I do not think that I am going to write very much.
I am very tired, and very happy.
Our house seems to be so full that it is bursting at the seams, although it isn’t really. There are just the four of us, and Christmas, and it does seem that the last bit is taking up a huge amount of room.
Every inch has been filled with celebration.
It has been a glorious day. I always feel as though Christmas Day has been the happiest, most perfect ever, and this year is no different. It truly has been the happiest and most perfect day, despite bat flu and dreadfulnesses happening in the outside world. None of it has touched us and our good fortune is beyond measuring.
We had only just ambled out of bed when Lucy arrived. She had come straight from her night shift, and she was white with tiredness and full of stories about people whose Christmas Eve had been so painfully sad that they had finished up with a visit from the police, which made us all quiet inside for a little while. Despite the horrors she had left behind her she was in wonderful good spirits, and it turned out that Father Christmas had arrived before her, and stuffed some socks full of sweets and books on the sofa.
To my complete astonishment there was a sock with my name on it as well. The note explained that it had been left by Rudolph, which accounted for the creatively dyslexic spelling, and inside it there were chocolate buttons and a handy reading light for the taxi.
I was more pleased and touched than I can tell you, it is years since Father Christmas has visited me, and I had to pretend that I was not a little bit tearful, but I was.
We took the dogs around the park, and talked and laughed, and ate a huge breakfast. This was the most brilliant breakfast, because it was made of fresh morning bread and leftovers from the night before, and I had gorgeous blue stilton, and trout smoked with oak chips and salmon smoked with whisky, and home made cheese and onion pasty, and a glass of sherry. I can not think of a breakfast that I would rather eat, unless it was all of that with added melon and fried eggs and bacon on toast.
Somehow by the time we had finished breakfast it was almost three in the afternoon.
I am ashamed to tell you that we thought the thing we would all like to do next would be to have a little snooze.
This might have been due to the breakfast and the sherry.
We went back to bed, and I slept instantly, the peaceful sleep of somebody whose work is done.
It was a fine moment.
We set an alarm for going to the Indian restaurant, and by the time we had showered and changed and assembled to set off it was long after five, and the daylight had vanished. Windermere was so silent and still that we half-expected to find the restaurant dark and shuttered, but of course it was not.
We ate, and ate, tandoori chicken and lamb and wine, and platefuls of steaming buttery rice. We shook hands with the restaurant owner, who sometimes drinks too much and has to be brought home in a taxi, and exchanged bat flu stories with the other family in there, whom we knew because they were taxi drivers as well. It is rather nice to find oneself to be something of a stereotype, it is cheering to discover that the family two streets away is exactly like one’s own.
We staggered home, groaning from the sort of discomfort that is only marginally eased when you loosen your belt, and the day was still exciting, because we had not opened any of our Christmas presents.
The picture is mine from Oliver, and it is one of the nicest presents ever. I have long coveted a truly beautiful Christmas decoration, and this one is splendid. It plays Christmas carols, and the skaters skate round the tree, and I gazed at it with happiness for ages.
There were chocolates, and some beautiful blue jars to match our kettle, and a bar of my favourite, favourite Chanel soap. We had imagined that we would never eat anything again, but when we put the film on to watch we opened some Hotel Chocolate, and to our surprise by the time we had finished we had eaten rather a lot, we are going to be very portly by the end of the year at this rate.
The film was a Pixar film called Soul, and although the plot is a bit peculiar, it is one of the most beautiful films I have ever watched. It is worth watching just to look at, and we all sighed with happiness at the end.
They have all collapsed into bed, and I am the last because of writing to you.
I do not think I can sustain it any longer.
I will see you tomorrow.
