NEVER BROUGHT TO MIND

It was all the rage

To hit the town

To count those final seconds down

To crowd inside unpleasant pubs

Or squeeze a way

Through sweaty clubs

For midnight’s chime

And raucous cheer

To welcome in that brand new year

With plastic glass of foamy beer

That’s never brought to mind

It was just the thing

To dance the night

In swirling bulbs of Christmas light

Until the hint of childhood missed

Was twisted on that midnight kiss

The music loud

The spinning world

A neon number now unfurled

With flickered hope in mind

And now we’re old

On New Year’s Eve

It’s so much harder to believe

We’d all dress up

And choose to leave

Our sofa and our families

To pick instead an awful night

And not the warmth

Of love and light

We’d surely left behind

THE SOUL, THE HEART, AND THE MEMORY

For Sammy and me, it’s been a Christmas in transition. Behind us, our wealth of traditions and memories, each telling us how Christmas ought to be, ahead of us, the home we haven’t reached yet.

There were some things we started though. On Christmas Eve, we went to Midnight Communion - this time at a new church. The candles twinkled and the rector preached, and we sang rousing hymns until it was time for “May I be the first to wish you all a very Merry Christmas” and we shared the ‘peace’. It was nice to be there with Sammy. Then we all sang all the long verses of O Come All Ye Faithful, and stepped out into the Christmassy night air.

It was our first married Christmas too, which made it all the more poignant. Stockings, just like we used to do in our family, then round to her family for dinner and gifts and games. It’s been excellent for me to get to know everyone a bit better, though, once again, I was missing my own family too.

Christmas was always so grand and so majestic, right from the beginning. I miss those family times. But families grow and change shape - and then houses are not big enough and distances are not small enough, and so the scintillation of Christmas magic starts again somewhere new, mixing up grief and joy and hope and bittersweet memories. I wish I had known that that was the way of things when I was young. But that, I know, is not the way of things.

The transition for us this year is that we’re not exactly somewhere new, but not somewhere old either. So it’s natural to miss the way we were, but also it’s inevitable that we long for the way things will be.

Boxing Day has long been my family get-together day. I wish I could describe it well this year. One sister, absent with grief; another there and croaky with flu, my parents clutching tea to keep warm, and a big TV screen showing a computer game - around which my fifteen-year old nephew threw gangly arms and bobbed his curly ADHD hair. The niblings have grown up.

My niece, now 20, was sipping a snowball (which I thought was custard) and my third sister’s boyfriend was there, to add unhelpful comments to proceedings. Sammy was quiet. I just missed my Grandma.

Christmas was born in transition, wasn’t it? We paint our nativity scenes with warmth around the stable, retro-projecting our own notions of family, home, and safety onto that holy night. But it was cold too. It was dangerous. It was temporary.

Anyway. That shouldn’t give you the impression we’ve not had a good time. It’s been wonderful in its own unique way. Having a wife who shares love for the season is a joy and a delight, and the permanence of her on the first Christmas morning of many to come, felt like a gift I could never have imagined. It will probably sit up in my mind as a Christmas like no other, given the context, but one infused with wonder and delight, alongside that very grown up feeling of loss and nostalgia.

And it’s not over! We’re still after all, only on le jour de three french hens, and the hallowed season of Betwixtmas has only just begun. Today we’re going for a walk and doing some baking - small things, but things that are good for the soul, the heart and the memory.

ANDY WILLIAMS HAS A WONDERFUL TIME IN SAINSBURY’S

“It’s the most wonderful time of the year…” sang Andy Williams in Sainsbury’s. We were doing our Big Christmas Shop, calculating the moment when the veggies would be at their freshest and the store would be at its least frequented. I’m sure someone’s done equations on that but I don’t care to look it up: it’s Christmas after all.

I don’t think I can agree with Andy Williams though. I mean Christmas might have been the most wonderful time of that particular year, a year that saw the assassination of JFK and escalation of the Vietnam War. But Andy doesn’t really go into detail about why. He just goes on about ‘mistletoeing’ (not a word) and ‘scary ghost stories’ (not entirely Christmassy).

Sainsbury’s got gradually busier as we pushed our trolley round. From the snippets of conversation we overheard (not to mention our own debates about the list) it was clear that hardly anyone in the store was having a good time.

“I’m just getting through it and out of here as fast as possible,” said one lady, her sequinned Christmas jumper glinting in the frozen aisle. Others were even less impressed. A gentleman gave me a look of solidarity as his wife led the way through a crowd by the cheeses. One hand held a long list, the other a pen. He seemed to be blindly following her, and crossing things off with a wistful eye on the price labels. I raised an eyebrow back, knowingly.

