Au Revoir Mes Amis – Part IV

January doesn’t really start for me until I put away the Crimbo decorations. It’s a process that I’ve always found bitter-sweet (or... sweat-and-sour, I should say). Part of me is usually thrilled at the prospect of novelty that January has always brought into my life, and this is especially true this year.



Yet, another part of me, the larger one, I should add, is not at all thrilled and treats the unhooking of glass baubles and detaching of twinkly things and lights as a little death. If I am spending the first day (or most of it), after such process at home, as was the case today, I end up walking around in a daze, my eyes searching the comforting glow of the lights on the tree, and finding only a dark, empty corner.

I think it’s symptomatic that I’ve wanted to write of these things each year since I started my online diary. In fact, I think that my first post ever was the very first Au Revoir Mes Amis in 2008. Let me check. No, it was my second post ever. Then I repeated it in 2009 and in 2010 and then today.

Today was a dark day. It rained for a while, although I am not sure those spits actually qualify as rain. I had a couple of errands to run, stuff I had forgotten twice over last week. After those, I sat in Starbucks, determined to crack open my new diary (the paper one). And I did so, except... I didn’t know what to write, which is a bit unlike me. I think I was suffering from New Diary Syndrome, that odd affliction that catches most writers out when something new and papery falls open on the table.

A new diary or journal is full of promises, of unwritten adventures, of new hopes and starts. I felt extremely hopeful a year ago, but the result was disappointing. Now I’ve got novelty served on a platter, and I am fearful of it; I am fearful to go after what is righteously mine. Hence I soiled the new diary with an extremely self-conscious page of tentative prose which was neither here nor there, really. But I ended that page by talking about my journal, the one I’ve wanted to start since October 2008 (I kid you not) and the one that I am starting tonight. By the time I will put the decorations away again next January, I will have a journal full of drawings to leaf through and that, in itself, is already uplifting. I don’t know why we treat our journals and diaries as if they were repositories of our pains when, really, they should exist to blunt them, not reflect them.

The Next Tree or Au Revoir Mes Amis - Part III

I spent the day taking my decorations down and thinking about them. As I got to the Christmas tree, still perfect and beautiful as the day I put it up, I realised I was very nearly yanking off the baubles, disregarding their precious each-in-its-own-box mouth-blown glass quality. Not long ago, a friend of mine remarked that my tree looked as good as one of those in John Lewis.

I don’t exactly regard John Lewis as the height of sophistication, at Christmas or at any other time, but I understood she meant it as a compliment and so I thanked her. But the truth is, a department store-like Christmas tree, all visually appealing in its colour-coordinated perfection, is a soulless tree. I don’t know about you but when I trail the city before the big day, I never wish to take home the tallest tree, the one ablaze with white lights in the main square, appealing as it is; oh no, it’s always the one pushed right in front of the bay window and decorated with all sorts of mismatched things and lit up with bulbs big and small and in all colours that catches my eye.

Perhaps this is down to a subconscious reaction to magazine spreads (you know the sort, Period Living, Ideal Home, the mid-market stuff) where everything, including people, look like computer-generated cardboard cut-outs moved around in the pic until everything looks just damn so. Thus it was that today I resolved not to go the clean way next December, but the colourful, mismatched one, like the trees I used to make as a child and which included glass decorations from the 1950s, clay ones from school, resin ones from The Disney Store and any odd bits of ribbon that found themselves in the house. And maybe next time I will also bake some treats to go on the branches, though I will have to dog-proof them in some way.

I won’t need to purchase a truckload of new things either. See these?



They come out to play every year, as I place them in vases and marble containers around the house. Somehow, I’ve already managed to collect more than enough for another tree (and in fact, three years ago, I had two) which, really, already speaks for itself.

Hazy

It's been a misty, foggy Christmas Day, spent opening a couple of presents, eating a little bit at lunchtime, finally tucking into the cheesecake that I bought two days ago and generally doing nothing. Like... nothing at all. Suits me fine. Merry Christmas dear reader and thanks for visiting and for all of your emails throughout 2009.

