Clearing Out the Old Year

Well, thank goodness that's over!  Finally finished with Christmas, though the tree won't come down until Friday, despite its needles littering the floor already.  We're very traditional...  But at least the holiday guests have now departed and I spent most of yesterday doing the laundry they generated and re-arranging the rooms they disorganised.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy Christmas, and I enjoy entertaining, it's just rather intense when the OH's distant cousin and family (all seven of them!) more or less invite themselves on Christmas Eve eve to stay for what felt like months.  It was hard to say no when Celeste wasn't even here, and George only dropped in for a couple of days, though even he brought two friends with him.  Fortunately, they were happy to sleep on the floor of George's room with sleeping bags, otherwise I'm not sure where we would have put them.  We already had bedding in the living room for the duration.  Joe was less impressed, I'm sure, though he didn't say anything, as he had to move all his writing stuff out of Celeste's room to make way for two large loud Americans and their toddler.

"I'm really sorry, Joe, but if little Kenobi got hold of your notes, you probably wouldn't have them anymore," I said, when I told him what was going to happen.

"Really, it's no problem.  I don't think Alison's home much over the Christmas period anyway.  Family comes first, after all." 

I don't think Alison's been home much full stop since they moved in, and certainly not since the Royal Wedding fiasco, but from the little Joe has said about it, I think she spends most of her time arguing with him when she is here.  I did ask Joe if he wanted to join us for Christmas dinner, since one more would hardly make any difference once I was in double figures, but he said he'd rather have a quiet day watching old-fashioned movies and eating a microwave meal.  I'm not sure if he was joking or not as I haven't had an opportunity to ask him what he did in the end.  He gave me a beautiful bracelet for Christmas, with some matching earrings, that look far too expensive and all I gave him was some notebooks.  He seemed pleased enough with them when I saw him at in the pub when we went down to welcome in the New Year, along, it seemed, with most of the village as the place was heaving, but we didn't have much chance to talk.  I shall pop down tomorrow at coffee break time and see how he really is.

Talking of how people really are, I must mention Janet and Brian.  Janet has spent most of her waking hours at the hospital but Brian has been home a few times to pick up clothes, post, etc, and dropped in briefly to thank me for the offer.  The surviving twin is holding on for the moment but they're not taking anything for granted and they're not making plans as such.  "Later in January, maybe.  And am I right in thinking that you're the biscuit lady?"

I wondered briefly what he meant and then realised that he must have seen some of my biscuits at the deli.  "As a business idea, it didn't really work, so my New Year's resolution is to only make biscuits when someone places an order.  My hips can't take it otherwise."

"Okay, well, when I've had a chance to talk to Janet about it, perhaps you can do some chocolate cherry cookies for us? For the funeral? It'll be a pretty small affair, but we ought to have something.  And I know Janet really loved them when she tried them."

My other New Year's resolutions, for what it's worth, are to contact Chloe and try to get fit again (haven't called her yet) and to try writing a mini-poem a day, using 'A River of Stones' as an inspiration.  There has to be more to life than cleaning the house and worrying about your children!

Happy Christmas in our village? Perhaps.

   It’s been incredibly busy around the village lately as we all catch up on Christmas shopping and the purchase of sufficient alcohol to sink the proverbial battleship, but we have now lapsed into a mulled haze of pleasantries and goodwill.  Work is officially over for the OH this afternoon but he’s managed to arrange to work from home today, which is just as well as we went carol-singing round the village last night.  This is generally a very pleasant evening out, aided by the unseasonably mild weather which meant we were all sweating buckets by the time we got into the pub that was our final stop, but no-one seemed to either notice or mind.

    There was only one downer in the entire evening, in fact.  Most houses in the village now have at least a wreath on the door or a visible Christmas tree lit up in the front room, but quite a few have illuminated icicles, rippling snow-flurries or even Santas in their sleighs.  I hate to think what the electricity bill is for some people as not everyone fitted solar panels...  However, one house had a wide array of lights attached to its front and planted in the garden but none had been switched on.

  “Oh look,” I said to one of my fellow singers, “they’ve realised how much electricity they’re using and have decided not to turn them on yet.”

