The footage of the children in Aleppo will forever be etched in my mind. Aleppo is an end to the year which wraps up what 2016 has been in international politics: cruel, tense, inhumane.
I suppose if 2016 taught us something it is that consumerism is passé. We cannot really enjoy shopping for the sake of shopping when all around us everything is shaky. I am writing this in the airport of Brussels, not far from the spot where in March three coordinated suicide bombings set off. Then we had Bastille Day attack in Nice; plane crashes; Panama papers; the post-truth fever; Zika; the deaths of Umberto Eco, David Bowie, AA Gill and George Michael; Brexit; Donald Trump and the German Christmas market attack. Every day, for 12 months, we have been waking up to bad news.
No wonder then, that when it came to gift-giving most people – young and old – have gone back to basics this Christmas: books, chocolates and simply spending time together. Increasingly it feels like it’s time to stay put in the nest rather than partying wild. We are starting to grow weary of living in a throwaway world, and deep down, because of the looming gloom, we are coveting the return of the make-do-and-mend culture of the war era.
For this reason, over the last few months, I have become an advocate of upcycling – I have decided that I much prefer to fill the home with items that come with the patina of age and style, than the lot of mass-made furniture ‘stil modern, mill-Italja’ that you find in almost all furniture shops in Malta.
I have come round to using objects which I would have normally discarded. Things that I had relegated to being dark, unfunctionable, characterless and which would normally have been chucked in the skips at the civic amenity site, I am now mending, sanding, and painting. We have restored to bright new life a set of drab bunk beds, a rickety bench, an unloved mirror and the dowdy hallway stand. What were once old, ugly pieces are back into actions – and the bonus is that old furniture is well made and incredibly durable. Home is now a cacophony of mismatched pieces which look so lively with a coat of Dawn White or Province Blue chalk paint.
When things are topsy turvy, we long for a simpler and more idyllic time
In fact upcycling, which is the term for beautifying ugly duckling objects, is great to encourage us to make our homes more individual. I’m scared that as the high streets around the world are becoming exactly the same, we’d be having the interior of our houses photocopies of each other.
Of course upcycling is hardly a new invention. Reusing found objects has long been a big part of folk art, and historically, Maltese people never really threw things away but reused or turned them into something else, be it old sheets into rag quilts or holey buckets used as planters.
I am not of course saying that in 2017 we should go down the route of making plates out of dishwashing liquid plastic bottles, or lamp shades out of Dixan boxes. I once interviewed a dear old lady who every Christmas turns every nook in her house into a veritable Christmas cove, with all sorts of decorations made out of toilet loo rolls, shampoo bottles and stuff like that. That maybe a bit too much. And as a matter of fact upcycling is not about creating crafts out of junk, buy the process of converting materials into new things that are of better quality.
a sense it is a style evocative of a world long gone, conjuring up images of Sunday lunches where all the families gather, of the village feeling, of inviting each other to our homes and dance. When things are topsy turvy, we long for a simpler and more idyllic time. And that is what we are hoping for 2017.
The year 2016 will go down in history as one we’ll want to forget but I am fervently hoping that we can upcycle it.
Happy New Year.
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Post Scriptum: Might I make a suggestion for a national New Year’s resolution? What is this obsession of ours with blue cheese? Why is it that every Christmas party I go to, there has to be the distinct smell of a Gorgonzola dip? Why is it that if there’s appetizers, there has to be a dollop of the blue-grey mould on crackers? December parties to my mind smell of blue cheese, and it doesn’t help that when partygoers indulge in, then there is the overpowering smell of blue cheese breath. In 2017 can we just start using a cheese with a more elegant smell, say Parmigiano Reggiano, please?
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Twitter: @KrisChetcuti