I can’t really explain why it’s taken me so long to write this because I have been doing NOTHING, but as my most privileged friends will attest, the less you have to do, the longer it takes. So the last you heard, I think, it was Christmas Eve Eve and I was about to go and eat. I did, it was freaking delicious, and there began an intense period of gorging that, as yet, is about 53% complete. I had steak at my work lunch that was mouthwatering, with béarnaise sauce and a delicious sweet pea, baby onion, spinach and lardon mélange that was almost the highlight. We played shag, marry or cliff and consequences and it was every bit as funny as last year and I count myself very lucky when it comes to my office existence.
That evening, I went back to my parents’ house and, if I’m totally honest, the next few days are a haze of gluttony, as an invisible conveyor belt (aka: my hand) carried an omniprocess of delicacies over my ever-excitable tastebuds: copious piles of Nigella’s ham in Coca-Cola, turkey, smoked salmon, delicious gastropub lasagne, mince pies, amaretto biscuits, peanut brittle, granary toast with salted butter, soup, homemade Christmas cookies, parsnips, salad, garlic bread, onion rings, Sultana Bran, Bollinger, white wine, red wine, Diet Coke and beer. In the brief pauses while I was chewing, I opened amazing presents including my much-hoped-for ukulele (but a far nicer one than I’d imagined) and a tube of Elizabeth Arden Eight Hour Cream. Delighted. There were emotional times with my family as well, of course, but in a shock development, my mother has decreed that I am not to write about them any more. Her rationale is as follows: if I am too honest about them, someone might think that my dad is a racist and want to stab him, and, as my mother put it, ‘They can find out who you are from your blog, find out where your parents live, and come around and kill him in the street. It’s that simple,’ she said, as if finding their address from my anonymous blog requires a similar level of skill to urinating. After the tension that arose over the programming of mum’s Christmas pedometer, I didn’t want to involve either of us in a complex technological explanation of a) how difficult it would be to determine my father’s identity, let alone b) quite how bored and/or misguided someone would have to be to choose him, above all the other mentalists on the internet, to assassinate. So I nodded meekly and promised not to discuss them again. We’ll see how long that lasts…
I do love Christmas but, like a late-night meal in Chinatown, the moment it’s over, you suddenly see what you look like in the hideous fluorescent lighting, realize your foundation is not worth the pump dispenser from which it emerges, accept that you will need to run, fast, for seven consecutive hours to burn off the meal you would have swapped your grandmother for moments earlier, and concede that it is time to go home. I was all up for the festivities, but the moment the presents were unwrapped and the taste of mince pies became commonplace, I was desperate to get back to my nest and recuperate tout seule. I am a creature of habit, it turns out, and fun though Scrabble and beginners’ ukulele undeniably is, I miss being master of my domain. I’m 32, after all, and being an only child in my parents’ house, still unmarried, still childless, while they are getting on with their semi-retirement, feels slightly regressive. So yesterday I went home and cleaned and now I am on the Piccadilly Line to Heathrow Terminal 4, en route to Prague, for a minibreak about which I am so excited I may rupture something. Apparently we have free wifi in the hotel so I’ll post this when I arrive. In the meantime, I hope all my Faithful and any LLFF fair-weather friends have had a joyous Christmas. Love to you all.
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