How very odd. Our uneventful and largely unfestive Christmas Day turned out to be a Very Lovely Day Indeed.
It really was a tremendously ordinary sort of day. All the animal-related tasks got done in the usual way at the usual times, and in between Life Went On. But the very fact that it was a supposedly special sort of day seemed to make a difference.
It was the night before the night before Christmas. Snow was not falling softly on the dark and empty landscape, and no angelic sound of distant carol-singers rolled in breezy breaths over the bereft fields from the silent, unlit village.
Inside the small, old house, dogs and cats slumbered peacefully in the dim light, content in their obliviousness to the very human fact that this was the night before the night before Christmas. No artfully-jumbled heap of colourfully-wrapped, thought-counting presents lay arranged in hopeful invitation beneath the sweet-smelling Christmas tree. There was no Christmas tree.
It was the night before the night before Christmas, and the unseasonably mild air was heavy with a sense of festive expectation, even though the day after tomorrow was unlikely to be in any way exceptional.
Well, more than a week has passed since my last cliff-hanging post, and I’m sure you’re all desperate to know what happened. Except, (because I have been so rubbish at updating the blog over the last few months) I don’t think there is a You All reading it anymore. Never mind. Maybe if I build write it, They Will Come.
Anyway… the long day of waiting passed slowly and inexorably without so much as the merest hint of a telephone beep to disturb it, and as the minute hand tocked irrevocably past the Closing Time for Derby Estate Agents, I remembered that the last time we had tried to speak to this particular agent on a Wednesday she wasn’t there because “Wednesday is her day off”. Doh! Wish I’d remembered that sooner.
Oh My Word! What is this? A third blog post in two days? What’s going on?
Well, the fact of the matter is that we are waiting. And it’s the sort of waiting that makes it very hard to get on with anything else while you are waiting. It’s the sort of waiting that fills your mind with speculations and imaginings, wrapped up in an irritating sense of having no control, garnished with a requirement for an inhuman amount of calm patience. Do I exaggerate? Almost certainly – but as you all know, I am totally CRAP AT WAITING.
Seeing as how I am (at least momentarily) back in the writing habit, I thought I might take this opportunity to update those few readers who might be interested on the progress of my battle against The Call of All Things Yummy. And the first thing I want to say is that it has not been easy – but not for the reasons that I might have expected. But then, that’s Demon’s for ya – always got a sneaky trick or two up their nasty little sleevies.
Oh dear. It has been a shamefully-long time since my last post. An even longer shamefully-long time than the last shamefully-long time between posts. Of course, there are reasons aplenty for this most recent lapse in output, but I can at least happily confirm that death from sugar-starvation was not one of them.
Since writing the last post, I have spent three-plus weeks in England, doing grandmotherly and motherly things, and partaking of the oft-overlooked benefits of city life. I also spent a considerable few hours of my time in Derby viewing houses. Yes – shock horror – I have pretty much decided that I can no longer resist The Call of The Grandchildren, and that to be the active, hands-on sort of granny that I long to be, I actually need to Be There.
