Here’s O’Hara reading it:

This is the full text of the poem, at the Poetry Foundation archive.

And here’s the abbreviated version my husband & I joked about improvising, in the event that I lost my specially marked-up reading-aloud version (the one with S – L – O – W ! scrawled at the top of the page):

Having a Coke with You

(with apologies to Frank O’Hara)

is more fun than going on a bender with a Eurail Pass.

Art is all right.

But not as all right as you.

Congratulations, Sarah and Steve. I love you – and your taste in poetry.

To celebrate my North American debut, I’m giving away 3 fabulous prize packages. These will include a shiny new hardcover copy of The Agency: A Spy in the House and an Agency t-shirt. These will be randomly drawn.

There will be a fourth mystery prize, not randomly drawn, and this will go to the entry that makes me laugh really, really, hard. Ideally, it will make me spurt coffee out my nose. Yes, I’m that classy, and also willing to suffer for a joke.
Mystery prize rule 1: I reserve the right not to give this out at all.
Mystery prize rule 2: A randomly drawn winner may also win this extra prize.

So, what do you have to do? Simply leave a comment below that completes this sentence: “If I were a spy…” You can enter more than once by spreading the word on Twitter, Facebook or at your blog (1 extra entry for each means of dissemination). Tell me what you did in your comment. This contest closes on March 31.

Good luck, everyone!

This is how I fritter away time on the internet at the moment:
India Knight’s Posterous: lovely, lovely things, curated for you by the Sunday Times journalist.
Mustaches of the Nineteenth Century: um, self-explanatory. But curiously addictive.
The Catastrophizer: my friend Sarah Sweet, on a soapbox.
Making it Lovely: again, self-explanatory. It helps if you like pink, brown, and hand-crafted things.
The Beat that My Heart Skipped: terrific name, and new to me. We shall see how we get on.

You’ll notice a preponderance of design stuff, and nothing at all book-related. I’ll compile a list of great writing and publishing blogs another day. In the meantime, I hope I’ve persuaded you to part happily with another precious quarter-hour you’ll never get back. Hah!

If you’re like me, the first things you picture are Christmas trees, a red-suited Santa Claus (or in England, Father Christmas) and the now-endangered paper Christmas card. Did you know that all three are, in many ways, Victorian inventions or mashups of older traditions? If we were transported back to England, 1840, we’d be celebrating without any of these icons!

Take, for example, Christmas trees – the visual centrepiece of English-speaking living rooms. But the Christmas tree is actually a German tradition made popular in 1840s England by the royal family, who were of German origin. (Queen Victoria’s first language was German and her husband, Prince Albert, moved to England on his marriage at age 20). Victoria and Albert loved celebrating Christmas, and it was their enthusiasm that made the tree (Tannenbaum) popular in England. Oh, and those first Christmas trees were small, potted affairs placed on a table with the gifts beneath – like so (image from the BBC’s Ten Ages of Christmas):

Victoria & Albert's Christmas tree

Santa Claus and Father Christmas are part of a tangled tradition, too. St Nicholas was a 4th-century Christian bishop much admired for his generosity – far from an elf! We get “Santa Claus” from the Dutch name for St Nicholas. Santa’s red suit is a recent revision, too: until the 1880s, he generally wore a long, green cloak. The most popular images of Santa Claus in a red suit were done for a Coca Cola ad campaign in the 1930s, and they’re what we think of now, automatically. Even so… any bets on how long that red suit will endure?

What else would Santa drink?

And oh, the Christmas card: all that paper is harder to justify each year, but e-cards are so soulless. Yet paper Christmas cards are themselves an invention of convenience – a commercial product without much tradition behind it apart from not wanting to write a long letter. Sir Henry Cole commissioned this next image in 1843 and used it to print the first commercial Christmas card. Note the lack of Christian imagery, here – it’s a family drinking wine together – and even the kids are imbibing:

Henry Cole's first commercial Christmas card

Although we tend to think of Christmas as something solid, something that all Christian-influenced cultures have always celebrated, our modern Christmas is pretty new indeed. I find the flexibility and brash (relative) newness of these traditions exciting. For me, it means that Christmas is for adapting, for inventing, for personalizing for my family. How about you? And if you celebrate another holiday – Chanukah, Kwanzaa, Eid, Diwali – how have your traditions evolved?

Either way, I hope your holidays are splendid.

A prefatory note: this is a North American recipe in which ingredients are measured pseudo-scientifically in cups. By volume, a cup is 250ml/8oz. A cup of flour weighs about 140g/5oz; a cup of sugar about 225g/8oz. Thanks, Fannie Farmer.

Vegan Carrot Muffins (makes 18)

1 1/2 cups whole-wheat pastry flour
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 teaspoons cinnamon
half a nutmeg, grated
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup loosely packed brown sugar
3 tablespoons flax seeds, ground and mixed with a generous ½ cup water; let stand until it thickens to texture of beaten eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup vegetable oil
4-5 cups add-ins: finely grated carrots, pineapple, apples, coconut, raisins, nuts or whatever else you fancy

Preheat oven to 350F. Whisk together flour, baking soda, baking powder, spices and salt. In a large bowl, whisk together sugar and flax seed mixture until creamy. Add vanilla and vegetable oil. Mix together wet and dry ingredients. Add carrots, etc.

Smooth batter into pans. Bake for 12-14 minutes for mini-muffins, 18-20 minutes for regular-size muffins, and about an hour for a large loaf pan.

Next week, we’ll get bookish again and take a look at German cover art.