It is all over.
Today we took down the poor Christmas tree.
It has been cut up into lots of pieces, and is now squished into boxes awaiting incineration. It is one of the wonderful and yet undeniably sad things about the Christmas tree that this is its pagan fate. When it comes through our doors at the beginning of December it is a one-way journey. It will never leave again. It will be decorated and feted and admired for the whole of the darkest month, after which it will be sacrificed on the altar of central heating until not a needle remains.
Of course lots of them will remain really, mostly down the back of the sofa. Oliver hoovered them out today but we will still be finding them in June.
Not only has the Christmas tree gone, but so has the Christmas jigsaw.
Lucy finished it last night. I have attached a picture of it so that such colossal efforts are not forgotten but have their own small stake in immortality. Also you will note that despite the predatory attempts of various domestic livestock and several nights involving considerable quantities of alcohol, we managed not to lose any of the pieces. I think that this is almost as significant an achievement as the jigsaw itself.
Anyway, we spent the day ending the festive season. We packed the Christmas decorations into their boxes and restored the house to its usual state of non-festive domesticity. This is not as gloomy as it sounds because we leave most of the Christmas lights up all year round, so it is never actually dreary in the house.
I learned this from Disneyland. It is an important part of feeling cheery. I have discovered that I like fairy lights all the year round, not just at Christmas. It doesn’t even spoil the Christmas novelty. We just put a lot of extra ones up.
I appreciate that this might not be very middle class. It is very hard to maintain a polished veneer of sophistication when one has no natural good taste whatsoever.
In fact it was rather a nice sort of day, quiet and dreamy and restorative in the winter twilight. It felt peaceful to be packing our Christmas away, neatly boxed and ready for next year.
I hope it has been neatly boxed. The children did that bit. I am not sure that they share my philosophy of next year’s carefully packaged Christmas decorations being a splendid seasonal present for my future self. I am rather afraid that they might share Homer Simpson’s philosophy.
Future Me? he said, cheerfully. I don’t envy that guy.
In the end we stopped for a celebratory cup of tea after which Lucy buzzed off. She has got to go off and detect things tomorrow and so was returning to Grandma and Grandad’s house where she is currently lodging. Then Mark and I rushed about organising things for the long journey to the north of the Wall, and Oliver and Elise buzzed off upstairs to pack.
It is going to be very odd to have such an empty house. By this time tomorrow they will be in Scotland.
We are all going to go. Oliver thinks it is a long way to drive for his first motoring experience, and so we are going to annoy the neighbours by leaving his car parked in one of the already-too-overcrowded parking spaces, and go in the camper van. This is going to be an adventure because we will have all of the dogs and cats with us, and the cats will be sick in the beds if we do not supervise them like an infant teacher with an incontinent four year old. I do not know why they do this every time, but they do.
The camper van has not moved for months and months.
I hope it will start.
