It is done.
It is done, done, done.
Jack took their calendar and my mother’s calendar last night, Number Two Daughter’s is somewhere over the Atlantic, having been hopelessly delayed by FedEx’s professional indifference. Ritalin Boy’s has arrived at school and is presumably being examined for drugs and illicit pornography by his housemaster before being issued to him. Granny Margaret’s calendar could be absolutely anywhere but has probably been dumped in her shed by some bored postman, I expect she will have found it by about June, and Nan and Grandad’s calendar is being held in the depot at York due to what their website describes as Unexpected Delays. They are jolly well right, having paid a tenner on Thursday for Next Day Delivery I did not in the least expect that it would still not have arrived by Sunday. Oliver’s is lying on the desk in the office, with the glue still drying.
I do not care. I have done everything that I can to ensure their safe and timely arrival and can do no more. I will turn my attention to the next major project.
There are a lot of choices for this one.
Probably it ought to be the ironing. It has been sitting in a crumpled heap in the loft for the last month now. We are going to need our smart clothes again soon. Really I ought to do something about it.
We are now, of course, on the final countdown. Ours happens rather sooner than yours because I have got to have everything done and completed by the sixteenth, which is when we have our family celebration in Manchester. I have got fifteen days to make Christmas cards, mince pies and chocolates, in which time I ought also to clean the living room and empty the conservatory of clutter, complete the ironing and the shopping and wrap everybody’s Christmas presents.
In between all of that I am going to earn a living, finish reading my story to Audible, draft my evidence for the House of Commons’ Transport Committee meeting, cut up firewood and get everywhere dusted and hoovered. I have got to find spaces for the dogs in kennels, decorate the Christmas tree and organise our restaurant bookings. I ought to clean my taxi as well but frankly I think that might be expecting a bit much.
There are going to be lots and lots of us at Christmas, and I am already bending my thought towards whether or not we own enough chairs, and exactly how we might manage to fit ten people around the table. Mark has said that I can stop going on about that because in an emergency he will just make the table bigger. We are not going to the Indian this year, but cooking Christmas dinner for ourselves, as I think I have already mentioned. I have telephoned the farm in Coniston and ordered something called a Four Bird Roast, which is a sort of Russian doll of birds which have been shoved inside one another, and a rolled leg of mutton. Mutton is lamb which has had a proper chance to grow up.
We have bought the Christmas tree. We had a family outing yesterday to Everly’s seasonal Christmas tree enterprise and Oliver and Jack squeezed the Christmas tree in to the back of my taxi until it was scraping against the windscreen, which is another reason why I really ought to think about cleaning it some time soon, the taxi not the Christmas tree, obviously. Emily and I put it up in the living room today. Nobody has decorated it yet, although Oliver and Emily very kindly brought the decorations down from the attic this afternoon.
I was glad about that. There are a lot of stairs between the living room and the attic, and I find it very difficult to scrape together the enthusiasm.
I had a morning with Oliver’s very nice girlfriend Emily today, whilst Oliver was out at work, and we made fudge. She took some home as a present for her sister, and I have saved the rest for the Christmas chocolates, so that was another thing I could cross off the list.
It is getting done, slowly.
One step at a time.
