It was the best of Times, it was the worst of Times. (I may let someone else write the whole of this now that the idea occurs to me). The day of the choir’s concert dawned with us all still in shock from the tongue lashing we had had at the weekend rehearsal.  The piece we were singing was Faure’s Requium and in Latin.  The tension was palpable as we stared like terrified rabbits into the conductors headlights but we did it! He kept miming SMILE at us but that’s quite tricky when you’re trying to sing through gritted teeth and  as I had observed previously, the title ‘Requium’ doesn’t generally suggest cheery.

People were extremely generous with their praise and afterwards we drank the vats of mulled wine in unexpected celebration instead of the anticipated drowning ourselves in despair.

Wednesday was the ITN Christmas lunch, always an occasion of dignified restraint. Ho Ho Ho! I managed to arrive home without my overcoat but at least this year it was only outerwear missing …

Last night I was supposed to be at another carol service but being a woman not yet quite mad enough,  I decided it would be a Good Idea to have the kitchen floor sanded and re-sealed.  By the time the men finished for the day it was too late even to creep in at the back of the church so I went round to my local Italian restaurant and, already light headed from  a day inhaling sawdust and varnish fumes in industrial quantities, rather overdid the Puglian red which brings me neatly to my latest hangover cure.  You are meant to consume this before retiring but messing about with a Nutribullet does not seem terribly sensible if drunk.

Take some milk, maple syrup, porridge oats, peanut butter and a banana and whizz it all together. I tend to add vodka – that’s up to you but recommended if you can’t find the other ingredients when reeling about the kitchen at two in the morning. Works a treat.

One of the downsides of going out and about during the festive season is the danger of getting stuck next to the sort of person you would normally cross the road to avoid – joggers, estate agents, remoaners.  It’s a worry.  Last night someone bored me for half an hour with his views on “the oppressed poor”.  Nothing patronising about that attitude. Normally we British nod and smiled wanly at these types and practice irregular Latin verbs in our heads to make the time pass more swiftly but on this occasion I wasn’t in the mood for lily livered nonsense.

”Are you aware that in X, a typical London borough, it is a FACT that one third of people don’t pay any council tax, thereby putting it up 50% for the rest of us? The police estimate that one in ten cars on the road has no road tax and therefore no insurance, the consequences of which also fall on those who do. Every day gas, electricity and water companies try to collect unpaid bills from people who have moved on without leaving a forwarding address, providing that the debtors have had their Human Rights letter first. (And I’m not making that up!)  Ditto with TV licences. That’s not oppression. That,  sweetie, is theft.”

There are children starting school who are not toilet trained, have never held a knife and fork, a book or a pencil,  who can’t speak in sentences. And it impacts on your child who’s in the same class.  I don’t care if you send them all to Eton; they won’t all come out the same because some of them are already 18 months behind by the time they start school. That’s not oppression. It’s bad parenting.

And spare me your thoughts on evil companies who don’t pay tax.  Does the government, of whatever persuasion, do anything about it? No doubt you use Google and Amazon and banks so you are part of the problem.  If you hate them so much why don’t you boycott them and bombard your M.P with letters of complaint? In fact, become an M.P yourself.  Do something!

As for the latest Blue Planet-inspired hatred for plastics in the sea, the overwhelming majority of it comes from just 10 rivers and none of them are anywhere near Europe so putting a deposit on my recyclable bottle of orange juice is going to make precisely bugger all difference and it’s not actually my fault.”

I hope I made myself clear.  Unless you are personally working on a solution I don’t want to hear that the problems of the world all directly attributable to me and my opinions.  The Complaints Department is closed for the holidays.

 

You may find it somewhat unnecessary for me to provide evidence of yet further derangement, given the overwhelming amount already available in these pages, but reader, a decline there has been.

Yesterday, lengthy pause, I want to the West End. I know, I know – why would you at any time. But a weekend in December?  Never mind the fish knives, Norman, get down here pronto with the straight jacket.

In my defence to the Mental Health Tribunal it will be stated that I had momentarily forgotten it was a Saturday, given that at my age most days feel like Saturdays, except Sunday which I continue to hate as a tribute to the 52 days each and every year of my childhood when I was bored beyond reason.

Should some film director at any time wish to recreate the last hours in Saigon as the Americans left, let him/her/it look no further than the queue for the lifts at Covent Garden underground during the festive season.  There was even an announcement warning people not to attempt to leave by the stairs as we were at the depth of a 15 storey building.  Information positively guaranteed to calm a claustrophobic crowd.

There are two reasons for this sudden decline.  Like most/all women I spend hours rummaging through the depths of my handbag whenever my mobile rings.  Even if it’s a tiny clutch bag.  Over the years I have on occasions managed to find it before the caller has given up but they are rarer than Edinburgh panda cubs. So how much crueller is it that now my iPad has started to summon me with bells too, at a stroke doubling the odds that I will never reach the appropriate device in the allotted five rings?

Add to this unhappy mix the fact that the cat chose to projectile vomit over the carefully written Christmas card envelopes, which she had thoughtfully knocked to the floor to ensure that the majority were hit.  Never mind nine lives; Miss Kitty is now in a negative liquidity situation even before we toss the smashed Art Deco clock into the mixture.

Talking of cards a girlfriend, well known for her inability to move at speed except when going down a one way street in the wrong direction, boasted to me that she had finished writing all her cards by December 1st. ‘That’s very impressive’ I acknowledged, ‘Now you just have to crack on with the ones for 2017’.