The staff were stressed too. Shelves needed restocking and shuffling with whatever the computer had decided goes where - decorations are gone, nibbles are in. Gifts are dwindling and boxes of Quality Street are invading the ‘seasonal’ aisles. And in between all the changes, their store was crowded with these pesky customers - people who stop and dawdle, can’t control a trolley and don’t know where the chutneys are. And there were hundreds of them.

Sammy and I got to the end of our list and escaped with a Starbucks hot chocolate. I peeled open the long long receipt and scanned it for discounts and nectar points.

“Ooh Santa,” she said.

“Well I am checking it twice,” I replied.

Andy was the only one having a truly ‘wonderful’ time, I realised. His heart has been glowing with those Christmas royalties since 1963. Lucky old Andy.

COLD STARS AND BURST PIPES

I wanted to shout at the night sky. I don’t think it would have done any good, but I wanted the stars to hear it.

We had been close over the weekend. The solicitors had moved quickly, paperwork finally sorted; we’d drawn the funds and we were ready. We’d even got our friends ready to help us collect our stuff from the lockup on Wednesday. It looked like it was all coming perfectly together, just in time for Christmas. The miracle was on.

And then it wasn’t.

“Matt,” garbled the estate agent, “Basically there’s been a disaster at the top of the chain…”

My heart. My heart can’t take much more of this, I thought, staring at the road outside Malcolm’s front window. The cars were rushing by, the sky was December grey, and the Christmas lights twinkled with some sort of misplaced joy.

A burst pipe has flooded the house our vendors are buying. That means they’re stuck where they are, and so are we - if we are anywhere at all - for Christmas, perhaps for good. The delay might push beyond the end of our mortgage offer, meaning, well, meaning we might have to find somewhere else, rent, and almost certainly lose a lot of money. We went from twinkly Christmas joy to bleak midwinter in the blink and fizz of a tree bulb.

Worse, I had to tell Sammy, right away. I didn’t know how to do that; I knew how upset she would be, I knew the voices that would whisper in my head when she burst into tears. I knew how awful it would all sound when it came out of my mouth.

We’re so tired. My cheeks are lined with tears and I have no clue how to turn this back to thanks and rejoicing, despite everyone we know urging us to do that. I wish I were a better Christian, more resilient, more focused on heaven than home somehow, less strainable. But I’m not. I’m hotheaded and angry, and emotional and stressed. I stand outside my father-in-law’s house and I shout at the sky.

The stars looked back, cold and silent.

WINDSOR AT CHRISTMAS

Back to Windsor today. It’s different to the last time. The Queen, like the summer we last saw her in, has gone. Winter has coated the castle in snow, just an icing on the battlements, the green grass and the cannons, but enough to show which season it is.

There’s something about the castle at Christmas. They decorate the ornate rooms with huge, sparkling Christmas trees and garlands and wreaths. Underneath the trees, between the seventeenth-century sofas and gilded pianos, are boxes of presents, wrapped neatly in Victorian paper and ribbons. It’s just the right amount of poshness and old-fashion to make it charming.

It’s strange though, how different it all feels without Her Majesty. Sammy pointed out how she feels the same - as though our connection to the monarchy has been somehow diminished and what we have left is doing its best, but won’t ever be what it was. That’s not the King’s fault. It just takes time to get used to the new, when you were so familiar with the old.

This week we also watched Harry and Meghan’s six-hour Netflix documentary about their long journey out of the Royal Family. That is one complex situation isn’t it? In a way, none of us are qualified to comment, and yet all of us seem to have the need to. There were two things that stood out. One, hurt people hurt people, and two, if the queues to get into Windsor this morning are any measure of anything, the monarchy will survive just fine, regardless of what the beetroot-faced newspaper men might furiously tell us.

It was nice to see the soldiers in their long winter coats. They marched past imperiously, arms swinging, rifles and bayonets high. You don’t ever want to get in the way of those people.

And the castle, there for a thousand years, uninvaded, impenetrable on its steep bank over Windsor and Eton, glistened in the winter sun. Behind it, the layered sky of foggy banks and wispy clouds, soft-stroked like an impressionist painting in grey, gold and silver. It was so different to last time. So much seems to have changed. And yet beneath the frozen snow and icy patches, it really hasn’t. I think that’s a good thing.

EXPECTING SNOW

We were expecting

A blanket of snow

That covers the world in white

But all we got was

A handful of flakes

That had soon disappeared overnight

We never get snow

It’s not very fair -

When the weatherman said it would come!

