A FOX IN THE CUPBOARD

I don’t know about you but for me the Christmas and New Year holidays have a hologram quality, taking on a radically different manifestation according to the perspective from which you happen to view them.

Before the event, everything appears in a sort of Nigella Lawson-esque glitter, a soft-focus world of roaring fires and delighted family smiling benignly amidst oceans of discarded wrapping; sipping your best champagne and nibbling those cute little chocolate dainties whose confection will be - to quote Nigella herself - ‘the work of moments’.

You picture a time of celebration, of festive meals, parties, occasionally perhaps eating and drinking more than strictly wise, but forgivable in the circumstances. You imagine long walks in a frosty countryside, interspersed perhaps with a successful visit to the sales to recover some object of desire, long coveted but never hitherto affordable.

But above all my pre-Christmas perception is that the hours will slow down and that I will be left with acres of golden empty time to call my own. Freed from the insistent telephone I shall have time not only to clean, tidy, mend, shop, bake, decorate, wrap presents, entertain, and visit, but also to rest with long lie-ins and vacant evenings tucked up in front of the television with a suitably seasonal and warming beverage.

Of course the idea of empty time is just as much of a delusion as the idea that one can make a tasty plate of Nigella’s Christmas pudding truffles in ‘moments.’ The reality is morbidly different. First, the adrenalin thoughtfully provided by work deadlines and which hauls you out of bed on cold winter mornings and propels you urgently in the direction of the office, simply evaporates. In a few days, while not retiring noticeably later to bed, your getting-up time advances rapidly from 6.30 to 7.30 and then to 8.30, losing you a good two hours before you even begin.

Without adrenalin’s whip-cracking brother, the ‘to-do list,’ starred and underlined with the day’s über-priorities, I have the most appalling tendency to faff about. In consequence everything I undertake has the feeling of dragging feathers through treacle. The result is that I stagger through Christmas wondering where it all went and making guilty resolutions to do it better next time.

At least this was what I thought as I sat by the chuntering printing machine on New Year’s Day finishing off a labelling order that I should have had done by Christmas Eve, but which, missing the adrenalin which switched off promptly at 5pm on 19 December, of course I didn’t.

If this sounds like an invitation for sympathy then please put away your hankies, for in fact, once you have gulped down a good lungful of New Year air first thing on 1 January and with an agreeable little apéritif with friends to look forward to at five o’clock, then sitting by the printer, reeling and occasional changing stock or ribbon with a good book in front of you, is actually rather a pleasant way of spending the day, particularly as the book I was reading was rather special.

I am rather a fan of Jane Shilling who used to write for ‘The Times’ but who departed earlier in the year when the paper took yet another lurch downmarket. I had dropped hints that one of her books might not be unwelcome in my Christmas stocking but evidently the hints were not sufficiently heavy or well-directed for I ended up with Alan Bennett instead.

Nevertheless there is a certain guilty pleasure in buying yourself desired but unreceived presents. Santa cannot be considered infallible, I argue. You are allowed to correct his mistakes. It was in this spirit that I ordered ‘A Fox in the Cupboard’ from Amazon. It arrived two days later.

The book is basically a most wonderful if meandering account of how one thing can so easily lead to another if you are not paying attention. In Jane’s case, how to fill time one holiday, lead to riding lessons and then to the purchase of suitable clothing and then to buying a horse and then to taking-up hunting, only to find that the timing collided unhappily first with foot and mouth and later with its Parliamentary ban.

Despite being raised in the country, field sports and their adherents have always made me feel uncomfortable. Nevertheless, I have been sufficiently close at various times of my life to horses, dogs, guns and so on to be able to have a nuanced appreciation of what she is describing, even if my riding was self-taught and bareback and my knowledge of hunting obtained from the stories of my namesake Somerville and Ross.

Part of the fun of the book lies in its magnificent use of language. The style flows freely but only the precise word will do, even if that means you have to keep a dictionary by your side. I counted 24 words, which either I did not know at all, or of which I was dubious of giving an accurate definition...words like ‘solipsism,’ ‘adamant’ (as a noun), ‘knout,’ ‘semiotics,’ ‘shirring,’ ‘bimbling,’ ‘gravid,’ ‘scuts.’ If Jane is ever honoured it will be for services to the nation’s word power.

Still, the holiday is almost over; I ate the last of the bon-bons yesterday. Soon I shall be looking back and seeing Christmas from an altogether different perspective. In retrospect Christmas will look rose-tinted again, the horrors and excesses forgotten. It will be seen as a time of good rest, fellowship, family, feasting; a time of wonderful confections (though I say so myself) and even better reading. By 2009 the limiting resolutions will have been forgotten. It was ever thus. And I have already started dropping hints about needing a new dictionary for next Christmas.