Mistletoe and wine
My Christmas Day featured neither mistletoe nor wine, and there was also a regrettable lack of children singing Christian rhyme. There were no logs on our fire because we haven’t had the chimney cleaned recently, and it wasn’t practical to hang gifts on the tree because it’s an artificial one from Argos and the branches aren’t terribly strong. Finding time to rejoice in the good that we see was also a bit problematic, due to an unexpected electrical failure which temporarily plunged our home into darkness 
Despite what Cliff Richard may thus have determined as festive shortcomings, it was nevertheless a thoroughly enjoyable day, not least because I received so many lovely presents.
I now have no fewer than nine new books to read (none of which, I rejoice to say, are by Thomas Mann!) and two new DVDs to watch (one in Esperanto, one in German). I also have a new handbag (well, when I say new I confess that it will be the first handbag-type-accessory I have owned in my life), a much-needed new pair of slippers, and a whole host of things I didn’t need at all but which are nevertheless incredibly welcome, especially when of the edible variety.
For me, the present which made me happiest was one which I actually received prior to the official day itself, in the Christmas card my boyfriend gave to me. Despite the fact that we have now been going out for just over eleven months, the only photos I had either of him or of us together were ones I had saved on my phone, and so he got a couple printed out for me.
One is probably my favourite photo ever; the pair of us sitting by the side of the river in Toulouse when we were on holiday there in September. We had actually split up a fortnight or so prior to the holiday and at the point the photo was taken the future was still very much hanging in the balance, so in some ways for me it is a very poignant photo, reminding me as it does of how I was feeling inside at the time. It is, however, overwhelmingly a photo of great happiness. I confess that I have it permanently set as the wallpaper on one of my phones so that I can sit and think soppy thoughts over it whenever I feel depressed or in pain 
My boyfriend’s amputated head looks soooo terribly cute in it, and sometimes thinking about him can give me more strength to get through the day than just a couple of painkillers.
I would love nothing more than to frame it and put it in a prominent place in my room, so as to increase the chances of me randomly catching glimpses of it and getting filled with warm gooey feelings, but there is a slight technical hitch. Namely, that for reasons I don’t care to explain, it is terribly important that certain other people think I was in Düsseldorf that week. Since the photo was thoughtfully left undated by my boyfriend this would not cause a problem, were it not for the fact that on those slightly crazed occasions when I am leading a double life, I make a habit of packing clothes I don’t normally wear as part of my complex suspicion-deflecting procedures. It so happens that the photo depicts me wearing a T-shirt which the crucial people in question might know I have not left the house wearing over the entire course of the summer. This is a rather minor problem and one which a bit of ingenuity will easily be able to explain away; I do indeed intend to explain it away and frame it in the very near future, but right now I’m not feeling well and on head-muddling medication which means I don’t feel equal to much ingenuity, and am loathe to suddenly produce the photo for fear of somehow messing up my explanation and a whole lot more besides. For now then, I’m just keeping it in a drawer next to my bed, where it is still easily accessible for me to turn to mush over should the urge to do so become particularly strong.
If, incidentally, that small example of the unnecessary complications which I have somehow accidentally introduced into my life shocks and confuses you, I would steer well clear of this blog 
When I coined the tagline “with a life that’s stranger than fiction”, that was really only a fraction of what was meant…
Luckily, my boyfriend was kind enough to give me a second photo, which shows him looking wonderfully attractive and moody at the World Scout Jamboree in July. I’ve framed this one immediately in a silver frame which my great aunt gave me for my twenty-first birthday, and now have it sitting in pride of place on my window ledge where I can drool over it to my heart’s content. Also, where it can make my mother jump when she comes into my room to close the curtains 
Interestingly, this is the first year ever that no one has bought me a diary. I am normally an enthusiastic diary-keeper, albeit one who lacks a certain discipline, so that I have certainly started keeping a daily diary every year since I was ten, but sometimes tailed off by the time I got to summer. Last year my diary keeping was shamefully spasmodic, which is quite regrettable considering it was arguably the most incident-filled year of my life. The problem, I suppose, with diaries is that when you don’t have a life you have plenty of time to write them, just nothing of interest to say. Then as soon as you start to acquire a life, you begin to have fascinating occurrences to populate it with, but a distinct lack of time to commit them to paper.
I am in two minds as to whether to go out shopping and pick up a diary in the January sales. On the one hand, there is a certain amount of excitement to be had from purchasing a brand new diary and sitting flicking through the empty pages, speculating on what you will fill them with. On the other hand, do I need a paper diary when I have at my disposal such a wonderful website on which to keep a blog? There are some things, perhaps many things, which are not suitable for discussion online and I certainly have no intention of letting this blog degenerate to the level of depression and self-indulgence which my other attempts appear to have done. But perhaps there is an argument for the case that if a thought is not suitable for inclusion here, it is a thought which should not be recorded anywhere at all.
In any case, Christmas 2007 was greatly enjoyable and marred only by a lower than anticipated turnout at ten thirty Mass on Christmas morning. Do the rows of empty benches in a church which in my own lifetime it has had standing room only for late arrivals herald the decline of the Catholic Church in England? Perhaps, but I console myself with the knowledge that it is quality not quantity, and since the esteemed Tony Blair finally outed himself as a Catholic last week, we are most certainly no longer lacking in the former :ninja: