I remember the two bad ones well enough – the one in which
my 17-month-old daughter was badly scalded and spent Christmas in a specialist
burns hospital, and the one in which I was literally on the verge of suicide.
And then there was the amusing one when a young actress friend of mine from the
theatre invited me to the flat she and her husband were renting at the end of
my street. When I got there at around 7pm she was just putting the turkey into
the oven, and was suitably horrified when I pointed out that a turkey that size
would take around 4½-5 hours to cook. She was young, as I said, and it was her
first married Christmas. She’d never cooked a turkey before and hadn’t bothered
to research the matter, so we ate rather late that Christmas night. The
following year I went to stay with them in London. That was when I had that surreal experience
of lying on a four poster bed in a room above an Italian restaurant in Soho, talking all sorts of drivel to a
similarly-recumbent middle aged woman while sundry thespians wandered around the
bed in party atmosphere.
So that’s four, and that’s virtually it – apart from the one
which I consider the best. It was the first year in which I was allowed to stay
home instead of accompanying my parents on the reciprocal visit to Mr and Mrs
Greenwood. Being on my own at Christmas, playing with the half size snooker
table which had been my main gift, was an enlightening experience which led me
to understand my distaste for too much close company. I was fourteen at the
time and the reclusive tendency was in its early stages, but it grew as the
years and the lady companions came and went. And that’s how I got to where I am
today.
But now I have to write a brief note back to my young friend
in America
who tells me that my grammar is 'really nice.' She says she loves magic and still
believes in Santa Claus. Such are the people I cope with best these days.
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