The picture is of our Christmas telephone call with Number Two Daughter, who rang this afternoon to wish us a happy Christmas, and to tell us that it was -20C in Big White, where she is working. We can see her when we make telephone calls these days, it is a wonderful world.
We are at work now.
We hadn’t intended to work tonight, but when we thought about it today we thought that we would quite like to have some more money, so this evening we went to work.
This is no hardship at all. We have filled our flasks with mashed-up-and-fried-with-an-egg Christmas dinner chicken and parsnips and sweet potatoes, and have followed this with a pudding of apple and pecan pie with dollops of cream. We have got flasks of hot, black chai, and I have got a good book. It is called Shantaram, and is about an escaped Australian prisoner who has run away to India. I have read it twice before, but it is the sort of book you like to read more than once, and so I have been re-reading it with pleasure, yet again.
Mark has not got a good book. He has been told by his friend Ted that when a computer engineer is with customers, he cannot be seen typing with one finger at a time with his tongue sticking out.
We all agreed with this pronouncement. Oliver and Lucy have introduced him to a BBC program called Dancemat. This taught them both to type, and Mark is sitting in his taxi now, probably still with his tongue sticking out, busily following the instructions.
It is hosted by a Liverpudlian cartoon goat, who breaks into song occasionally, and who is enthusiastic about hitting the letters with the correct fingers. Mark has got to concentrate very hard, partly in order to understand what on earth the goat is going on about.
In between bursts of Dancemat he is trying to do his maths homework and also to learn about the way IP addresses are allocated. He is going to be completely cross-eyed by the end of the night, at least getting the occasional customer will give him a break.
He is going back to work tomorrow, so we won’t be out very late tonight. There is no point in staying out anyway, because the Christmas double time rate ends at midnight, and I am not interested in normal time fares, so we shall go back home.
We planned a day of doing nothing, nothing at all, because we are exhausted after Christmas and needed a rest. We had our coffee in bed this morning, and perhaps it was a mistake to have a second cup when we went downstairs, because we suddenly thought of lots of things that we might like to do whilst we hadn’t got anything important planned.
It turned out that we were rubbish at doing nothing.
Mark took a wheel off my car and put a new tyre on it. This is an awful lot of faffing about, because he doesn’t have any machinery to do this any more, and has got to do it by shoving chisels underneath the edges of the tyre. I was glad that he had though, because the tyres have been getting increasingly troubling for a few days, and it is nice to think that the wheels are all the same size again.
I was seized by the feeling that you get after the huge riot of Christmas. I have had enough of parties. I wanted to have my life back again, straight and ordered and neat and properly arranged in unexciting predictability.
I thought I would start at the top and work my way down.
I sorted out the loft.
Since the lodger moved out, the loft has become a sort of terrible glory-hole where I have flung everything for which there is no space anywhere else.
This has included the children’s school luggage, our smart clothes from Manchester, some cushions out of the camper van, lots of suitcases, and all sorts of other junk.
I tidied it all up.
I organised games kit and toothbrushes and pyjamas. I arranged summer clothes into drawers and hung our heavy greatcoats and scarves in their bags in the wardrobes.
I love the smell of our coats after Christmas. They are soft wool, and somehow just seem to capture the scents, of perfume and Mark’s Blenheim Bouquet aftershave, and the cinnamon smell of the hotel, and a faint waft of woodsmoke from the Christmas markets.
It seems sad to hang them up and put them away, because we don’t use them very often in between, not unless something exciting is happening, like visiting Gordonstoun. It is only at Christmas when they come into their own, and we can wrap ourselves in cashmere, and silk, and alpaca, and feel wonderful, an extra spark of Christmas magic.
Once the loft was tidily arranged I felt very pleased with myself, so pleased that I went downstairs and reorganised my linen shelves. I have now got beautifully folded towels and sheets.
These are not very exciting activities, but they feel exactly right for the slow ticking of the season. The darkest time is over, and in a few weeks the first signs of the spring will be here.
Not long until the snowdrops.
I think I might buy some paint.
