It is lovely to be home.
Our house is tiny, quiet and warm, and I like it very much.
It might be quieter if we had not been reunited with the dog pack. They have been staying with our dogless friends, and have completely forgotten what civilised behaviour is like. It would appear that walking to heel has become a forgotten art, sleeping on the bed is an activity that they have decided is a canine right, and charging about barking has become an almost constant occupation.
I have been obliged to growl at them several times today.
I was on my own in the growling, because we remembered, with a shock of horror in the stilly watches of the night, that Mark was supposed to be at work today.
We had forgotten mundane things like employment in our fairytale adventure around the glorious city, and he was forced to leap out of bed rather hastily and phone Ted to explain that he would set off for work once we had had some coffee.
Mark went dashing off, and I roused the substitute assistance team, who were deep in contented slumber, and not exactly delighted to see me. I explained that in fact Christmas was not yet over, and that we had got Things To Do, especially if we wanted to eat and drink for the next few days.
Actually they were really quite forbearing. Once they had recovered from the unpleasant realisation that they were going to have to get dressed, they resigned themselves to their weary lot and came shopping with me.
We went to Booths, which was packed. The car park was so full that the only available space was almost back at our house. Once we had fought off enough rival shoppers to be able to acquire a trolley, we battled our way through the doors, and then spent at least ten minutes making sociable remarks to almost the whole of the rest of our local acquaintance, who had also left their shopping until the last minute.
Eventually we managed to get a ringside-view of the fridges, where we contemplated the troubled issue of Christmas dinner. Oliver declared his dislike of turkey, and Lucy said that in a perfect world she would like a Pot Noodle. Booths did not have any geese, and there did not seem any point in spending fifty quid on a bird that at least one quarter of us was going to refuse to eat.
In the end we bought a chicken. We are going to have chicken for Christmas dinner.
It has the celebratory distinction of being free range and corn fed, but it is still a chicken.
We thought that we would make this more thrilling by adding little cocktail sausages wrapped in bacon, and of course there is almost no meal that cannot be made massively more interesting by the addition of lots of garlic salt and butter and ginger.
Actually I am quite pleased at this outcome. I do not feel the least inclination to eat turkey salad for the next week.
We bought lots of other things, because I was too preoccupied with not getting run over to be dictatorial about the contents of the trolley, and we have finished up with a three-foot long box of Jaffa Cakes, several Pot Noodles, and some curiously flavoured popcorn. They hesitated for a while in front of the Gin And Tonic Flavour, but in the end decided that you knew where you were with Salted Caramel And Chocolate Marshmallow.
When we came home we dragged everything off the floor and disinfected the rather curiously scented living room carpet. It was not exactly smelling of dogs, but something about it was not the ambient scent I would choose to have wafting through my living room.
We scrubbed and sprayed and hoovered, and in between shovelled piles of smart-clothes-washing into the machine. We unpacked and put things away and occasionally tripped over the dogs, who were engaged in unwrapping the most accessible of the Christmas tree chocolates.
Eventually order was restored, and I dismissed my reluctant assistants and started getting ready for work, which is where I am now.
It is very odd to be back, quiet and still as if everything important has already happened. I am sure that Christmas will be very lovely, but it is a small thing after our holiday.
It is nice to be still for a while.
