Tuesday Ten

Ten things I like about December

1. The weather. Unpopular I know, but I like it when it is cold and dark. I get to wear all of my handknits and I don't overheat running for the bus. When I was walking home tonight it was still foggy and had just got properly dark, and the air was like velvet.

2. Being able to get away with wearing a Santa hat. Instant cheer.

3. The Christmas work wind-down. There's a race to get everything done before the holidays that makes me really productive.

4. The (seemingly now annual) Christmas shopping trip to The Most Middle Class Service Station In England, ie the one of the M5 near Gloucester. We went last year, bought, ate, then drove to the next junction and stopped at the one on the other side on the way back. Epic cheese. Great gin.

5. The school Christmas party/night out. Being so tired it feels like your face is swollen but also abandoning all cares because you know that it doesn't matter how late a night it is, you've got two weeks off. Of course, all my holidays are welcome, but the winter one especially so.

6. Christmas decorations. Especially robins. Making an effort to light the scented candles and the tea lights and switch the lava lamp on. Tinsel and Christmas cards.

7. Christmas Lush. Their Christmas range has been something for me to pore over for at least a decade now. I miss when Aliboo and I used to go to the first day of their sale and sit on the doorstep with cookies and hot water bottles from 7am to get the best bargains. We stopped doing that around the time they started opening on Boxing Day, but I still try to buy myself a Christmas box each December...not least because I like to use them for yarn storage.

8. Carols. Quite excited that my new school has a compulsory carol concert. I'm looking forward to hooting my way through God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.

9. Epic Christmas food prep. The lemon curd. The mincemeat chelsea buns. The tunis cake. Having the time to make croissants. Eating almost nothing but satsumas, cold meat, cheese and pickles for 10 days in a row. Delightful.

10. Being able to veg. I sometimes complain that Christmas is irritating because it gets in the way of a perfectly good holiday - shopping and life admin is made more difficult by having several days in the middle where everything stops. But I think that's a bit humbug of me. If there are ever a few days when doing nothing is entirely permissible, I think this is them.
Except my tax return. That still needs to be done.