar Man, we have the technology. Why not extend it to Christmas? You go into a shop, identify things you would like people to buy for you, and they can do that, maybe even online. It might be possible to avoid human interaction altogether. Of course, this already exists in a prototype form, in the shape of Amazon’s wish-lists. But it is clearly ripe for exploitation by an enterprising retailer or group of retailers – after all, even I wouldn’t want all my presents from one source. You need at least a bookshop and an off-licence. Think of it. Obviously you would over-order so you wouldn’t know exactly what you were getting for Christmas, thereby preserving the element of surprise. But NO dud presents. Nothing you didn’t want (except from annoying people who decided to go off-piste because they knew what you really wanted). No horrible Christmas sweaters from distant relatives with no imagination. No socks (unless you wanted them; myself, I’m quite happy to receive socks as a present so long as their ones I like. Sartoria Gammarelli, if you’re feeling generous). No left-field gifts you have to pretend to like (my stepfather once received a Gillette shaving set from his elderly mother; he has a beard). Wouldn’t that be wonderful? Everyone wins. The givers have an easier time of it. The recipients get swag they actually desire. The retailers can charge a modest fee for the service. It’s downside-free.

The fundamental problem, as I see it, is that we beat ourselves up for the commercialisation of Christmas. Even the most fervent atheist is capable of worrying that the festival has become “meaningless”. If your conscience pricks you, fine. Volunteer at a homeless shelter or something, thereby both doing some absolute good in a world which needs it and making you feel better about yourself. Call in on an elderly neighbour on Christmas Day bearing a box of mince pies/a bottle of sherry/a few grammes of cocaine (delete as appropriate). These are virtuous things; if you are a believer, you may think you will be rewarded in the next life, and, if you are not, it doesn’t matter because you just made the world a fractionally better place. But too many people, for whatever reason, dodge the uncomfortable truth that for most of us Christmas is a secular festival. Face up to that. More than that, embrace it. Make life easier on yourselves.

A love Supreme

Dear readers,

I have been away far, far too long (not that anyone will have noticed, I’m sure – my address to “readers” is a self-delusion I allow myself). Rest assured that in the meantime I have been forming strong likes and dislikes of things which have cropped up in my everyday life: Poetic Licence gin (like), Strictly Come Dancing (dislike), home-made raspberry vodka (like), Tom Ford (dislike). So I have been keeping busy. But the time has come to vent again, in hopefully as accessible a way as possible.

Today I want to turn to a slightly more serious topic than usual (though I am fully aware that whether the “No brown in town” rule is still valid is a very weighty matter). Anyone who pays even scant attention to the news will have at least become aware of the proceedings this week in the Supreme Court. The excellent Rupert Myers, a lawyer as well as a journalist, has been tweeting wittily from the west side of Parliament Square (@RupertMyers), and the story has led the news bulletins. This is a good thing, because the Government’s case before the Justices and the arguments against it are important and deserve public attention.

However, there has, I think, been rather more heat than light. This was summed up for me by the wackily-dressed protestors (on both sides) outside the Supreme Court, including the loathesome Cornelius “Neil” Horan, who was nearly killed at the 2003 British Grand Prix. Mr Horan, incidentally, believes that Nigel Farage was sent by Jesus to withdraw the UK from the European Union and thereby fulfill a biblical prophecy. My reading of the Bible is far from expert, I freely admit, but I don’t recall any references to the EU in my boyhood Scripture classes. Of course, it may simply be that Mr Horan is a loon. But I digress.

I’d be willing to bet that the man (or woman) in the street, that much-quoted authority, will be aware of the proceedings in the Supreme Court but his or her interest will end about there. Several innocent bystanders have been assailed by television journalists only to reveal that they think the case is about whether the UK can, should or will leave the European Union. It isn’t.

As more observant readers will be perfectly aware, the issue at stake is whether the UK Government has the power to invoke Article 50 of the Treaty of Lisbon to begin the two-year process of the United Kingdom giving up its membership of the EU by using existing powers under the Royal Prerogative, or whether it requires an Act of Parliament to do so. Now, that’s not a simple concept or one which can be made immediately sexy. But it is important. In constitutional terms, it’s about as important as it gets, which is why the Attorney-General himself and the Treasury Devil, the Government’s senior lawyer, have been deployed to make HMG’s case, and why the opponents of the Royal Prerogative argument (who won in the High Court) have engaged the services of one of the Bar’s brightest and most brilliant silks, Lord Pannick QC, to put the arguments against.

