It is over.
It is so very over that I am on the taxi rank. Christmas is done, normal service is resumed,
This is really rather nice.
It is so lovely, after all of the noise and the fuss and the anxiety, to be sitting here quietly, with nothing much that is pressing in and requiring my attention. There are no lists of things that I should be doing, no concerns about things that I might have forgotten, no endless calculations or gazing bemusedly at Amazon wish lists and pictures of wrapping paper.
In short, there are no worries at all.
Obviously we have got no money left, but that will soon sort itself out. At least, I hope it will sort itself out. My taxi is currently limping around like a puppy who has brainlessly attacked a bad-tempered bulldog. I am not exactly confident that it is going to last very long before it conks out, self-pityingly, at the side of some road somewhere.
It probably won’t need to last very long. It is very quiet. We have been sitting here for two hours and so far I have done one job.
This does not matter very much, because it is Double Time.
I should have started writing this ages ago really, but I was so much enjoying having some guiltless space to read without intrusive Christmas-related traumas creeping in that I have not. Instead I have immersed myself in a rather good book about the painter Turner, and absent-mindedly eaten the whole of my leftover-salmon sandwich whilst I was reading it.
They all left this afternoon. We assembled this morning for bacon sandwiches, after which Number One Daughter’s family took themselves off to visit some more relatives, and Mark took Jack and his dad over to the farm to load some wood for Lucy’s kitchen floor. Fortunately the dogs went with them, which was a relief, because it meant I could tidy up in peace.
Poppy is staying for an extra day or two. Jack’s dad has hired a car whilst he replaces his, and will have his work cut out for the next few days without having to rush around after an excitable puppy. Jack has taken Lucy home and come back to our house because he is spending the next few days fixing a car, not my taxi, alas. Poppy adores Jack, and so will be able to bounce around irritating our dogs and coming on fell walks with me until Jack goes home again.
Once the house had gone quiet I hung up washing and swept, before suddenly my knees seemed to be becoming rather inexplicably wobbly, and I sat down, rather heavily, in the little chair next to the fire.
I sat there, dreamily, staring at my feet, for what seemed like ages, and when Mark came back shortly afterwards, I explained that I thought perhaps I might need some sleep.
I crawled wearily up the stairs to bed, where I sank into a dreamless, oblivious sleep. I don’t recall Mark coming to join me, but he must have done, because he was there several hours later, when Poppy barked to warn us all that Oliver was getting ready for work.
She does like barking. We are going to have some Being Quiet lessons over the next couple of days.
I am very glad that I do not live next door to us.
I made sandwiches for Mark and Oliver with leftover turkey, of which there is rather a lot, it tasted divine but I do not eat meat very often these days, and I am going to have to go to the chemist on Monday for some more indigestion tablets.
Perhaps when I have had some more sleep I will be able to think of some creative things to do with turkey. At the moment I think that even making sandwiches with it is something of an achievement.
It has been a splendid Christmas. All the same, today I feel a bit like a character in the sort of film that starts just after the nuclear apocalypse, the sort where they have got to try and piece together a civilised life out of a gun and a couple of tins of baked beans, but which completely glosses over details like the sewers not working any more and ignores the need to keep an eye open for comfortable, well-fitting shoes whenever they might go through a newly desolate town.
It is Le Jour d’Apres.
