LAST DAY OF TERM

It’s odd, isn’t it, how many of us still think of our lives in school terms. In my case, forty-four years after leaving school - to the day almost - I am sitting here thinking this is the last day of proper work before the Christmas holiday. Except that it’s not a day of proper work otherwise I wouldn’t be writing this blog, nor later, going out to lunch. I am demob happy already.

What a term it has been! Never it seems have I been so busy. We have had a record autumn with our labels by some margin. Order after order has come in. Profitable orders from big companies too. Don’t they know that there’s a recession on? And even as we plan to put the dust sheets over the business for a week or two we know we have to find seventeen hours of time to number 150,000 tags for 5 January. I keep asking myself whether this is the storm before the calm.

That’s the labels - but to keep the grey cells alive - I still do a bit of Europe-based writing and consultancy. I became the UK co-ordinator for a communications project this autumn, was briefly on the management team even and paid in euros. There’s nothing more calculated to make you feel as though you are going up in the world than to be paid in euros with the pound falling in value every month.

But sadly on top of my weekly writing commitment and my voluntary work with UNESCO, the project was a step too far. Enjoyable it may have been but my blood pressure ws taking a hammering. Luckily for me the project was unexpectedly cancelled. I was sad to lose the income, but the extra work had been just too much.

There’s another consequence of being overly tied to a desk: I have bulged, shamefully. I am now three pounds over my ‘alarm-emergency’ weight which itself is a stone over what I consider my desirable weight which again is ten pounds or so over what those strict matronly books with their height to weight ratios, say that I should, primly and thinly, be.

In the rush I stupidly sacrificed my Canadian Airforce exercises - ten minutes of mixed aerobics involving a lot of running up and down the main corridor of the house, trying to compensate with a short-lived attempt to tackle the forty-five minute hill-climb up to the top of the Primrose Hill tump and back again every day before breakfast. It’s a wonderful walk in the early morning sunshine. But in the chilling wet darkness of a November morning it is purgatory.

Still from this evening I shall switch into Christmas mode: the house needs cleaning (and how) and decorating. We have to unblock the chimney and look out the logs, spray the fir cones, make confections (Nigella’s Christmas chocolate puddings look nicely adventurous), fetch the goose, ice the cake, build the little village (IKEA c. 1995) that consists of elves and snowmen and houses and snow laden trees with a little church and all of which lights up (hopefully) very agreeably as it nestles round, over and on top of the great snowdrifts of Royal icing I shall mount on the cake.

All these things have to be done. And the presents wrapped and piled around the tree. As a family we rather overdo presents. Forget the quality, our emphasis is on keeping the manufacturers of wrapping paper in business. A litter of glistening shapes and sizes, grows daily around the tree. Each of us will have half a dozen presents or so, including presents from and to any pets that may be lurking. When he was still alive, our Newfie, Sampson, would have been amazed at his perspicacity for buying useful snippets. A hussef, perhaps, or a pepper grinder. In return his present would be a splendid Savoy Cabbage, wrapped loosely in layers of newspaper and tied with a ribbon. This he would lie with, patiently tearing off the paper with his teeth, and then munching his way through the leaves. We would have given him champagne, too, had he shown any liking for it.

I myself am difficult to buy presents for. My Scottish ancestry makes me guilty about any significant largesse pointed in my direction. ‘Something from a charity shop will do nicely,’ I say in an attempt to head them off. This is not mere parsimony. For in truth charity shops always strike me as a modern day treasure trove. The concept of recycling appeals - as does the lack of choice. If we are talking about clothes that fit, there is one example, in one size and one colour - take it or leave it. I have never like decisions.

Last Christmas Younger Daughter bought me a padded plum-coloured gilet for £5. I have worn it almost every day since. It is an admirable garment, if not an admirable colour. Yet I would have never gone into a shop and bought a gilet new for the simple reason that I would have felt my arms would be cold. Only when one is presented to me do I find that by some mysterious process they aren’t. Surely that is something they could have taught me in school those 44 years ago?