TOO MUCH YEAR

It feels today as though there's way too much 2018 at the end of the year.

I don't mean that it hasn't gone quickly, they all do these days, don't they - and this one's gobbled through the months like Augustus Gloop's advent calendar - I think I just mean that I've kind of had enough of it.

I'm really tired, and, had I already finished my Christmas-shopping, I'd be absolutely ready, even tomorrow... to sit back in an arm-chair, with a skewiff paper hat, that post-prendial-glow that you only get after a Christmas dinner, and a smooth glass of something rich, red, and silky, and I'd not do anything at all until the fireworks explode over the Houses of Parliament on New Year's Eve.

I've not scoped the end of 2018 well then; I've not paced myself. And as usual, there's much to do and somehow not a lot of time to do it in. It makes me wonder whether there's a better way to do it all.

I woke up late this morning. I'd been dreaming I was walking through the Andes with some geography teachers, and so I was a little tardy getting to work. Then, as I clambered out of the car, I somehow managed to fall backwards back into it (I don't know how), injuring my arm on the gear-stick and the handbrake. Good job I didn't do that en-route to Macchu Picchu! The geography teachers would have laughed their socks through their sandals. Oh, and also I might have tumbled to my death.

So anyway, there are still a few days to go.*

The fabled Christmas Do is tomorrow, which I will navigate cheerily. I will. I'm telling myself I will. Then the weekend... looks like a flurry of carolling, decorating, tidying, arranging, and festive joys, interspersed with hunting for My Secret Santa and Other Animals, in the twilit melée of Salvation Army tunes, and long queues in warm shops.

Next week, work winds down, there are two more 'you-sing-it-I'll-play-it' carol-events, and then I'm home and dry with my Christmas jumper, my skewiff hat, and my festive glass of Ribena.

Well. Of course, it won't quite work out like that will it. Sigh. Still, as long as there's some joy and some hope around, maybe the peace will follow as the tail end of this slightly-too-long year fizzles out. Ah you can but dream.

Just hopefully not about geography teachers in South America.


*I of course, mean of the year, and not of me.