Skip to main content

A difficult time of year


No, it's not been an easy Christmas.  I wanted to feel it, you know, all the joy and goodwill, but it's been hard work from start to end.  It always seems harder, doesn't it, when everyone else is out enjoying themselves and you're stuck in a dreary grind of endless details.  Like you're in a little gray world of your own.

You wouldn't believe how much paperwork there's been.  I'd put that application in from my parents' address months ago.  Never thought it would come to anything, but all of a sudden I got a call to say there's a council flat available down there.  I couldn't say no, could I?  Not in the circumstances.  Even though it only meant moving to the other end of the sodding country.  So we packed up quick as we could and stuffed the Astra as tight as a Christmas turkey, and then - then what happens?  "Oh I'm sorry sir, there's been an administrative mistake.  You can't move in until the end of January."  Fat lot of good that is, when the lease runs out on our old place in mid-December.

You'd think someone could have put us up, wouldn't you?  No, everyone was away or had family coming to stay.  Merry festive season and all that.  I'd found some cheap hotel, but when we got there they knew nothing about our reservation, and were very rude about it.  We ended up in the roughest B&B you can imagine.  I thought we'd have been better sleeping in the car, but it was a good thing we didn't, as it happened.

Why?  Well, you know all those horror stories of the husband having to deliver a baby on the way to the hospital?  We didn't even get that far.  Oh yes.  Right on the stinking carpet.  I was absolutely bloody terrified, I can tell you.  He came out all right, though. Mother and baby both doing well, as they say...

No, but there's more.  We'd just about got the mess mopped up, when someone started hammering the door half off its hinges.  Turned out to be the down-and-outs from the rooms upstairs.  I thought they'd come to complain, but you know, as soon as they saw the baby they were transfixed.  You should have seen it - these rough guys all huddled round cooing over a tiny bundle.  So I went off to make everyone a cuppa, but when I got back I couldn't even get into the room.  Three more lads had turned up, kind of Arabian looking, but what they were doing there God only knows.  They didn't seem to have much English.  To be honest I was so exhausted by that point I didn't much care.  I just wanted it all to be over so I could get some sleep.  They left us some pricey-looking presents, though.  Is that some kind of foreign thing?  Giving expensive gifts to complete strangers?

Yeah well, it's over now.  We moved into the flat yesterday.  Mary's been amazing through the whole thing, and Baby J's cute as can be, but I tell you something.  I hope I never have another Christmas like that one.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Place at the Table: Spiritual Formation Book 12

"God has ordained in his great wisdom and goodness that eating, and especially eating in company, should be one of the most profound and pleasurable aspects of being human." Miranda Harris had been intending to write a book for years. She'd got as far as a folder full of notes when she died suddenly in a car accident in 2019. When her daughter, Jo Swinney, found the notes, she decided to bring her mum's dream to fruition. A Place at the Table was the result. I thought this was going to be a nice friendly book about having people over for dinner. In one sense it is, but it's pretty hard-hitting as well. Miranda and her husband Peter co-founded the environmental charity A Rocha, so the book doesn't shy away from considering the environmental aspects of what we eat and how we live. They also travelled widely and encountered hunger at close quarters; the tension between seeing such poverty and believing in a generous God comes out clearly in A Place at the Table.
Post a Comment
Read more

Flexitarianism

Hey folks!  I learnt a new word today!  I can now proudly proclaim myself to be a flexitarian .  Yes, I wish that meant I'm in training to be a trapeze artist.  Or that I'm a leading world expert on the chemical properties of stretchy materials.  All it actually means is that I don't eat meat that much. Well, big deal.  That lumps me in with a majority of the world's population, many of whom have no choice about the matter.  So why the need for a fancy new word?  Because, it seems, that we in the prosperous West have come to regard having bacon for breakfast, chicken sandwiches for lunch and a steak for dinner as entirely normal.  But also because we in the prosperous West are starting to realise that might not be an entirely good idea. You know about factory farming, of course.  The images of chickens crammed into tiny cages and pigs which never see the sunlight, which we push out of our minds when we reach for our plastic-wrapped package of sausages in t
Post a Comment
Read more

Unto us a son is given...

Did I mention something about life getting back to normal in October? Oh yes, I was just finishing work and looking forward to at least two weeks off to organise the house, stock up the freezer and buy baby stuff. Then little Toby threw a spanner in the works by turning up five weeks early! Which would put his birthday in... let's see... October. So much for normal! For those who would like the gory details, here goes. If you are a mother who had a long and protracted labour, I advise you to skip the next bit - or if you don't, please don't start sending me hate mail. You have been warned. You see, we'd been to all the childbirth classes (yes, just about managed to finish them) and learned all about the different stages of labour, and how many hours each lasted. We learned some relaxation techniques and various things Graham could do to help coach me through long periods of contractions. And then we turned out not to need any of them, because the entire thing
3 comments
Read more