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.