Things I hate about Christmas

Spending money on presents I know the recepient doesn't really want
Receiving presents I don't really want or need or like
Parsnips
Rubbish trains costing more than normal to take twice as long without a seat
Being away from people I love
Christmas pudding

Things I love about Christmas

Mince pies
Port
Guilt-free TV watching
Cold hands and a warm fire
Family
Cracking nuts
Sparkly lights on trees on the South Bank
Champagne
Loving people
The promise of hope in a gold package

Arrrggghhh!

Where has the time gone? It feels like the last few weeks have been swallowed up by a large whale, just like that, gallons of minutes whoosing into its open mouth. I suppose blogging is a bit like having a pet, you like looking at it but the maintenance can sometimes get a bit laborious, and before you know it people are asking why you haven't fed the screen recently. Perhaps I'll get reported to the Royal Society for the Protection of Blogs.

Asian Adventure

Well everyone, brace yourselves! I've got some news... (those who know me well should probably sit down for this next bit) I'm going to Singapore for six months in January! Soon I'll be wearing summer clothes though it's January and eating asian food outside at night... Can't wait. Please come to visit, you'd be very welcome.

Reflection

Sometimes things aren't quite what they seem. That's been true of my life recently, situations that I've made a snap judgment about have completely turned around, evolved, renewed themselves. On Wimbledon Common recently I stumbled upon this reflection in a pond at the bottom of two small inclines... The surface still as glass and the reflection an exercise in beauty.

Thanks to Sam for the photograph.

Sick

I'm a bit sick at the moment, approximately every 45 seconds a rasping sound leaves my chest, shortly followed by about ten seconds of hacking. I think this is what's known as a 'chesty cough'. It's interesting to note people's reactions. Mothers of small children in crowded tube carriages move their precious youngsters out of reach of my spluttering germs. I don't tell them that the little bundle of goodness is picking up more germs from the tube seat than from coughing commuters such as myself.

Being sick so far has changed my routine in the following ways:

• Sleep or lack of. I've kept myself awake most of the night with my incessant coughing.
• Benylin surely a class A substance?! I don't consider myself to have an addictive personality, but where treacley, sugar sweet, ethanol spiked cough syrup is concerned I don't trust myself.
• Christmas cards: when I should have been out having fun like ordinary people two weeks before Christmas, I managed to make all my cards. Writing them is another matter. Hmmm. Might email everyone instead.
• Food seems to have lost all its taste. It's seems a shame to eat it.

Anyway, when my life gets more interesting I promise to post something more exciting on this blog. Until then, excuse me while I cough my guts up.

Vision

‘without vision the people perish’

A famous person said that, so famous I can’t recollect who on earth it was. There’s truth in those five words, one syllable short of the iambic, yet perfectly balanced. True. For about a year my life has been stagnant, claustrophobic, ‘same-y’ (I discovered recently that our American friends don’t use that word, hence the quotation marks). I’ve walked down the same streets, eaten at the same restaurants, stared through the same sky in the city I love, but it’s all been largely without feeling anything much at all. Each week was just a prelude to the weekend. Each weekend a prelude to another week. Though the sun recedes and the leaves fall the feeling remained, until now. These days I’m so excited sleep alludes me, at 3am I’m thinking of a thousand things that are to come. Walking with you on Wimbledon Common I see scarlet and orange and gold and crushed poppy and pale grey and honey leaves, dappled light refracting through elegant trees, life coming up through the soft earth. I stretch out my arms and breathe in the earthy dampness. There’s a path through the trees, and my eyes are looking down it, sparkling.

Trees

I would really like a Christmas tree this year.

(Re)collection

A few years back, I found myself in a Weatherspoon’s pub at Leeds City Station. I forget what I was doing there, presumably I was about to catch a train and had some few minutes, or hours, to spare. Gorgeous Lizzy and I sat on stools, (this is hazily recollected) sharing a table with two middle-aged Yorkshire women, the path between student and local temporarily open. I had just bought a book called ‘Beyond the Binary’ and it was sitting temptingly on the shiny pub table, waiting for hungry eyes to devour words and thoughts and theory. The lady on our right noticed the book and harped up, ‘Beyond the bin – ary? What’s a bin – ary? Well I never, you young people today!’ ‘It just means opposite,’ I replied, probably a bit smug.

I probably thought I was really intellectual and informed then, now I just know I’ve got a lot to learn and theory never got anyone anywhere, apart from a mental hospital. I still have the book, I looked at it last night as I got into bed. Its blue cloth cover and gold embossed print stared across the room into tired eyes. It has lost its appeal, and I realised with amusement that the only association I have with this tome is Lizzy and I in a smoky pub in a train station, waiting to go somewhere, anywhere, nowhere…