Why do I have a Christmas wreath drip-drying in the shower? Why does this time of year always feel like a nervous breakdown? It’s not as if Christmas is a surprise.
It happens regularly as clockwork on 25 December annually and is quickly followed by a brand-new year, as it has been for the past millennium or two. And here it is again, right on cue, along with its travel companion, anxiety. On Saturday, I came into the kitchen to tidy up before the cleaner arrived, as you do.
I couldn’t wait to see her. We’ve been having maintenance work done, so the floors are gritty underfoot and the entire house exudes the essence of wet dog. But I have a big university assessment due and need to prep a Christmas radio special, and my son and his girlfriend arrive on Friday.
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It’s his birthday on Sunday, and I have two assignments to do over Christmas, neither of which I’ve started, and I haven’t even written my Christmas cards — they’re on the table waiting, posing an added challenge this year thanks to arthritis flaring up in my writing hand — and there’s shopping and menu-planning still to do, so a clean house by someone else’s magical hands would be really, really nice. Except… A message from the cleaner pinged on my phone: she has dislocated and broken her toe. She will not be coming in now – or at all, until halfway through January, because she’s going home for Christmas.
The headache was instant. I seriously contemplated lacing my tea with hard drugs. And then I realised this was the same thing that happens every year, as predictable as Christmas: this was my annual freak-out.
I want everything to be beautiful, calm, welcoming, filled with peace on earth and goodwill to man and all that, not to mention clean sheets, sparkling windows and homemade treats, but I forget how much damned work it takes. I’m the proverbial duck, paddling like crazy, while trying to appear serene and in control.
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