Re: December 26/27 2005

I can’t help feeling time has warped a little. Christmas is now over, and I am typing this by candlelight, watching the inflatable light up snowman my brother bought my parents for Christmas slowly taking off across the garden. Such a shame.

It is a most surreal time, and not only because I am watching Frosty floating into the neighbour’s garden. Enforced ‘quality time’ in the days that people and time seem to forget. Boxing day and the day after seem to me to be vaguely empty, like some omnipotent force is trying to improve traditional family life by putting re runs of old films on the TV, and closing all the shops. It may seem terribly 21st century of me, but at this time of year, don’t we all miss the late night shopping?

Call it post-indulgence digestion time. Call it family time. Call the vacuum just plain boring. Maybe this is what I need? Time to take stock of what I have and don’t have in my life. Time to catch up with sleep/school work/friends/The Sound of Music/ Carry On films. Or maybe just time to plan the New Year’s party.

It seems unfortunate and unfitting to end a year, which has seemed to be event after event flying by in the pages of a diary, with emptiness and gluttony. I could say it seems unfortunate to end 2005 so soon, yet something in me is glad to see it passing.

Having taken time to rethink, restock and remember, I may head toward 2006 in the knowledge that it will be at least 362 days before I will have the time to watch the dreaded ‘Christmas TV’ again. Time goes by too quickly sometimes.