We were expecting

Toboggans at dawn

And a magical day for some fun

Meanwhile on Facebook

Our friends in the north

Are posting their pics up online

Throwing snowballs about

With carrots and gloves

And having a whale of a time!

We were expecting

A blanket of snow

Instead it’s a normal old day

At work and at school

Where it’s boring and dull

And the sky is still heavy and grey

SNOWY DENOUEMENT

So there wasn’t quite a Christmas miracle. Just more confusion. I think (and to be honest, I need to call the solicitor later) that we can exchange, the funds are ready and so is the chain… apart from what the emails yesterday called the ‘intransigence’ of the people at the top of the chain, who for some reason are only now just realising that they’ve got a week to empty their house.

This whole process has been horrible. I once described it as handing over a bag of emotions to someone and watching as they reach in at random to decide which one to give you next. Here, at the sticky end of this miserable wait, it’s more like somebody dangling hope in your face and then snatching it away when you reach out to take it - again and again and again. We were quite prepared for closure yesterday; then they told us it was close, then they told us that it wasn’t, and now today we’re close again. I can’t take much more dangling about.

Isn’t there supposed to be a redemption-story in those movies? You know, like a grumpy old man who rescues a girl from a frozen lake and turns out to be a war hero. Or a mean lady, who has a change of heart on Christmas Eve and rips up that business contract after all? Where’s that character? Where’s our snowy denouement?

Well it’s not too late, I guess. As they say at my local Pentecostal deliverance centre, “God is an eleventh hour God, glory to God.”

I get it Pentecostals, you can put your arms down. Just sometimes I wish God could also be a 2pm-nice-and-early-so-you-can-stop-worrying-all-day God as well. But you know, I think he’s clever enough to be both. And what the Pentecostals know for sure is that we can trust him. So amen to that brother-sisters. Amen to that.

A MUTED RED LINE

Today’s the day then. Our Christmas deadline for exchanging. Perhaps I’m not full of enough faith, but there’s a muted sense of resignation about it. Neither of us expect the Christmas miracle.

I’ve been joking about how it should happen like it does in those movies - the snow falling at exactly midnight, and the whole town coming over with fresh-baked cookies. Then, in a flurry of surprise and falling snowflakes, the solicitor arrives with a freshly drawn contract and a bunch of keys wrapped up in bright red ribbon. Hark the Herald plays. We all sing as the Christmas lights sparkle, and then, roll credits.

“I think it’s okay to be pragmatic,” I said last night. Once again my brain was wrestling with the idea of letting go of hope to defend against disappointment. It seems very natural, but also… not very spiritual.

“The faith part of me really wants it to happen tomorrow; the logic is though, that it won’t,” I said to Gary. I was thinking about the two documents needed from our vendors’ vendors: the grant of probate and the non-revocation of power of attorney. Despite our solicitor reassuring us that they’re ‘straightforward’, I have a deep, uneasy feeling that both of those things are just as complicated as they sound. And we also have to remember that there’s probably a family trying to resolve that complexity in the middle of some grief.

So here we are - a muted red line, a simpering milestone: a resigned sense of gloomy predictability. In a way (although it means a nomadic Christmas in the cold) there’s some relief in it not happening today. At least we know where we are (or aren’t) for a few weeks - and admittedly, the pressure would be off for the festive period. It might not be the Christmas we wanted, but we can make the best of it.

NIGHT VOICES

“You can’t even keep her warm,” whispered a voice in the dark. I rolled over and buried my face in the thin duvet I’d been left with. It was cold. Next me to me, Sammy, wrapped up in every piece of sheet, duvet, pillow I could find, was shivering herself to sleep.

We’re still waiting for our house. If nothing happens today or tomorrow to unblock the paperwork at the top of the chain, then we are having our first Christmas together in someone else’s home, under someone else’s feet, with a pot-plant tree and a string of battery-powered fairy lights. And it is freezing.

The other day I asked my accountability pals whether they shouldered the burden of big decisions as the men in their marriages. As I was asking it, it seemed like such an old-fashioned question; a thought that had surfaced from the dark ages of misogyny when we used to agree that men were the head of the house. I don’t even know why I asked it! My friends talked about ‘division of labour’, and about how it’s important to carry things together, but also submit to each other’s strengths. I stopped short of telling them about the night voices.

“Pathetic husband, useless man. Your dad wouldn’t have let this happen.”

“I am a child of God,” I whispered back, silently, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. I am doing my best. I am… a good man…” It was all I had. I was weeping with tiredness.

