First Christmas

It’s been a while. Festivities started early for us, due to complex family plans, so we have already had our family Christmas. Now we’re prepping for the next one. Thankfully our first one was a relatively low key affair. Minimal gifting, a rolling buffet instead of much roasting of meat and just us and the kids. Tallulah and Dani prepared a family quiz, which was hilarious and kind and clever. We played card games, watched old episodes of Ghosts and took sporadic naps. It was one of the nicest Christmas day’s I’ve had.

I was particularly proud of my gifting. Finances are fierce at the moment and everyone is living here there and everywhere and doesn’t want to be hauling huge, cumbersome gifts about, so everything was either edible or second hand except for one thing, which I bought from this magnificent shop - Revere The Residence. It is hands down my favourite shop in the world. Everything in it is brilliant and everyone who works there is also brilliant.

I am almost ready for my next Christmas Day, which apart from roasting a huge piece of beef, will be much like the one we have already had but without Tilly, who has gone back to her actual home to have Christmas with her partner and his family. We will miss her, but it doesn’t do to be too greedy. Also, in practical terms, it is very hard to lodge six people on a boat with two bedrooms, so although I am sad she won’t be here, there is more room to breathe. Oscar has spent the last few days at his girlfriend’s house, so that’s also been quite handy, space wise. If I win the lottery I am definitely buying a guest boat.

Living on a boat does force you to concentrate harder on your life, which is not always a bad thing. There isn’t much room for excess or sloppiness. You have to take the time to sit and figure out what is important to you. What will you keep? What will you discard? Preparing to live here involved months of these kinds of decisions and every new experience brings another round of assessments and revelations. What I have discovered is that it is the thinking about it all that is the most difficult. The doing is usually pretty easy.

I have surprised myself in terms of what I can live without, which turns out to be a lot more than I thought. I am also quite pleased that some things that I was putting off doing because the thought of them made me tired and there was too much mental heavy lifting, have been unavoidable, so I have had to get on with them. Christmas is a case in point. I have been trying to slim down festivities for some years now, with varying degrees of success. This year I have had to just get on with it for all kinds of reasons and it has been pretty liberating. At no point have I found myself yearning for the things I can’t have, which is a pretty good feeling. I do not feel in the slightest bit cheated or covetous of what other people have or are doing.

There were two things I wanted to do before our early family Christmas that I didn’t get time to do. One was to go and get a panettone ice cream from Badiani’s in Wood Wharf. The other was to go to Panzer’s Deli in St. John’s Wood and buy some smoked salmon pate. Generally, the thing about not having time to do things is that there are invariably other days on which you can do them which may turn out to be as good or even better. As it turned out, we went with Tilly to wave her off on her travels yesterday and as we were on Finchley Road, Jason and I walked to Panzer’s and got my salmon before hopping back on the tube. Then we walked home via Badiani’s and I got my panettone ice cream and they were both as delicious as I dreamed, and made me slightly less sad that Tilly had gone. So that worked out well.