Job Done

Right, all my decos are duly sorted and now it's time for more coffee. And more chocolate. I am telling you, at this rate I won't be able to fit into my knickers by the end of tomorrow, let alone into my dresses by mid-January.

Au Revoir Mes Amis - Part II

I always feel a little sad and very empty when I take my Christmas decorations down. Yes because, regardless of the continuous rants one finds in all newspapers and website as November nears its end, Christmas is my most favourite time of the year and I don’t care what everyone else says.

My decorations make me happy and the house always looks so drab and boring once they have been packed away that I’ve often considered keeping at least a string of lights around, just to remind me of good, cheery times. However, it’s never the same, is it? December is December and there is nothing like Christmas at Christmas; hanging on to glitter, sparkle, wreaths and fairy lights at nauseam never is a good look. They have to go and I have to let go.

I’ve finally managed it and I think that I did better than last year, when I succeeded in the knick of time, just before I left for the States. I’ve got it all done and dusted even though I am already planning next Crimbo’s tree, an all-silver affair covered in my beautiful white glass baubles. Gosh, I cannot wait already.

Epiphany

When I was a child, I accepted that the day of the Epiphany was the last day of Christmas. I never asked myself what epiphany itself meant, if anything at all. It was only many years later, while studying James Joyce, that I found out that epiphany means sudden revelation. To the uninitiated, it may seem like a distant relative of the déjà vu, and yet, they have nothing in common, for the epiphany is more similar to the concept of uncanny as elaborated by Freud, than it is to Groundhog Day.

It all fell into place; the sudden revelation of the baby Jesus to the Three Wise Men was as appropriate an example of epiphany as Gretta’s own revelation in Joyce’s The Dead. I realised that I have epiphanies all the time, too many to mention on here, and too many so painful and private that I am not brave enough to even dwell on in my own time.

Today I had such an epiphany as I crossed St Anne’s Square and heard the angelic voice of a young soprano. It was very frigid as it has been for a number of days and this girl was belting out arias from Tosca, red face et al. She really shouldn’t sing outside like this, for she may spoil her voice. Many people stopped by and dropped some change at her feet and there, right there, watching a talented singer busking, because this is really what she was doing, I had my most recent, and one of my most painful, epiphanies. I need a job. A paying one. And damn fast.

Press Pause - Part II

When I wrote this, I was so very keen to stop time words didn’t even come close to expressing it. Now I feel like I always do at this time of year; no matter what happens, or fails to happen, in my life, I am always eager to pause on the Christmas holidays and to live in this slow, not-a-care-in-the-world limbo for ever. And I am not one of those self-righteous, operous people who proclaim that they couldn’t possibly live in a permanent holiday state. I damn well could I am telling you, as there is nothing I enjoy more than feeling delivered by the tyranny of domesticity in all of its annoying guises.

Tin Toy

I once read that nostalgia creeps on us around year thirty, when we are old enough to remember childhood with fondness and still close enough to it to clearly recall its tribulations and its happiness. I got a beautiful tin toy for Christmas and even though I never lived in the years of the tin toys (before WWII), nostalgia bells rang loudly in my ears as I edged the rocket ride out of its box. Now I cannot stop looking at it; it is so alluring and comforting in a way I've never known before. It is completely new to me, and yet uncanny in the Freudian sense of the term.



Above and beyond the fuzzy feeling, I got a little miffed as the packaging reads that 'The Schylling Collectors Series Tin Toys are made the same way toys were made almost 100 years ago'. Nothing bad there, right? Yes, but how about the other side of the box that also reads 'WARNING: NOT FOR CHILDREN FOR COLLECTORS ONLY', like it is an unexploded war bomb painted in pure lead?