  “Didn’t you know? That’s Janet and Brian’s house.”  I shrugged in my ignorance, so my informant continued, “She was pregnant with twins? Tall woman with blonde hair?”

    I thought back over some of the larger people I had seen around the village lately and could faintly recall an attractive blonde who was clearly finding pregnancy very tiring.  “Has she had them then?”

  “They weren’t due until January 17^th, but she went into labour last week.  Both babies went into a special care unit but one of them didn’t survive and it’s touch and go for the other.  They’re probably at the hospital.”

  It was sobering information through all the merriment.  How does anyone celebrate Christmas under such circumstances?   It made the words of ‘Away in a Manger’ far more poignant when we sang it at the next stop, whatever one’s religious beliefs.  And I had a chat with our ‘head chorister’, Les.  He was going to donate the money we collected to the Parkinson’s Society for family reasons, but now it’s all going to go to Sands, a support group for people like Janet and Brian.  And I shall pop a note through their door this afternoon, asking if they want to drop in for some cake when they get back from the hospital.  I can’t imagine they will, but the least I can do is offer.  Merry Christmas indeed.

Bring me sunshine...

As I was walking down to the post office last Friday, attempting to post all my overseas cards before the last posting date, I could have sworn that I saw Verity's Max speeding by in his car, the indicator flashing as though he was heading back to his former home.  I haven't seen him in the village since Verity threw him out back in April, so I wasn't entirely certain, but the car was definitely familiar. I speeded up my steps to the post office,  joined the lengthy queue of like-minded people and eventually returned home only to discover I'd left Celeste's presents on the kitchen table, and she has now decided she will be staying in Switzerland after all since it has snowed, so it was back to the Post Office again before they closed for lunch...

All of which meant that by the time I was able to phone Verity to ask if she knew Max was driving through the village, there was no answer.  I think she had said she would be at a planning lunch for next year's Diamond Jubilee celebrations in our local town, though it was probably a Christmas lunch for the planning committee without any actual work being done.   Either way, I wasn't able to get hold of her that day, or over the weekend.  Finally, yesterday, she returned one of my calls.  She was unusually vague about where she had been over the weekend, but she was able to confirm that it had indeed been Max who I had seen on Friday.

"Wretched solar panel people, couldn't actually pick a day to turn up and then keep to it," she said, "so I asked Max to be there and make sure they didn't leave a hole in the roof."

"I didn't realise you were even talking to Max," I said.

"Well, it wasn't ideal, but he at least knows where all the various switches are in the house that they might have needed access to," she admitted.  The words came in a rush, as though I wasn't the first person she'd had to explain to.

 "Why couldn't they come back today instead, when you could be there?"

"Oh, I'm not staying at home today, I have some book thing to go to and then some Christmas shopping to do.  Besides, it would be too late for the deadline - haven't you been following the news? I thought you were going to get solar panels yourselves."

We had looked into solar panels at one point, but the outlay needed was horrific and I thought the subject had been dropped.  I asked the OH when he got home, though.

"Oh, there was a good deal on the price you could sell the electricity back, and they're halving it from tomorrow.  That's what she meant about the deadline.  Still haven't ruled it out, though.  As technology improves, the price of the panels and their installation will probably come down, we can do it then. Seems the decent thing to do."  And he went back to reading the post while the TV was still on, wasting more electricity.

I'm going to have to invite Verity for lunch at some point, I think, to find out exactly what's going on, because she's far too keen to rush through phone calls and dash off at present.  It can't all be because she has to finish her Christmas shopping!

News of the World I'm Not

You're probably wondering what happened about Fiona's flowers.  Well, actually, if you've been as busy as I have over the last couple of weeks, you've had too much to think about to wonder about the mendacious Fiona and her envy-inducing flowers.  I've been trying to shop for Christmas presents, without much success - nothing looks terribly appealing, or if it does, I'm rather put off by the price tag.  Still, I bought some lovely earmuffs and matching scarf and gloves for Celeste, since she was going to be a chalet maid for the time being, at which point she phoned and said that since there hadn't been much snow, it was possible she would be home for Christmas after all.  Perhaps it will be cold and snowy again here? 

