Whilst on the Christmas markets we purchased some incense of the same sort that we had used in India.
It is remarkably strong, and despite the detail that I haven’t actually lit any of it yet, I am getting wafts of Delhi every time I am at the kitchen sink, where it has been stored on the windowsill. It does not smell quite like Delhi, because we have got a conveniently flushing loo here, but all the same it is wonderfully evocative, and is adding an extra small pleasure to all kitchen tasks.
These went fairly easily today. We were obliged to stop work unexpectedly prematurely last night when my taxi decided that it needed a holiday, and chugged to a faltering halt. It was very quiet anyway, so we did not feel especially deprived. We had an early start this morning, and Mark spent the day nailing an emergency repair together with some car glue. He thinks that this might hold out tonight, but is not promising anything. I have got my fingers crossed, although secretly I am not quite sure which outcome I would prefer.
I wrapped the children’s Christmas presents, because they continue to believe in Father Christmas with a determined conviction. In all other matters of faith they are firm believers in rational argument, but on this one they are unshakeable zealots. The magic is real and to suggest otherwise, Lucy explained, would be an offence against their cultural integrity.
Mark and I do not buy Christmas presents for each other. If there is anything either of us badly wants we will get it in the January sales, when we will love one another just as much as we do in December, just at a fifty percent discount.
My friend Kate came to visit, in the middle of her last-minute shopping trip. I was pleased to hear that she has also got a Christmas dinner crisis, because one child wants to eat nut roast, the other Kentucky Fried Chicken, and she doesn’t really want either. She left to go and look thoughtfully around Asda to see if anything inspiring would present itself.
We had a sleep when she left. It seems to have been a massively busy month, it is actually less than a month since we were clearing the shed out at the farm, but in my head it is for ever ago.
Since then I have made advent calendars and Christmas presents, Christmas cards, Christmas chocolates and mince pies, cakes and biscuits. We have been to carol concerts and the pantomime, restaurants and pubs, we have partied with family and friends and smart Headmasters. We have had dinner guests and visiting children. Mark has started a new job and bashed away at his maths GCSE: and all the while we have gone to work and brought the firewood home and strolled around the Library Gardens with the dogs.
I am tired now. December has been one long, glorious celebration, and I have appreciated it until I can barely lift another wine glass. In fact I am still not terribly sure that I would like to lift any more wine glasses, you can have too much of a good thing, and I think I might have done this.
I am on the taxi rank now, and Lucy is at work, standing outside a pub looking menacing. The head of the security company has decided that she needs some experience of a different sort, and so tonight she is at the Albert, a pub with a raucously local sort of customer base. I can hardly believe that it is only a week since the last time she was out On The Doors, it seems like ages ago.
I left her outside it with the usual two giants, and their support team of a Guardsman called Pokkers, whom I like because of his determination to have shiny buttons and to make the world a law-abiding place with the Queen at the head of it. He makes a point of getting in my taxi when he has been out, so that I have got a respectable customer and not some wicked villain, and begs me to find a properly ladylike job where I will be safe from rascals and not have to listen to bad language. Obviously I have got no interest whatsoever in doing this, but I am touched by the sentiment.
It is my last night at work until after Christmas, and I am not sorry about this. I am longing for a few days when I can sleep late and wake up to a second coffee and leisurely ambles with the dogs.
The picture is Windermere at night, from a taxi driver’s point of view.
