A wet weekend close to Christmas produces all kinds of things to do. First, you have to 'find the Christmas decorations' which means climbing into the loft, tripping over your children's precious droppings, exam papers and childhood toys, carefully categorised in crates and boxes which have never quite made their way to their owners' houses. Somewhere, in a dark corner, is a small box of obscure ornaments that one has never had the courage to throw away and which, if one did, would produce outcries from the same offspring along the lines 'but we always have the fairy on the mirror and then you forget to take it down until about Easter. It would not be the same without it.'
The imminent arrival of mobile grandchildren also an effect on our quiet ordered life. Evenings and weekends have been filled with visits to jumble sales for suitable toys, on line searches for travel cots, the installation of stair gates and fire guards, and a full health and safety assessment in the knowledge that anything movable will be moved. One is allowed a last lingering look at the television zapper as episodes of In the Night Garden and Abney and Teal are squeezed onto the digibox, taking up space for unwatched but reasonable adult viewing such as Downton Abbey and David Attenborough’s latest spectacular. The zapper will surely be hidden under cushions, beneath armchairs or lost in the doll’s house before long.
Then there are the Christmas lights. These seem to work first time which is a major step forward on the ones we bought all those years ago which just about lasted one Christmas and mysteriously lost the will to twinkle when stored in a loft. Now the challenge is to get the timer device to work the right way round and not turn the lights on at midnight and off again at teatime the following day.
Finally there is the Christmas letter which has to be cleared by three inveterate and literate editors, each of whom objects to what has been said/not said about them/their brother/sister. But for the result of that work, you will have to wait a week or so.
