22nd December 22
A while back I sat down with Christmas and we had a chat. Up to that point I realised I’d mostly dreaded it. Family time has not always been that much fun, and so for me it just meant a lot of extra work. But actually Christmas is full of many things that I love: presents – giving and receiving, sparkly lights, candles, silly jumpers, decorations with lots of memories attached and a gooey roast dinner, you know the sort where you scrape the yummy bits off the bottom of the tin. So I wrote a list of all that we did, (I did), and asked Mike and the kids what they couldn’t bear to live without. There were surprisingly little and mainly involved a chocolate orange at the bottom of the stockings!
Then I wondered what I would like to do. It took me ages to work it out, but the end result was four twinkly stockings for the children and their lovely spouses. I love velvet and sequins and ribbon. I should really have been born in the 18th century, as a toff of course, otherwise I couldn’t have afforded the beautiful silk and baubles. But I spent some very happy weeks sewing.
My creative juices now of course go into the writing, at this time of year into the Crib service, which often involves making things too, so its a win win – happiness all around.
So I hope you all have a lovely Christmas. That you get space to do something that fills you up and if you can’t think of anything, you can always read one of my books again!
