Jingle Bells

Mothers are Christmas. Mine declared she was deaf on Christmas Eve and proceeded to shout that she was freezing while we frantically hydrated ourselves with vino in the hundred-degree heat. My son woke at three and repeated until five that he was too excited to sleep while I hallucinated.

Christmas Day was an orgy of unwrapping. My stepdad expressed his gratitude for his Covid vaccine getting him through his recent bout of Covid. I had a secret smoke on my twelfth trip to the recycling bins.

Mother gifted my little one a plastic pumping heart. I overfilled the balloons with water and as he enthusiastically squeezed the valves it exploded and sprayed everyone in the sitting room. “That happens in real life!” she exclaimed delightedly. ‘Yes, my darling’, I told my stricken son, ‘That’s a heart attack.’ They’re ‘normal’ now, I didn’t add.

My seven-year-old proudly introduced his squirrel, “He has an itchy bottom, like I did an hour ago.”

“I don’t like walnuts either,” my mother concurred. Maybe she has gone deaf.

No doubt inspired by her gift, she confessed she has self-diagnosed heart problems too, that rule her out of an ambitious babysitting plan I tried to trick her into after thirty-eight bottles of plonk. Her mind is still as sharp as her eyeliner.

My father is with my brother in New Zealand where they had good weather and lots of Covid positive test results between fishing and parties. I bit my tongue. And went back to the bins.

Friends came on Boxing Day and looked remarkably relaxed about all the Lego they were asked to assemble. I think they were stoned. The children rang their Christmas bells until everyone was howling as loudly as my mother, while their singing Santa tap danced on the floor. My stepdad threw a tea towel over its head, but its little legs still waggled defiantly in song. Enraged or ecstatic, he started dancing too, before grabbing great handfuls of unwanted walnuts and tossing them across the kitchen. There was nothing left to recycle.

In Morocco, my best friend has converted to Islam. What? That’s less Christmassy than the illuminated tuktuks I had to dodge before I could fall into the humble embrace of Selfridges to witness the miracle of materialism.

I went to Church yesterday where it’s still Christmas but without the pressure. In the afternoon we saw Peter Pan at the Palladium. The dance routines would work in Heaven. My son can’t believe Julian Clary is a man when he looks and sounds exactly like his old form teacher. Both my boys have abandoned their toys to play with the postboxes I crafted from the packaging they came in.

It’s a new year. Things to start, things to finish, another birthday to deny. I wish you all a rousing 2024.