If this beautiful toy is lovingly made as they used to, when kids only had paper, wood and tin toys to play with, why is it that one of today's kids cannot play with it? Has tin become more dangerous than, say, video-games, Barbie dolls, Big Jims? More dangerous than those annoying mono-skates that infest our pavements everywhere? Methinks this is another case of suing-culture spin... what if an idiot child decided to ingest the whole tin toy? Or maybe just one of the rockets? What if the kid decided to stick it into his eye or perhaps ram his little sister with it? Gosh, perish the thought that this lethal weapon were given as an actual toy to an actual child. Everyone knows that the more evolved we get and the more imbecile our children become. I am just glad I am not a child and can play with this all day, so there, ha ha ha, ho ho ho!

Christmas Wouldn't Be Christmas Without...

Monopoly

I have a love-hate relationship with this game. I cannot quite stand it and yet, come the Yuletide season, an unstoppable urge to play it descends upon me. I don’t play it at any other time of year and every time I get a glimpse of the box in the middle of July, it immediately conjures Crimbo up as much as...




Panettone

I must confess pandoro is my favourite, the tall star sprinkled with impalpable icing sugar, but then the basic version of panettone, the one that only has raisins, is a favourite too. It alone is the only reason I sometimes swap Starbee for Costa; they sell mini panettoni all year round and I just love to eat one, no matter the season.



Presents

Yes, shoot me if you must and then stick your own sense of leftist self-righteousness where the sun doesn’t shine. Doesn’t one of the greatest literary classics begins with ‘Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents’? Much as I hate Little Women, Jo utters one of the greatest truth known to mankind.

Home Alone and Home Alone 2

Kevin’s family, and his parents especially, always irritate me beyond belief, but so long as I close my eyes and grit my teeth when they come on screen, I am sort of ok. I am not shocked that they leave the kid at home you know, but that they cannot see that he is the smartest of the pack and gets bullied for the privilege. A modern classic and my favourite up until...



The Polar Express

Nothing else to say on this one.

Boxing Day Blues

Cold and Miserable - Part II and III

Well, I thought this cold near enough Christmas to ensure a safe holiday season but, oh no, ho ho ho, would that be the case? Of course not! I am in the midst of some other germ bout, with an open tap in place of a nose and a face as red as Santa’s. Yes, sure, it could be worse but, believe me, it could also be infinitely better. Why is it that of all days in the whole year I have to be poorly today? Why not any other day? Why not next week?

On a related note, I was thinking earlier today that if only we ourselves followed our own advice, life would be much easier. Because, you see, we are all great at dispensing advice, but not so good at following our own pearls of wisdom. It’s a case of talking the talk and walking nowhere. When male friends ask for an opinion on what to bestow on their significant others at Christmas, I always say this: ‘Absolutely anything but clothes’. And you know why? Not because clothes aren’t welcome to the female, but because they come in different sizes and females have a distinct tendency for blurting out the size they used to be or the one they wished they were and not the size they are. So absolutely no no no clothes under the tree, even if she begs for a Lanvin dress.

Why oh why did I tell my parents that I would have looooved a certain something to wear but was economic with the truth? Why did I, of all well-adjusted fashionable people, or all switched-on women with great female sensitivity and knowledge of the female mind was conservative on the bit about size? And so part two of the misery is this stinking cold and part three is a fabulous skirt that doesn’t fit me. Or it would have fit me if this had been Crimbo 2006 instead of 2008. And so the misery, and the diet, begins right now. Like today. In fact, it has already begun. That'll teach me.

The Raveonettes' Christmas Song

And sometimes a really great Christmas song can be very modern in every sense of the term without one slice of cheese in sight. If you've seen Christmas with the Kranks and have been pretty much unable to get the opening credits out of your head, here's the reason.

Cheese Please!

I thought I could survive this month without posting this video but I'm afraid resistance is futile. It was playing at the back of my mind all day anyway.

Christmas Songs

Not long ago I heard somewhere that Last Christmas by Wham! is the UK’s most popular Christmas song. Well, they should really call it a Christmas anthem, not a song, as it proves the point I was making a few days ago when I wrote about Music and Lyrics and cheesy 1980s pop songs. Today I sorted out this year’s Christmas compilation, a conglomerate of over one hundred jazzy pieces, classic carols, country versions, lounge remixes and, yes, cheesy ones as well.