(I haven’t been following every minute of the case, so I didn’t see the Attorney-General’s opening statement, but it did make me wonder if we should all – but the Government especially – have cause to regret the recent trend for appointing rather undistinguished lawyers as Attorneys-General. Of course here I make an exception for Dominic Grieve QC, the previous AG, who was brilliant. I have no animus against Jeremy Wright, and am sure he’s a serviceable workaday barrister, but there was no suggestion in his pre-House of Commons career that he was destined for the top, and I think I’m right in saying he only took silk when he became AG. The hard work in court will no doubt be done by James Eadie QC, the Treasury Devil, but you wonder if the appointment of a more successful and experienced lawyer to the post of chief law officer, someone like Lord Goldsmith or the late Peter Rawlinson, might have served the Government better. But, again, I digress. It’s my thing.)

So suddenly the Supreme Court is in the public eye, and so, to their varying levels of discomfort, are the Justices. Ten men and one woman (the court, like its US counterpart, currently has a vacancy), nine of them Oxbridge-educated and all of them white, are going to decide a momentous point of constitutional law and politics. The legal question before the Court may be a narrow and technical one, but its implications are huge. Lady Hale, the Deputy President of the Supreme Court, remarked to a Malaysian audience, rather unwisely, in my view, that she wasn’t sure that even primary legislation was sufficient authority for the UK to withdraw from the EU. I paraphrase her, probably unfairly, but that is how her remarks were reported. I think she would have done well to refrain from comment, and she was, in the most discreet, diplomatic and judicial way, reprimanded by her boss, Lord Neuberger.

The Daily Mail, of course, piled in with predictable views and predictable (lack of) subtlety, dubbing Their Lordships “enemies of Britain” and painting them as out-of-touch members of a liberal metropolitan elite who would stop at nothing to thwart the clearly-expressed will of (51.8 % of) the British people. (Actually, it’s less than that, since it’s 51.8 % of those who voted on a turnout of 72.2%.) On a simplistic level – and, let’s face it, the Daily Mail doesn’t have any other levels: it is a bungalow on the housing development of British journalism – it is very easy to make the Supreme Court Justices look like caricatures. Ten out of eleven are male, all are white, nine, as I said above, went to Oxbridge, and the other two studied at Durham and Queen’s University Belfast, hardly ex-polytechnics offering courses in dramaturgy and golf course management. The Justices are not “representative” of the people, though they are probably quite representative of the senior judiciary (although Lord Sumption was promoted to the Supreme Court directly from the Bar and has never been a full-time judge until now; he has written an excellent history of the Hundred Years’ War, though).

A recent article in the Spectator by Professor Richard Ekins of St John’s College, Oxford, analysed the Justices and gave brief pen-portraits of them, concentrating especially on their attitudes towards judicial activism and the interplay between Parliament and the courts. This is the first time that all the Justices have heard a single case, a decision taken so that there can be no accusations of a biased panel. It’s inevitable, then, that their past decisions and, to some extent, backgrounds, will come under intense public scrutiny. We’re entitled to look at what American policemen would call their rap sheets (NYPD Blue was a documentary, right?).

This is all fair enough. Greater public interest in and engagement with the judicial system is A Good Thing, on balance, and some of the Justices and their defenders have been a little too delicate when the spotlight of attention has swung over them. But this is not the United States. Our Supreme Court is not, thank goodness, deeply politicized in the way that SCOTUS is, nor is the nomination of Justices the bitter and partisan business which it is in America. (The nomination to fill the current vacancy in Washington is going to be fascinating: The Donald has tacked to the right on a lot of moral, ethical and religious issues to win the presidency but his track record is rather more liberal. That said, a Republican-controlled Congress is going to want some red meat, and a strongly conservative new Justice will be towards the top of their list of demands.)

Of course, what we are witnessing is uncharted territory for all concerned. The Supreme Court only started its work in 2009, when the Constitutional Reform Act 2005 transferred the judicial functions of the House of Lords to the new body, and never has it been under so much intense scrutiny. Who, six months ago, could have named more than one or two of the Justices? Even the splendid Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, the Armani jeans-wearing, boat-driving first President of the Court, was hardly a household name even though he’d been a senior judge since the mid-1990s. Lady Hale of Richmond is notable for the fact that she’s the only woman on the Court, and wears a funny little bonnet when the Justices get together in their gowns. But really, who had ever heard of Lord Mance? Or Lord Carnwath? Or Lord Hodge? Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury, the current President, is largely notable outside the legal profession as the brother-in-law of Rabbi Julia Neuberger.

