Saturday, 19 December 2009

Having a thoroughly bachelor Xmas part 1

I'm not much of a Christmas person. To be candid, I'm quite often ecstatic when it's all over. This year I'm getting Christmas off. Mrs S is in the UK with the kids, and I'm busy moving house, which is the ideal excuse for not fussing around with decorations and shopping.

The apartment is a glorious mess with everything packed in boxes ready for shifting, furniture stacked and I'm living in one room with a camp bed and a keyboard. Reference books on star catalogues, Canadian history, and various aspects of physics lie open on every flat surface. The only fiction I have at present is Joe Haldeman's 'Marsbound', but I think that one will go back to the library half read. The prose and style are fine, just that the story doesn't grab me.

No-one is around my ears demanding specific foods at particular times. It's gloriously relaxed. The only creature with demands on my time is the dog, and all he wants to do is snooze and fart under my feet, get walked and fed, and have his ears scratched from time to time. So long as the keyboard is rattling, he knows his god is in his heaven (Pack leader, whatever, these terms appear interchangeable from a canine point of view) and all is well.

This year I'm not missing;
  • Turkey
  • Christmas shopping
  • Having to accede to everyone else's demands to 'open it now' in squeaky little voices
  • Turkey and sprouts
  • Tinsel every bloody where
  • Pine needles all over the rug
  • The inevitable straining at the waistline and necessity of new year weight loss
  • 'Fun' that isn't fun at all
  • Extreme tackiness
  • The wearing of flashing plastic antlers
  • Turkey leftovers cluttering up the fridge
  • Maxed out credit cards
  • That awful bloated feeling from eating and drinking too much
  • The grave foreboding that the future holds yet more Turkey
Incidentally, anonymous comments are turned off for the next few days. Not for any particular reason, only that I'm having a wonderfully lazy time and simply can't be arsed to engage with the world for a while.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

We stopped the "traditional" Christmas dinner years ago. It is also No1 son'r birthday on Christmas Day so we have a birthday tea in the evening. A Christmas dinner would just be too much with another celebration to follow.

Over the past few years we've had Goose, Grouse, Duck, Venison, Rack of Lamb (my very very favourite) or Beef on the bone (now that it no longer causes madness). This year Roast Partridge in on the lunchtime menu.

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