What with digging myself out of the snow to get to work, worrying about the quickly depleting supplies of fuel to keep the various antiquated heating systems fired up, slithering back over the icy roads at lunch time to let The Hounds out, I hadn’t had much time to think about Christmas.
Not that Christmas could be completely forgotten – that would be impossible with all those relentlessly insistent jingle-bells and sparkly intrusions on our consciousness.
I had, however, been resolutely avoiding the shops: there are all those things there that might have been bought if it had been other than it is. The Christmas cards were neatly stacked behind an empty vase to be dealt with later - perhaps next year. Several invitations for ‘the day’ had been fended off with ‘I’ll- let-you-know-nearer-the-time.’
Christmas could be survived if it was firmly ignored.
But on one of the ‘snow days’ when I couldn’t get to work, I was struck with the grim reality of what Christmas might be like from now on.
It was the woman on the radio who was responsible.
I don’t know where they get them from, these women who they wheel out every year at Christmas time, but you know the type; the ones who make their own decorations, who bake the sodding/brandy-sodden cake in March, who probably even knit the stockings in which to lovingly place the little darlings’ teensy (expensive) gifts.
While I was staggering in with the last of the un-Yule logs, there she was, on the radio, Christmas Super Woman enthusing about her fabulous festivities.
Everyone, she crowed, was involved. The youngsters peeled the potatoes and set the perfectly themed table. Even the first of her three husbands had been known to help with the Brussels sprouts.
I exaggerate – a little - but you get the picture.
She really got my attention, however, when she mentioned the fact that every year they always had a ‘spare’ to join the Yule bash.
She sighed a slightly martyred sigh as she said it, clearly thinking herself very noble and generous for inviting such sorry creatures as society’s ‘spares’ (the recently divorced, the terminally unmarriageable and, I assume, the recently widowed) to participate in her family Christmas.
So there was the miserable truth - from the mouth of Christmas Super Woman - I have become a ‘spare.’ I am now one of those who are invited for Christmas because they are unattached, floating disconsolately in the world of happy couples and families. I have, it seems, the potential to be someone’s good deed in the season of ‘good will.’
“Bah! Humbug!” to that I say.
Having survived this Christmas – just – with two other ‘spares,’ next year I intend to simply disappear somewhere, even if it means that my newly sprung snow-shovelling muscles are required to clear a runway at Heathrow.
Suggestions for destinations anyone?
Best wishes to you all, my dear Maclanders.
Xxx
PS Christmas marked six months to the day.