Naturally, I’ve got Last Christmas too which, together with Hilary Duff’s (no less) Jingle Bells Rock, is one of those favourites that always prompts my own renditions belted out as soon as iTunes transmits the first two notes. For a while, Victoria used to walk up to me wagging her tail every time Jingle Bells Rock started; now she stares in disbelief as I persist to broadcast it in a loop, sometimes as many as twenty times an hour.

Of course iTunes has made the scouring for songs (Christmas or otherwise, if truth be told) as easy as getting a parking ticket; type in Winter Wonderland and 150 versions will fill up your screen ready to be tried and tested before you buy. I haven’t got all 150 versions but I have nine, for this is one of my favourite songs, as is Please Come Home For Christmas, which even Bon Jovi recorded many years ago, when Cindy Crawford was still a model and not the semi-retired mum she plays at these days.



I am also big on Blue Christmas (four versions), which for a time I referred to as my favourite Christmas song, and Let It Snow! (five versions) which always makes me think of New York in the middle of 2003’s blizzard, even thought that came in February. Above and beyond the classics that every Christmas compilation should include (by Louis Armstrong, Bing Crosby, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra), you must get:

Michael Bublé Let It Snow Let It Snow Let It Snow from the mini-album of the same name which also includes one of the most under-rated Christmas songs of all times, Grown-up Christmas List;

Kenny G’s Miracles: The Holiday Album and Wishes: A Holiday Album, fabulous jazzy songs from the guy who makes his sax sing, very grown-up Christmas music especially good for dinner parties (if you've got the space and stamina for those);

John Williams’s Home Alone Soundtrack, which includes the superb Somewhere In My Memory (you should also get the version in Sally Harmon’s A Cozy Christmas of course);

Putumayo New Orleans Christmas, the ultimate Christmas album from the Big Easy, it’ll make you wanna move there; and

Oh Holy Night which, no matter who sings it, is always an emotional affair.

Perfect Day

Perfect Days are like Awful Days: they catch us unaware like unexpected guests whose memories linger long after they've left. We all have a tendency to remember Awful Days above and beyond Perfect Days because they adhere to the rule spelt out by the media: only bad news is news. Yet, it never takes me longer than one minute to roll out my own Perfect Days, even when they happened eons ago.



Rich hopes that my writing work will sell well so that he can retire. When I protest that I want to retire too, he says that I've already done because I do not consider writing as work (while, in my view, it can't be considered work until I see payment for it, but that's another story). In the grand scheme of work-and-life things he is right; I am having a ball, as they say, and I've been having a ball since September and this full immersion into what I love officially began.



And so today I was telling a friend of mine that I am leading the Perfect Life and that I do not want to work ever again. I want to be a housewife, I want to be free to enjoy all I like to do without the sword of Damocles hovering above my head. Except for writing and academia of course, now, those wouldn't be swords, nor thundering clouds. We met for coffee(s), run a few errands, stopped by at her place, chatted some more, then I went home to tend to the guys, I got changed and headed downtown for a spot of Christmas Markets browsing. How I love these, let me count the ways! I know that German markets never have anything suitable for vegetarians (unless you're a bird) but I love them all the same. I am not one of those people who is only happy if she eats (but very nearly so).



The minor snag is that I do not want to do anything other than walking around and browsing, even when I have stuff to finish and I really ought to finish it right now. Still, there's always tomorrow, right? Or the weekend. Although I heard that The Polar Express is back at the IMAX and now that may take a whole day.

Assessing November

I am finally getting to the end of this series of posts. I swear I won't use this stupid title in the year. What was I thinking when I started? Why assessing month x, as if I were writing a damn report? You all know by now that the most notable thing about November is that I finished my book and I sent it to the publisher for editing and that's all there is to say for a month that was, with the exception of the past few days, intense writing only. Now back to London...



