On the dance of the year

So if the year has just danced its way through 365 days, how did it go? It probably started out a little timidly, shy and getting up off the bleachers, handbag clasped, doing a light nod and toe tap, smiling, just shy of a grimace, hoping no one would watch it. Then it started to get a bit excited, a bit more of an arm waving, jiggy bounce, but surprised - like ooh, hello, look at this. Then it probably started doing some wild moves, like dusting off breakdancing moves it had never tried before but remembered from 80's movies and always wondered what they felt like. Funny year, whooping, and head spinning. Then it got all busy and serious, but not unfun. This might have been more your hard core mechanic tribal moves, in a state of trance. A purpose to the dance, a rhythmic, intense, focused containment. On and on, without room for doubt. By the third quarter, the year probably noticed the change in the music, more mellow, more curls and warbles. The year began doing more open armed, flourishy things, loking around to see whateveryone else was doing, who was around, what was happening to the peripheries. By now, the year is tired and sticky and ready for a good lay down. It has slowed to that smiling, sunburnt festival kind of dance where swathes of flesh are liberated from the confines of cotton elastaine, peeking out, joining in the fun. It is the 'the drugs have worn off' or 'those beers are making me feel tired and dehydrated' kind of feeling. It is the 'am I dancing? What am I dong? I seem to be moving but I think the song is about to finish and actually I'd quite like to sit down' moment.

12 days of Christmas

Day 1
A man on the bus has a small flakey something hovering above his scalp on a piece of spindly hair above his bald spot. I stare and can't stop. I am fascinated and appalled in turns. I realise that this is not the festive spirit.

Day 2
I keep taste testing my newly cooked biscuits. oops.

Day 3
I go to the work Christmas party. I mingle. I participate in games. I wish I was enjoying it more. Afterwards I go to a coffee shop and enjoy the relative silence of the banter of strangers after a day of small talk with people I know but don't know that well, whose company I enjoy but maybe don't enjoy so well.

Day 4
I buy all manner of 'educational' toys for my cousins, realising that actually I am buying them for the 10 year old self I once was or imagine I was once. Solar powered car making on Christmas day here I come.

Day 5
I change my mind and buy Christmas cards after all. I write three at lunch over a chickpea salad and flat white.

Day 6
I am late for work. On the bus, a friend, calling me to say hello, reminds me that 'it is the season to be jolly'. I laugh and suggest that this is what I will remind the person for whose meeting I am now late for.

Day 7
I eat crackers and wine for dinner.

Day 8
I organise flights to home town after much procrastinating. I plan a middle of Christmas day flight and feel ever so spontaneous and slightly subversive.

Day 9
I go book shopping for Christmas gifts and feel instantly relaxed and calmed leaving work concerns behind, and transported to large print big picture colourful glory of international cook books. I am transported to a life where I cook these things, and have these plates. I am lost in the minutae of Nonya curry pastes and Egyptian spices.

Day 10
I picnic and end up laying down playing scrabble outside on a rug eating cake. Oh the athleticism. Later in the day I make up for it my playing pool.

Day 11
I wrap things using curling ribbon. I plan to join in Christmas eve singing carrols and wonder if I will be busted for my non denominational, atheistic, random spirtualist credentials, and whether I'll be able to blend in ok.

Day 12
I write this post rather than finish a serious workish book chapterish thing. I look forward to being done enough with such things as to shut the chapter of this year and leave them till next year - next decade! - to reengage with.