Having been instructed to write a blog - here I am. My blogs always begin their lives in one of two ways, either I am eagerly typing away as if there was no tomorrow or I sit for ages staring at a blank screen and hope that some inspiration and hopeful words will fall from the sky. Today I am trying something different. Today’s blog will be me typing things as I think them.
So often when I reach the end of the day and come to write my Twitter smiley thoughts I cannot remember everything that has happened. At the moment my free time is being gobbled up in making Christmas presents - which I love - and filing my tax return - which I don’t love! In the whirl of things to do it is very possible that somewhere along the way the really important things that are worth taking time over get lost. Last night, as part of an attempt to watch all our Christmas films before Christmas (which is not going to happen because we have just got too many!) we watched The Grinch. If you haven’t seen it, you’re missing out. It’s not the ludicrously overacted parts, or the totally bizarre world that is created in it, it’s that age old idea of seeing beyond all the frothy frivolity and working out what really matters. There is a line in the classic Band Aid single “Do They Know It’s Christmas” that irks me each time I hear it - and as I think that otherwise it is a fantastic song, I hear it quite often!
And there won’t be snow in Africa this Christmas time
And the greatest gift they’ll get this year is life.
I think the greatest gift anyone will get this year is life. It’s a shame they never thought to swap the word “greatest” for the word “only” (which is what I think they meant!) that might have made it a perfect song!
My light reading entertainment that travels everywhere with me - quite literally as it is shoved in my handbag! - is Philip Glenister’s nostalgic book “Things Ain’t What They Used To Be”. [It is quite possible that at this point my blog readers will now be utterly confused at the giant tangent I seem to have taken here, but hopefully you will see the point shortly!] The final section is without a doubt one of my favourite parts of the book where he carefully lays out Christmas as it was when he was a child with a real fondness. While the image of one brother becoming irate enough to tip up the Monopoly board after the use of some extreme house rules is perhaps the part that makes me chuckle the most, what I really love is the way Christmas really seemed to be a family event.
And now to tie up these rambling observations:
Without meaning to sound too twee, but hoping that some of my point reaches my blog readers, we shall be having all the trimmings. The turkey, beef, ham, sausages and bacon are all coming from our local butcher, the tree shall be set up and decorated with hundreds of lights and baubles collected over so many years, and there will be presents stacked under it come Christmas day. And, yes, I will be hanging up a stocking and I do believe in Santa Claus/Father Christmas/Saint Nicolas or whatever you wish to call him - he is, after all, everything that the season stands for in one figure - but I know that come Christmas morning if I have my family, life and health I will have had my best present.
In the meantime, I’ll plough on with my tax return and endeavour to get my presents completed in time… Wish me luck!
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