Planes, trains and automobiles

Last Sunday evening, hundreds of candles glimmered as our church held its annual service of nine lessons and carols. 

The readings recreate the wonder of the Christmas Story and everybody joins in to belt out the much-loved carols.

Folks wear Christmas jumpers and Bill gives it some wellie on the organ.

It is one of the landmarks of our Christmas.

Putting up Christmas lights, Cornish style.

We are trying not to be dictatorial parents, but we had spotted the fact that all the offspring might possibly be back for the carol service, and we were allowing a little flame of hope to kindle…

Pascoe was joining us from London, Carenza was coming back from Will’s and Perran was getting a lift from Bristol.

During the day, we got updates from each of them and it began to remind me of a cheesy American film, about people getting home for Thanksgiving/Christmas.

In the end, Pascoe was with us in good time, Carenza slipped into the seat we had saved at the very last moment.  But Perran was still en route – his lift wasn’t ready to set off until quite late.  Plus there was something about a DJ forcing him and his friends to go out clubbing until 6 that morning.    Didn’t quite follow that story.  Don’t think I was meant to.

However, even though we didn’t quite all get to the Carols, everybody was home for dinner, which was brilliant.  Enough to keep me going until we are all reunited once more for Christmas itself.

Some Hope

I guess I don’t give my heart to Christmas completely. 

As we put up the decorations, I think about how long it will take me to fetch them down again on January 6^th and moderate my swags accordingly. 

When I buy gifts for the children, they aren’t luxuries.   I try to get useful things that I probably should have bought them anyway.  In our house, Christmas has become the Festival of New Pants.

I buy my Brussels sprouts (and indeed everything else) from Morrisons, not Waitrose – the Christmas meal will be pleasant, but would leave Mary Berry with that puzzled disappointed look we have come to know.

Perhaps I hold back because I’m afraid the festival will let me down. 

Don’t get me wrong, each year Christmas sends me into a complete tailspin of organisational frenzy, but it is partly because we have so many significant family birthdays in December.  And trips to grandparents in Cornwall and Northumberland to arrange.  Not to mention the complications of a Christmas dinner which must cater for a meat eater and a vegan, and every ideological regime in between.

However, I have reached the “no longer care” plateau quite early this year and am even pursuing other exciting projects such as replacing our double-glazing.

And yet part of me is waiting for Christmas to tiptoe up behind me and surprise me with a joyful hug, as it does most years.

Cornish Christmas

There was a hold up.  So when I finally set off for Cornwall, it wasn’t when I’d planned, and when I travelled, the M4 was completely blocked so I had to turn round and go back towards London and set out again on the M3 (should I have put a sat nav on my Christmas list?)

It didn’t feel like a good start.

But although things hadn’t gone to plan, it was certainly educational.

I discovered what happens when Jennie gets tinsellitis.

I learnt that Fiona and Izzie would rather take a country walk in the pouring rain than go Christmas shopping.

And that Mark felt the woods were safer than Marks and Spencer at this time of year.

And I found that Mum and Dad could be Lord and Lady of the Manor, if only granted the chance by the NT.

So really, it was all worthwhile.

Lazarus Gave me a Dead Leg

“Tonight Will and I are going to see Lazarus, the David Bowie musical” announced Carenza. 

“I wish I could go.” I was feeling sorry for myself as my plans for the weekend (visiting elderly parents) had fallen through. 

“You can.  We’ve got a third ticket.”

Wow.  Am cool and trendy.

Thought long and hard about what one wears to a David Bowie musical.  Realised how cold it was and put on an OAP jumper instead.

When I got there, even the venue was edgy – a big marquee by Kings Cross.  Will bought us each a prosecco and spotted an actor from Game of Thrones at the bar.

“Was he very short?” I asked.

“Not that one,” said Will.

The seating was clever too – the chairs were raised high to allow leg room for the lanky.  Unfortunately I am not lanky and was able to swing my legs like a prematurely-aged six year old on an outing with her parents.  Except that, (meanly, I thought) Will and Carenza wouldn’t let me sit between them.

The music was great, and the performances stunning. However, to praise Lazarus further would be disingenuous.  The plot was so confusing that I wasn’t even sure whether I should feel sad or happy at the end.  There was the odd moment of lucidity when one character explained the plot to another, but apart from that….

I wasn’t even able to fidget restlessly in my seat as my feet weren’t on the ground.  Two hours without an interval seemed quite long.

Then bizarrely on the way home on a dark city street, I kicked something soft.  It landed with a thud. I made the mistake of looking to see what I’d kicked.  It was the most enormous frog I have ever seen.  What was it doing on these mean streets on a November night? 

In spite of my boot, it was still alive, although injured.  It stared at me with an unblinking beady eye.  What to do?  Should I finish it off?  But what with?  And what if it wasn’t fatally injured? 

A coward, I left it, probably prey to an urban fox.  But the look it had given me stayed with me.  Didn’t this remind me of some fairy tale?  What if I had just been cursed by a magic frog?

The next day I woke up with a pain in my outer left thigh.  A week later, I had developed deep vein thrombosis.  Not in reality, just in my mind.  It was when I reached down and felt that my skin was numb that I panicked.  (I think it had been numb all along, but I’d been feeling through corduroy trousers which is a similar sensation.)

I googled the symptoms of DVT. 

Never google symptoms. 

Reassuringly I didn’t have the common symptoms.  Then I read the caveat which said, “Only half of those who have DVT experience any symptoms.”

There was nobody home so I drove myself to minor injuries. 

“We can’t help you – DVT isn’t a minor injury.”

I looked miserable.  They suggested I ring 111 and tell them I was already at a hospital and the 111 people might then ring the hospital I was already at and arrange for me to see a doctor there.

I rang the 111 people.  They wanted me to examine my leg over the phone.  I explained that I was in a public waiting room and couldn’t take my trousers off.

“Go to the loo.”

I crouched in the overheated loo with my trousers round my ankles, attempting not to make contact with the much-used toilet seat while they asked me questions, often ones that conjured unwelcome images, such as,

“Are you bleeding a lot?”

At the end of all that, they were pretty sure it wasn’t a DVT but I ought to see my GP.  When I finally got out of the loo, I had that swimmy feeling which means you are about to faint.  I sat in the waiting room with my head between my knees for a while.

But nobody was home and nobody was going to come to rescue me.  I would just have to pull myself together and get home somehow. 

And that was when I remembered the curse of the frog.

In the end, I had to hope that the poor frog had limped to safety, because my own fate was not as dreadful as it could have been – I didn’t have DVT.  Instead, the uncomfortable seat at Lazarus had pinched/bruised a nerve and it should feel better after some weeks.

So although seeing the David Bowie musical made me feel young, cool and trendy, I am not sure it was worth it as I now have a limp and am possibly living under a frog curse.