I threw an arm around the shuddering cocoon of duvet and stroked the cold head that was exposed to the pillows. It was uncomfortable but at least it was a bit warmer for her. I don’t feel the cold like she does, so I was okay, but there was no way to go to sleep like that: all the angles were wrong.

All the angles were wrong. The cold, uncomfortable elbow, shoulder, ribs, knee. And the sharp voices that like the darkness so much. They are wrong though, I thought as I watched the shadows on the ceiling; my dad would have done the same thing in this situation, and I am far from useless or pathetic at this difficult assignment. I’m learning. And we’re waiting for a story that has been hard-fought-for, long awaited, and beautiful. And even in the middle of the night I knew, I know, I keep knowing: morning is coming.

ROTARY SANTA

The Santas are out. We saw one yesterday, perched in a Rotary Club sleigh outside Sainsburys. To be honest, he looked a little ropey, as though strung together at the last minute - off-red coat, cotton-wool beard and a face far too young to be the real thing. Also, I’m not sure what Rotary Santa was supposed to be doing, as all he had with him was a charity bucket and a stereo blasting out “Santa Claus is Coming To Town” at a distorting volume.

What do kids make of these Pound-Shop Santas? They surely can’t be fooled, can they? I mean, are there parents wheeling trollies into Sainsburys who are pushing the idea that the lonely man in a painted crate is the real, actual, bona-fide Father Christmas? I can barely believe it.

“Oh they’re just pretending to be the real thing,” I can just about remember my Mum whispering to me in a 1980s BHS. We’d been queuing up to see a man in a cupboard, guarded by surly elves and plastic penguins. She was trying to convince me that the people in Santa’s Grotto - including the elves with the look of disdain - were sort of representatives of an invisible, but very real Father Christmas, who obviously was too busy preparing at the North Pole at the time, and certainly wasn’t frequenting department stores in the Home Counties. No, she was clear - these people were his helpers, and I was to go along with the game of pretending while perched on the knee of a stranger, so as not to hurt their feelings or give the game away.

I’m not a parent. I don’t know how you navigate this topic with small children. I don’t even know if you can apply the same approach twice, or even if you should try. All I know, and all I knew then was, if there was a real Father Christmas, a real person who squeezed down our chimney and popped through the electric-bar heater somehow, it didn’t matter even half as much to me as being loved by Mum and Dad. So going along with the pretence was easy. Then I got a little sister and actually being one of Santa’s Little Helpers for her sake became my nudge-nudge wink-wink role. In fact, even now she texts me on Christmas morning to say: “He’s been! He’s been!” She’s 37.

Anyway, I smiled at Rotary Santa yesterday. I couldn’t tell whether he smiled back as his beard just wasn’t able to move the way normal beards do - along with his mouth. He jangled his bucket and looked at me with tired eyes. Why does Saint Nicholas need to collect money for a charity? And why does it have to be me?

“He sees you when you’re sleeping, He knows when you’re awake…” blared the stereo perched on the arm of the immovable sleigh. Poor old Rotary Santa, I thought. The Real Father Christmas wouldn’t really approve of this kind of representation, I’d wager.

And the kids aren’t hoodwinked for a second either, are they?

HOPE, HOME, AND FAMILY

I have found writing difficult lately. It’s ironic really - my first poetry book is about to come out, I’m employed as a technical ‘author’, and I am (as you’ve seen) engaged in lengthy correspondence with John Lewis. I just haven’t been able to put a decent blog post together for a while.

I’ve started a few. I had some observations on football the other day that were *chef’s-kiss* electric. I tried writing that one during England’s 3-0 demolition of Senegal in the World Cup but while it seems I can remain perfectly placid as the ball zips into the net, barely anyone else around me could contain themselves. It was all a bit distracting.

Then there’s the ongoing house drama. Writing about that is almost as deflating as trying to live through it, and fifteen weeks after moving out of our flat, we are kind of exhausted even talking about it. Not that we mind anyone asking.

Meanwhile the weather’s gone cold. Autumn slipped into winter somehow and now the afternoons are Christmassy and the wind is freezing. I could wax on about the weather again but I don’t think it’s exactly uplifting. I’ve come to realise that expressing yourself lyrically is fun and even therapeutic, but my poetry is not everyone’s cup of tea.

All of that leaves me in Costa, for a quick lunch break, and a drink that’s curiously all adjectives: a small, decaf, oat, flat white. I’m not even sure I’ve got those in the right order. How have we got to a world where a product is made out of adjectives?

I’ll try to write more often towards Christmas. That season, more than any other, seems to evoke a lot of emotions. It’s a swirl of colour isn’t it, around the ideas of hope, home and family.

I like to think about those things a lot at the moment.