So what are we to make of all this? It’s an interesting spectacle, and I think it’ll be a while until television is screening live feeds from the Supreme Court again. If it makes even a few people think a bit more about the separation of powers, that’s got to be good. (Though it’s frightening how ingrained ignorance on such matters is; in a previous life I was scolded by a Member of Parliament for not doing what he wanted on the grounds that I, as a clerk to a select committee, worked “for the Government”. Well, not quite, sir. Let me explain things to you. Suffice to say that the MP in question is no longer in the House.) But there are Big Things at stake here. As I said earlier, the actual point of law on which the Supreme Court is deliberating is a narrow and technical one. But its implications are huge. What should the public make of referendums if they are dismissed – all right, that’s a loaded word – by senior judges as “advisory” and having no force in law? The judiciary can now consider what Parliament meant when it passed laws (so-called “legislative intent”), but should they also, in this case, be considering what “the public” meant when they voted narrowly to leave the European Union? What, for that matter, did the public mean? How can anyone tell? It reminds me of the possibly apocryphal story of Prince Metternich, on being told of Talleyrand’s death in 1838: “I wonder what he meant by that?”

Doubtless the two camps will have their own fiercely held certainties. The Government will say, and has said, that the people have spoken and we must abide by their wishes. After all, our beloved leader tells us tirelessly that “Brexit means Brexit”, a phrase I feel I am going to come to hate as much as Lord Reid’s description of the Home Office as “not fit for purpose”. Remainers will argue that Parliament is sovereign and must have a voice, that the Government cannot change the law by use of the Royal Prerogative. Both have a point. We shall see in January which way the Supreme Court has jumped. At least, in the phrase of all good competitions, the judges’ decision is final.

One of the interesting questions, for those of a certain bent, is whether this is a blip or a trend. Is this a one-off, after which the Supreme Court can sink back into its stately and oft-ignored routine work? (It rules in anywhere from 50-odd to 80-odd cases a year; the last judgement, in November, was on R (on the application of Rutherford and another) v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. I doubt it flew off the shelves, though two of the seven Justices hearing the case dissented, so perhaps there were some fireworks to be seen through a glass, darkly.)

Or, if one can start a sentence with the word “or”, is this a trend? Is the Supreme Court, settling into its still-new role, going to become a force to be reckoned with, a watchdog of the constitution (“You mean it is Mr Balfour’s poodle!” – DLG) and a hotbed of judicial activism? Some instinctive reactionaries like me shuddered at the constitutional reforms of the Blair/Brown Government – it was like watching Edward Scissorhands perform a vasectomy – but we do now, for better or worse, have the holy trinity of the separation of powers between executive, legislature and judiciary, even if the executive is part of the legislature and dependent on it for its existence. There are much cleverer people than me who will dwell on these matters at great length and with great erudition. All I will say is: watch this space.

I cannot leave the matter without some remarks on judicial apparel. I am, it will surprise no-one to know, deeply traditionalist in such matters. I can see the argument for discarding formal court attire in cases involving children, who might be intimidated by wigs and gowns (as a child, I myself would have been as happy as a pig in the proverbial). But I feel strongly that “work clothes”, whether worn by judges, barristers, politicians or clerks in Parliament, are important. They are part of the persona. You are not Alf Bloggs, you are Mr Justice Bloggs and you are performing an important public role. When you put on the clothes, you put on the role. Of course, I am fighting a rearguard action here – I know that the tide of public opinion is against me. If the clerks at the Table in the House of Commons still wear wigs in ten years’ time, I will be (pleasantly) surprised.

As the Supreme Court was set up in the modish New Labour years, it was inevitable they would dispense with much of the ceremonial. The Justices wear lounge suits to hear cases, though I think in some cases the barristers still wear wigs and gowns. The one concession has been the black-and-gold gowns which the Justices don for special occasions. These are fine so far as they go – and, as observed above, Lady Hale of Richmond likes to accessorise hers with a Tudor bonnet – though they bear on the back the badge of the Supreme Court, which I think looks a bit tacky and smacks of footballers’ names and numbers on the back of their shirts. But they also look a bit odd worn over lounge suits or equivalent. At least successive Lord Chancellors since the role was recast by Blair have retained formal court dress for high and holy days. Mind you, the current occupant, Miss Truss, does look a bit like the principal boy in a pantomime when she wears knee breeches. But fair play to her for continuing to wear the traditional robes, even if the full-bottomed wig seems now to have gone the way of the dodo.

It could be worse. The Supreme Court Justices could wear ghastly zip-up gowns like their American counterparts – you just know they’re made of nylon – over their suits, though I have some time for Justice Ginsberg for adding a lace jabot to tidy up her garb a little. But ceremonial is something that Britain does so well. The Supreme Court could have looked so much better with Justices in gowns and traditional judicial clothing. A wig here and there wouldn’t go amiss.

Here endeth the lesson.