W is for…

1.Bloggers, strangely, I don’t even mind it’s nearly Christmas. I’m in such low spirits that all it means to me is the end of work and the warm womb of my mother’s house to stay in, silent, for a week.

2. There will be a three-coloured, big-pawed cat for company and a pile of logs for the fireplace, woolly socks and old books from my teenager years to read again. In the early evenings, my mother will appear out of her ‘painting studio’ with a bottle of Alsatian wine and say: let’s not let it get us down.

3. It is everything, it’s Christmas that we don’t celebrate, it’s the sum of losses and anxieties about what remains. It is what we face everyday and the fact that it could be worse. It is the loneliness that we both live in; she because she feels she has failed to build a proper family, I because I have been so afraid to fail too that I chose to not have one at all.

4. We’ll drink by the fire, wishing it could be colder and that it would snow, or if it is, that it would snow harder, for the whole night; for added womb effect. It’s so satisfying when the airport has to close down and the buses no longer run! The best times are when cars can’t drive up our road, then it gets truly quiet.

5. One morning, clad like the Michelin man, we’ll walk up a mountain. It’ll hurt my lungs because I’m not used to it anymore. I’ll want to enjoy the scenery and be moved to tears but I’ll be so worried about not enjoying it enough that I won’t, really.

6. As usual I’ll get back to London the day before New Year’s eve, with neither plans, nor wanting to make any, and I’ll relish letting myself into an empty house. The candy of feeling sorry for myself! It is my tradition. This year, the Special Lady Friend situation isn’t looking too good, you see. It’s likely to be my fault. Added sweet bitterness to the candy.

7. I’m still young, have four limbs, eyes that see, a job and a place to live, and five different sets of bed linen, damnit.