Today I finished reading Dean Koontz’s Odd Thomas. I couldn’t bring myself to write a post about the recent Sandy Hook massacre. It was just too awful for words.  Sadly, we all know that nothing much will be done to restrict gun ownership and that, as with the Aurora Cinema massacre this summer, the shock will soon fade from the news (though, of course, for the families of the victims it will never fade). Two of the more perverse follow-ups to the latest tragedy were a sudden surge in sales of child body armour and a proposal that schools should be protected by ‘safe’ rifle-toting ‘buddies’. Written in 2003, Odd Thomas is very much a work of its time. The (obviously) aptly-named Odd is an otherwise unremarkable young man whose sixth sense and visionary powers tell him something awful is going to happen in his small, unremarkable Californian town of Pico Mundo. Those inadvertently facing impending death and disaster are haunted by willowy spirits, called bodachs, whom only Odd can see, and the bodachs are gathering en masse in Pico Mundo. Koontz is good on the atmospherics and on the building tension, and he weaves in some humour and comic characters to leaven his tale. But he is perhaps best on Odd’s own disrupted and disfunctional childhood. Since I have mentioned Sandy Hook, it’s pretty obvious what sort of horrors await Pico Mundo, but I am not giving away any secrets. The tension arises not from the impending horror but whether Odd can stop it and the consequences of this for him. Koontz doesn’t spell out a message but there is nevertheless a strong one in this book: there are monsters in all societies. (So let’s not, I would add, make it easy for them by allowing the easy purchase of assault rifles.) All through this book I kept thinking ‘handled well, this would make an excellent film’. Guess what? The film is coming out in 2013…

We are now into the closing days of the last working week of the year. Today my team – the members of the SG’s secretariat – had its annual Christmas lunch. The head of my secretariat, Miguel Colera, is Spanish. It was not by chance, then, that we ended up eating in an upstairs room at a restaurant called Casa Miguel. The food was delicious, the company great. It has been a heavy old year and the team’s members have really excelled themselves in every respect. It was a well-deserved moment of relaxation for them all. After the meal there was a game in which we had to take it in turns to sing a number from a well-known film whilst imitating the singer in question. In my picture (thank you, Laura), Miguel is singing My Favourite Things from The Sound of Music whilst imitating Julie Andrews. Actually, I made all of that last bit up.

To the opening this afternoon of the twenty-fourth meeting of the EESC’s Liaison Group with European civil society organisations and networks. After the opening by the joint chairs, EESC President Staffan Nilsson and Jean-Marc Roirant, the meeting heard a presentation of a study especially commissioned by the EESC on ‘the impact of the crisis on civil society organisations in the EU – risks and opportunities.’ The study, undertaken by a team of researchers at the Institute of European Studies at the Free University of Brussels and presented today by Professor Jamal Shahin, discovered that the crisis has had a very uneven effect on civil society organisations. It is not just a case of the bigger organisations and the single issue organisations doing better. Some organisations have been much more adept in adapting to circumstances and developing survival strategies. Moreover, in many sectors the crisis has reinforced the role and the identity of civil society organisations, even if, paradoxically, they struggle with funding.

A pre-Christmas outing to the cinema this afternoon to see Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit, An Unexpected Journey. I went with an assortment of young things and an adult. I should immediately note that the assortment of young things were unanimous in their approval and enjoyment. However, said adult and I were unanimous in our disappointment and tempered enjoyment. I suspect the reason for this is in some considerable part because we two adults had actually read Tolkien’s original (I don’t think any of the young things had). Turning a blind eye to the relative brevity of the original tale, most of the reviews I have read have been positive, if not glowing, and strangely accommodating of what must be one of the slowest starts in a modern film. It is fully three-quarters of an hour before Bilbo Baggins’s journey actually gets under way and by the end of the film we have only reached the sixth of Tolkien’s nineteen original chapters. Moreover, the film critics seem strangely ready to accept the fact that if you are going to make an epic trilogy out of a short book then inevitably the story is going to be a bit baggy. To be fair, I thought Jackson did justice to Tolkien in his portrayal of the famous riddle game between Bilbo and Gollum, and I said this to the assorted young things. ‘That was the most boring bit in the film,’ they said ‘and it went on for far too long.’ Quite.

Amidst the flurry and the flutter of the plenary session I got one piece of excellent news that I can’t help but brag about (briefly). I passed my brevet and can therefore now navigate on inland and coastal waters on both motorized vessels and on yachts. All that hard graft of late-night studying was worth it! The process has not been disimilar to getting a drivers’ licence. There were practical and theoretical exams, and the theoretical part involved the memorisation of a lot of obscure detail that, actually, won’t be very useful on a day-to-day basis (I doubt whether we’ll meet many ocean-going vessels or fishing trawlers on the Lago di Como, for example), but that it’s important to know about nevertheless. As with learning to sail, the most enjoyable aspect of the process is to become aware of a whole area of human endeavour of ancient origin where man has learned to elaborate and impose rules on himself and on his environment. I shall never look at a buoy the same way again!

In the evening a small party was held to celebrate the civil society prize with representatives of the three winning organisations as our honoured guests (in the picture, the winners, together with the President, the Swedish and Portugese permanent representatives and the EESC members who sponsored the winning entries). Such events are real ‘feel good’ events. Our guests were clearly elated to see all of their good and hard work honoured, and our members were delighted to be honouring some of the many civil society organisations that the Committee’s membership in effect represents.

In this afternoon’s plenary session the EESC’s President, Staffan Nilsson, gave out the 2012 EESC civil society prizes to representatives of the three winning organisations: Transition Network (UK), CAIS (Portugal) and Livestycket (Sweden). This year the prize theme was  ‘innovate for a sustainable Europe’. The winner of the first prize, Transition Network, was awarded for its REconomy project, designed to help local communities to create green businesses and to embed green practises in existing ones. CAIS helps homeless and disadvantaged people to take back their lost dignity through job-creation and back-to-work schemes and was rewarded for eighteen years of good work. Livstycket was rewarded for a project designed to help immigrant women learn Swedish and hence facilitate their integration into Swedish society.  “I am impressed,’ said Staffan Nilsson, by the creativity and the unique character of the three winning projects. They have social innovation at the heart of their activities and show that sustainability is not only about environmental issues.”

The EESC’s last plenary session of the year got under way this afternoon with a spirited pro-European integration speech from the Swedish Minister for European Affairs, Birgitta Ohlsson. The Minister brought along a slide show, graphically making her points about inter alia the need to guard against racism and xenophobia and fight for gender equality as integral parts of a Europe of values.

To a lunchtime reception offered by the President of the EESC’s Labour Market Observatory, Krzysztof Pater (Various Interests Group, Poland), who had laid on a delicious Polish spread for his guests. The Labour Market Observatory was set up in 2007 to identify and analyse labour market trends and challenges. Labour markets in all EU member states have undergone profound transformations in structures, mechanisms and industrial relations. The Labour Market Observatory observes labour market challenges and trends, collects examples of best practices, stimulates reflection by organising hearings with institutional, socio-professional stakeholders, civil society organisations and academia, and produces investigative reports and studies on selected topics.

Once a year the Christmas Choristers (a voluntary choir with members drawn from all of the EU’s institutions) comes and sings for us, and for a very worthwhile charity (the Giraffe Project), at lunchtime. The carols are, like the choir members, drawn from different EU member states and mulled wine is served to the listeners. I make a point of being there to welcome the choir but, actually, I really like these mini-concerts. The choir sings very well and very prettily and the carols always put me in a good mood by reminding me of the festive season. Yoiks! Christmas is just thirteen days away! Where did the year go?