Anyway, I went round to Fiona's as soon as I'd finished doing the washing-up after dinner that night (grilled pork chop with a stir-fry vegetable medley and some steamed cabbage, in case you're interested) to hand over the flowers and challenge her on her lack of honesty.  Not that I really care, you understand, just to see what she said.  I was very disappointed.

"Oh, thanks for taking those in.  I'd taken my little charges up to town to see the new art exhibition.  You can't start introducing children to culture too soon, in my opinion." (The children she looks after are all under three.  I doubt they know what an art gallery is, other than a place to run around. I bet she was intensely unpopular and didn't care an ounce.) "It never occurred to me that there might be a delivery."

"I was a little surprised you were out," I told her, keeping as straight as face as I could manage before dropping my little bombshell.  "Though I was even more surprised that someone could be under the illusion that you've just turned forty."

Fiona turned very slightly pink before retorting with a reasonably-well aimed barb of, "Taken to reading other people's cards, now, have you? I suppose with nothing interesting in your own life, you have to resort to invading others'."

I tried to point out that the card had fallen out of the flowers but not wanting to have a full-blown argument on the doorstep at a time when other people are still out and about, I stopped defending myself and went, without even asking who D was.  I'd make a terrible tabloid reporter and an even worse witness at that Leveson enquiry, crumbling at the first refusal.

Meanwhile, I have found an old recipe for Christmas pudding, so I thought this year I would have a go at making my own.  The only disadvantage is that even once the quantity has been reduced down as far as I can, it makes about 20 pounds of pudding.  Consequently I've been boiling small puddings every night for the last week and plan to give them as Christmas presents to some of the older residents in the village.  It's a good recipe and there's something lovely about home-made, so I hope the recipients appreciate my efforts.  The house is developing a lingering odour of Guinness and currants; the OH is talking about getting it redecorated next year and I don't think it's a coincidence.

An Opportunity

   I was just about to sit down to a lovely cup of coffee and a biscuit and a chat with Joe after whizzing round the whole house with the polish and a duster, when the doorbell rang.  It was the local florist, though this wasn't immediately apparent as he was struggling with an enormous bouquet of flowers.
   "Hi," he said, once he had managed to arrange the flowers and his arms in such a way that his face was visible.  "I'm really sorry to bother you,..."
   "Oh, no bother if you're delivering such beautiful flowers!"  I was about to help the flowers out of his arms and into mine when he turned them slightly away from me.
   "Um, no, sorry, they're not for you.  That's the point.  They're for a Ms. Haggerty, couple of doors down?  But there's no answer there, and I could see the lights on here...  Could I leave them here for her?"
   I was about to tell him what he could do with Ms Haggerty's flowers but he was quite a young chap and might have been shocked.  I was also dimly aware of Joe hovering somewhere between me and the kitchen, waiting for the kettle to boil  So I smiled my sweetest smile instead.
   "No, that's no bother at all," I oozed at him, retrieving the flowers in what I believe to be a smooth move. (Eat your heart out, England rugby team.)
   "Brilliant, thanks.  I'll leave a card for her to come round."  And he set off.
   I was slightly disappointed that she would know that I had her flowers, but never mind.  No good deed goes unpunished.  I carried them through to the kitchen with Joe holding the door open fully for me so that the flowers weren't damaged, and then put the basket on the worktop.
   "Look, there's a card fallen out," Joe said, bending to retrieve a small white object that had fluttered to the floor.
   Now, I would never *open* an envelope addressed to someone else, but if the contents actually fall out, then it would be foolish not to read them.  And boy, was I rewarded!
   "Happy birthday, Fi - now you'll see that the big four-oh was nothing to worry about after all! All my love, D."
   Innocuous? You may very well think so.  I, however, was in the same class as her at school.  So I know that she's known for a few years whether or not one should worry about being 40.  D, it would seem, does not, despite sending all his (her?) love.  Now where would D have got such a misconception from?  I am actually looking forward to handing over the flowers later.  And the card.  Separately.