So I cannot recall ever being quite so ready for Christmas as I happen to be this year. We now have our ‘main’ Christmas tree which stands in the corner of our Hall and greets visitors to the house the minute they walk through the door whilst my little fibre optic tree gets lit when we have visitors to our main Lounge. I have three little cribs in place, one in each Lounge and one in the dining room – all I want now is for some visitors to the house to which to show them. I have also started to think about the Christmas card list which is automated to the extent that I have all of the addresses on a computer file and the trickiest thing to do is to get the labels printed out. I did a quick search to see if I have any Christmas cards in stock which do but I still need to buy to some ‘good’ ones (with a religious theme) to send out to family. I find that when I am engaged in this task, I send religious cards only to those who would value and appreciate them whilst I like to have an ‘internationalist’ set of cards for those of a cosmopolitan but non-religious persuasion. I suspect that I may already be too late for the theoretical last posting date for Spain which could a date in late November but I will concentrate on getting my international cards into the system as soon as I am capable. One of the Christmas traditions was always working as a ‘temp’ as a Christmas postman in the days when the costs of postage were quite low and the volume of Christmas cards correspondingly high. I worked on the post in Harrogate when I was only about 16-17 and then worked on the post in both Manchester and in Leeds. Meg in her youth certainly worked on the post in Stafford and she used to tell me graphic stories about her vain attempts to deliver a rapidly decaying goose. The particular challenges to us in those days was trying to get calendars delivered through incredibly small and tight letter boxes in the older parts of town and, occasionally, there were yapping dogs that seized cards out of one’s hands the minute they got pushed through the door. I actually got quite used to working on Christmas Day as well but after a day with one’s family, I started work washing dishes in one of the large hotels at about 6.00 in the evening and we did not have a TV in those days so I was not missing very much. Some people go a little mad decorating the outsides of their houses with variety of flashing lights but I must confess to not going this far bit I generally, with the assistance of friends down the road, invest in a couple of Christmas wreaths for the outside of the house. When I am out on the road in the next few days, I am under strict instructions from our domestic help to complement a few of our Christmas decorations with some tinsel of similar red-green hue and not to mix up styles by suddenly introducing extraneous colours.
When I eventually got down into town later on the morning, I wandered into one or two of the charity ships wondering if they had any brass candle holders or even tea light holders because I have in mind to deploy in the little memorial to Meg which I have in the Music Lounge. At the moment, Meg’s ashes are in a box covered by a tasteful red plush covering cloth with Meg’s photograph surmounting it and a little rosebud or similar in a delicate little vase immediately in front of it. I am unsure of there is a term that covers this sort of arrangement but an American term is a ‘columbarium’ which actually refers to a whole building or structure designed to hold the ashes of lots of individuals. I am not going to use this term as nobody will know what I am talking about so will just refer to it as Meg’s little memorial when friends or visitors call around. Actually, I did find in a charity shop a couple of German made tea light holders which were sold to me for £1.50 the pair and which are just on the right side of being too ornate for the purpose – I suspect that they were intended as table decorations in the first instance but they will serve my purpose quite well. I happen to have a good supply of tea lights in stock from when the Eucharistic minister used to call around and we lit a couple of candles before conducting the mini-service. Once I had all of the decorations in place, I was overwhelmed by some minutes of sadness because if Meg had been alive I would have wheeled her around so that she could admire and take pleasure in all of the decorations so the feelings of loss became immense. I made my way to the ‘Gifts of Love’ cafe where they know me quite well and in fact express some concern if for any reason I do not turn up on a Friday morning (it is nice to be missed) and generally get greeted by a hug anyway. Another lady well known to the proprietor came in and generously bought £20.00 of raffle tickets the proceeds being used to finance the welfare of abandoned horses and donkeys. So I bought £5 of tickets as they treat me so well and the coffee and cake that I have are well below the prices charged by the commercial establishments which are dotted along the High Street. Then I came home and cooked myself a dinner of risotto remains of the risotto from a few days back with a goodly serving of broccoli. The weather was intensely gloomy today and at 3.00pm in the afternoon it was practically completely dark but only just over of weeks now before the days start to lengthen again. During the day I had a brief conversation with my Droitwich friend who was down in London for a works Christmas party ad she seems to have had a good time but I am not quite sure what day and time she is actually returning. Tomorrow is going to be dominated by the buying of party food for Sunday’s party – I am leaving this to the last moment so that it does not ‘go off’ by being purchased too early.