Liberty is one of my favourite places, especially so at Christmas because the selection of decorations is always slightly different from the usual suspects found across the nation from John Lewis to Harrods. But this is not all. I've often walked its wooden boards dreaming of living there, not in the shop itself, but in the house that it looks it could have been in the distant past. Yet, despite its mock-Tudor look, both inside and outside, Liberty was always a shop. Its current premises were in fact built at the beginning of the 20th century and have as much to do with the Tudors as I have with a size 6. I bought some vintage-inspired glass ornaments and spent quite some times in haberdashery, where I fantasised about quilting now that I have finally figured out how to use my sewing machine.

There was more to London this weekend than just shopping or indeed eating (at Laduree of course, but also at the Patisserie Valerie, at Zia Teresa, at Fortnum's Parlour and others). There was also this:



But if you too have seen The Mousetrap, you will know that I cannot reveal who has done it after all...

Christmas Windows

I have a very soft spot for two very specific types of mail that come through my letterbox: the Studio Catalogue and the Harrods Magazine. When I mention this to anyone willing to listen, this anyone is baffled, if not shocked, by this coupling, for Studio and Harrods could not be more different if they tried.



The former is the purveyor of all throw-away cheap and nasty tack, Christmassy or otherwise, including revolting boiled sweets of the basest sort and vulgar willie-and-tits-shaped chocolates, while the latter sells everything for everyone everywhere, provided this everyone has a job trading commodities such as oil (the black, not the olive, sort) or weapons and can therefore afford essentials such as £1m snooker tables or £ 18,000 Swarovski-encrusted table footballs.

Still, Harrods is one of my favourite places and the one that has the very best sale in town if not in the world. Having shopped at Saks, Neiman Marcus, Bergdorf Goodman, Harvey, Selfridges and everywhere else all the way down to Lord and Taylor, John Lewis and Macy’s, and having read the past ten years of French, British, American and Italian Vogues, I really do know my market. This year, the Christmas windows pay homage to the latest Bond, James Bond outing in Quantum of Solace (nice title by the way, not that it means anything to me), with glamourous Bond girls languidly draped over desirable objects, wearing very gorgeous dresses, among typical Harrods super-lux settings.






Yet, for all of its refined bling (a bit of an oxymoron this one, but not quite if you know Harrods), my personal award of Best Christmas Windows in London goes, yet again, to Fortnum and Mason. Fortnum has a real knack for creating magical displays that tell a story. I recall their fabulous Alice in Wonderland windows for example, but this year they have surpassed their own greatness, with an icy take on the Snow Queen having children and adults alike stopping agog, ooohing and aahing with their mouths open. And I’ll tell you something else... I wasn’t the only one taking pics of these.

Au Revoir Mes Amis

I always feel a pang of sadness when I have to take the Christmas decorations down. As I wrap the glass ones in copious amounts of tissue paper, I wonder how I’d like it, to be a Christmas decoration that gets just four weeks a year of fresh air and ends up spending the rest of it sweating out in the attic in the warmer months and shivering in the colder ones. I presume January must be the most difficult time for the Christmas decorations, knowing that after gorging the spotlight for the whole of December, they are off on a detox diet of silence and coldness. At night, when I hear small hushed noises from the attic, I always think it’s them, jumping out of their boxes and living it high in a Toy Story meets Beauty and The Beast manner. Then I get up the following morning, and pass by the lounge and wish they were all down here singing and dancing, lightening up the mood of the home when all I can do is wait for Valentine’s Day to approach.

This year it took me a good three days to pack and store everything away, not simply because I couldn’t dedicate a good 8-hour stretch to the job but, if greater truth should be told, because I really have a lot of Christmas stuff. There are the trees (four, even though usually it’s only two that see the light of the season for I decidedly lack the space for more), the stockings, the cards, and then the wreaths, the garlands, the lights, the nativity set and numerous ornaments that end up infesting every corner of the house, from study to kitchen via bathroom and porch. Of course I do not resent putting them up when the time is right, but I do dislike the packing up process. It takes less time, but the emptiness it leaves in the house is not conductive to appreciating the task in any way whatsoever. And so this year I have left a number of fairy lights around, and I can tell you that the plain ones, even when set within clear bubles are decidedly un-Christmassy when on their own and so will provide me with comfort and joy all year round.