Glimpsesofcolour

‘I’m going to make the knickers and belt out of tinsel.’ At least that’s what I heard the young woman say. And very fetching I’m sure she will look in them, though the knickers sound rather scratchy.

I haven’t left the house since Christmas Day. Neither has anyone else. This is bad.

Must drag son off to playbus this afternoon. At least we managed to get him up before 12.00 noon, which is a big improvement on the last few days when he has been sleeping till at least 3.00 pm and then staying awake at night till 5.00 am!

Someone once remarked that all work consisted of either moving objects around the face of the globe, or instructing others to do so. In my case I think the statement can be made more specific. Almost all my work seems to consist of moving clothes around my house. Consider this morning for instance:

1. Spin washing which was washed last night in response to discovering one of the three compartments of my laundry basket was overflowing.
2. Bring basket of said washing upstairs.
3. Take down from drying rack, the previous washing which was washed two nights ago in response to discovering that son’s laundry basket was overflowing.
4. Place dry wash in basket ready to move to airing cupboard.
5. Hang up on drying rack the washing from last night.
6. Clear airing cupboard (which is overflowing) to make room for the washing from two nights ago.
7. Match socks as necessary/possible
8. Place clothes taken out of airing cupboard in appropriate drawers.
9. Tidy clothes all over bedroom into appropriate drawers and wardrobes.
10. Tidy clothes all over son’s floor into appropriate drawers.
11. Assemble clothes which need to be repaired/altered at new tailor’s shop which has opened nearby.
12. Go to the sales to get more clothes? Maybe not…

Coffee spoons be damned (pace TS Eliot), my life is measured out in washing loads. Was it for this I got an Oxford degree in Eng. Lit?

Christmas has been achieved. There have been no disasters, either culinary, present-related or relative-related. Two festive meals have been satisfactorily cooked and eaten (this is the price of combining Austrian Christmas and British Christmas). As usual, too much has been eaten. Gifts have been exchanged and admired, and most of them aren’t going back to the shop. Good times have been had with family and with friends. The times with friends were better. It was pretty hard to find God in the midst of it, but that’s true of most of life. Wherever God was, I realized I was more likely to find him in the people than in the presents. This is a good realization.

Now I can relax into that liberated and liberating period between Christmas and New Year, when there is no script and no obligations, and we can all slouch around, watching lots of lowbrow TV and eating our way through large packets of Twiglets, Pringles and crisps, not to mention the nuts, dates, clementines, and of course the chocolates (of which there is a superfluity).

I really, really am going to do Christmas more simply next year. But then I say that every year…

*totally spurious German phrase meaning ‘Christmassing has been done’.

I’m already frazzled, and we haven’t even reached Christmas Eve yet! I think it must be the effect of having to fight my way through Waitrose on a Sunday morning to pick up all the stuff I failed to get earlier in the week at Tesco due to the presence of son distracting me from my purpose. And I still don’t have dates, because Waitrose is so posh they only do dates in stylish bags that you can’t reseal, rather than the bog standard ‘Eat Me’ ones in a box that everyone else does. Maybe our corner shop will have dates. Is it possible to have Christmas without a box of dates?

Also I made the mistake of inviting my mother to join us for church lunch and carol service today. This considerably lessens the restorative effect of being with my church family. Besides which it was freezing in the big draughty church hall we rent for worship.

When I was small we had a card nativity set with a background scene into which you slotted all the characters – a bit like Pollock’s toy theatres but much more kitschy, with rather Sunday schoolish art and bits of glitter. Unfortunately somewhere back in the mists of time we had lost the baby – he was after all the smallest piece. That’s how my Christmas feels just at the moment. We’ve lost the baby. Amidst the sprouts and the crackers, the tree and the parcels, the culinary slip-ups and the disappointing purchases, can I find him again?

I’m not at all sure that’s the correct declension, but you get what I mean. We have a tree, son and I have decorated it, and it is filling the house (well, the lounge at least) with Christmas fragrance. It’s far too big as usual – they always look smaller in the street than in the house. But it looks good, and I am full of a sense of achievement. And I also took the branches I’d trimmed to make it less wide, and made them into a lovely bushel sort of thing to hang from the curtain pole, with glitzy artificial flowers on it. And I’ve put the cards in the card hangers. And I got mistletoe and tied it to the hall spotlights with gold tinsel.

Tomorrow I might even bake some mince pies! Meanwhile there are only about a hundred presents to wrap, and cards to write to people who sent us cards but weren’t on my list, not to mention two festive meals to prepare, and a boy to keep occupied… am I really so sure I like Christmas?

BTW I wrote the Prayer for the Week yesterday instead of tree shopping. So that’s another task done.

PS I do have to tell my Christmas tree joke, about the boy who had heard ‘O Tannenbaum’ sung but hadn’t quite got the words, and went round singing ‘Atomic bomb, atomic bomb..’

Yesterday’s plans (for Christmas tree purchase etc) went missing in action as Genius Brat was sent home from school with a stomach ache. He still has it today, so it looks like I will be in my usual scenario of not getting the tree till about two days before Christmas. Oh well, that makes it more Austrian – in the land of my fathers, the tree is normally decorated on Christmas Eve.

He only has half a day of school tomorrow, during which I was hoping to write my last Prayer for the Week. I think he’s fairly determined to go in tomorrow as his ‘girlfriend’ has a Christmas present for him (yikes, does that mean I am supposed to get a present for him to give her? Oh the challenges of parenthood! I’ve only just given her a birthday present on his behalf..). Then it’s the holidays, oh frabjous day – two weeks of trying to entertain a grouchy boy and keep him off the computer.

On the plus side, my Polish* window cleaner wished me a holy Christmas. Now that I like.

*I feel a whole series of puns coming on: he must be a window Pole, my windows are now Polished.. oh, make your own.

No, not the film about Dylan which I hear is very good. Just me, not blogging. Sorry about that folks. Life has been full of Christmas preparation, writing, and driving. Especially the driving. Drove for 3 1/2 hours last Wednesday without ever going further south than Tottenham or further north than High Barnet (or further east than Woodford Green, while I didn’t go west at all, not being a young man).

Too long and complicated to explain, but essentially it was all about picking up church friend to go to cancer support group, encountering huge Christmas traffic jams so that what is normally a half hour journey was an hour and a quarter, then taking her mostly home (all of her went but she didn’t go all the way home), then picking up son from friend’s house, having an hour at my home to recover and get changed, then taking other church friend out east to see a Riding Lights play about Bethlehem – which I highly recommend.

Then Friday I tried to go shopping at the hallowed retail shrine of Brent Cross. Only they’d closed the entire North Circular west of the A1 because of an accident. What is normally 20 mins journey took 1 3/4 hours. Then I still had to do the shopping.

I slept a lot at the weekend. So did Genius Brat, who is certainly a real teenager now – he didn’t wake up till 2.00 pm.

The writing, by the way, was four pieces for Prayer for the Week in the Church Times. Plus a sermon which in the end I didn’t write at all as I decided to read the congregation a very long Austrian story. They seemed to like it.

Just got my credit card bill containing all the Christmas expenditure. Now I know why people sing ‘I owe, I owe, I owe’ at Christmas.

From the Greenbelt ‘Wing and a Prayer’ magazine for angels and volunteers:

‘I’ve never camped. Black people, by and large, don’t camp. I feel like we’ve suffered enough already’ (Jason Barnett, black actor).

This explains perfectly why I’ve never camped. Jewish people don’t camp either.