TENSION

I feel a tension deep inside me today. It's a niggling, nagging, itching discord that faintly scratches somewhere I can't reach. The worst of it is that I have no idea what it's about.

It's that feeling that you get when you can't be sure whether or not you've left a tap running or the hobs on, or you've said something to someone that you shouldn't have and it only lodged with you subconsciously when it was far too late to do anything about. I do try to be careful to think about what I say, but I haven't always got it right. I don't think I've done that, any of that; but that's the feeling I've got.

I believe tension can be useful. You can make a basic telephone out of yoghurt pots, a suspension bridge or a guitar; you can pull heavy weights to impossible heights or stop children falling from dangerous ones; you can ring out church bells across the land or fire particles around a collider until they explode - you can do all sorts with a little tension.

But this is not the creative tension between opposing ideas, pulling out a glorious solution. This is not the harmonic generated by pinching a string at both ends and giving it a twang. This feels much less musical - like it's me being stretched, catgut pulled impossibly tightly by opposing forces that I don't understand. This is tension and it's hugely personal and confusing.

Hmm. I'll revisit this.

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In the meantime, Christmas draws ever nearer. A great number of people it seems, are stubbornly refusing to think about, mention or have anything to do with Christmas until the first day in December. They say November is too early, that the season loses its magic if it begins barely a minute before midnight on that hallowed day, and that all who enter into Novembermas should be merrily ashamed of themselves for spoiling it for the rest of us.

I think it's odd logic, but I'm not going to knock those First Day Adventists. For those of us who play an active part in Christmas preparation, like rehearsing carols or writing Christmas music, 'tis the season from about October onwards. And for many people, the festivities spill out from the twelfth month where there really is no room at the inn for those extra events and traditions, and flood in to the end of the eleventh. We're even singing carols at a garden centre on Saturday (30th).

One tradition my sister and I have is the Christmas hamper. Every year, Dad's old work send us a hamper stocked with goodies: mince pies, sauces, wine, preserves, puddings, crisps, chocolates, wafers, condiments and compliments of the season. And every year since we were small, my sister and I have maintained the tradition of unpacking the hamper in a gloriously messy fashion.

She came round especially tonight for the Unpacking Of The Hamper. Who cares that it's November? It was great fun. There was packing foam everywhere (just as there is every year) and Mum pretended to get cross (just like she does every year) and the tins and jars and bottles are now lined up on the side, ready for the season (just like they are every year). Fun.

Oh! Maybe fun is supposed to be a kind of natural tension-relief. I think perhaps I need to have a think about that.