At home

It’s the stillness, the silence, I cherish here.  The doorways and stairway between the desk and the front door mute even the flap of the letterbox.  One phone is switched off; the other unplugged, confining interruptions to a virtual world of voicemail.  I can hear only the rattle of my keyboard, a clock ticking, the quiet swish of the central heating, and an occasional sigh as the puppy adjusts her sprawl under the desk.  Sometimes I add the click of the kettle and  quiet grumbling as water comes to the boil. 

This morning, even the light is quiet.  Low creamy winter sun is creeping over the roof of the house behind, and falling across my shoulders to fall exactly on the top shelf of a bookcase. The gilt titles on one or two hardbacks gleam, but softly.

Soon it will be very different.  I’ll leave this home for another and plunge into the hurly burly of Christmas. 

Christmases to remember: a luau in Waimea under the shade of canopy with Father Christmas, hot and sticky  in beard, fur trimmed red jacket, long black boots and a green hula skirt delivering gifts to small-pigtailed children in spangled pink party frocks; walking alone through Sefton Park, deserted and snowy under a clear blue late afternoon sky; lost in thick mist on Dartmoor  after eleven courses at a small hotel;  a night walk across Plymouth Hoe, with my father and the dog, looking at the stars and watching the lights at Jennycliff; the first time I had champagne for breakfast.

You need time for Christmas – lots of time.  Time to meander through buying  and wrapping presents; to sit at the kitchen table with a plate of biscuits still warm from the oven, writing letters to slip into cards; time to tie up and boil a Christmas pudding, choose crackers, fill stockings, sing carols.  People don’t have this time any more.   Even buying vegetables and crackers for cheese has to be crammed into a half day taken as holiday from work.  Late night shopping, extended opening hours, miles of shelf space devoted to Christmas puddings and mince pies, gift wrapping services all bear testament to this.  Carol singers now gather in shopping malls not on front door steps, and the Salvation Army brass band sits in the doorway to a large supermarket; places where, if you can pause to listen, others cannot, and will grumble that you are blocking their way, holding them up.  Listening to Christmas carols has become another item on a long list, to be ticked off you speed along aisles, filling a shopping trolley.

I have time.  At this moment, I have time.  And I shall have time again afterwards, when I hope it won’t feel too late.  I’ll look at photographs and remember that I was there then, and hope I know what it was that was there.