Today I woke up feeling all refreshed. I didn’t mean to wake that way, after all, I spent all of last night hacking away like a twelve year-old who’s just discovered a packet of Capstan Full Strength down the back of the sofa. I only get a cold once a year, but when I get one I do try to give it my all. I have a big cough, a resonant, basso profundo bad-boy of a cough, the kind of cough that can ruffle hair and startle small children. It makes people feel sorry for me, but I just don’t know how to expectorate any other way. My cough doesn’t come from my throat; it comes from somewhere deep and cavernous - the same place that produces my laugh and that sexy phone voice that I use when I talk to Mr. Singh from the Bombay call centre. When he calls he always says his name is Colin, or Brian or Malcolm, but I know that he’s just picked a random English name for the day. I imagine all the telesales workers have to choose an alternative name to stop people slamming the ‘phone down, but I think they should try throwing in a few modern names to add to the authenticity of the deceit. I’d happily speak to an Indian man called Tyrone or Titus, if only because there’d been a bit of imagination used in selecting the pseudonym, but I have little patience with people who waste my time and don’t have the good manners to announce their real name when they call.

I do know of a boy who was christened Titus. It’s an unusual, faintly romantic name, but not when you team it with a surname like Chester. I don’t know what his parents were thinking, but Titus Chester is not the name of a brave, dashing hero, more of an excuse for a big slug of Nightnurse. I don’t know what’s become of young Titus, but I like to imagine him lying in the school sanatorium, looking pale and consumptive, alongside his two best friends, Ronnie Nose and Saul Throat.

But back to my story: When I felt the veil of sleep lifting from my eyes, I decided to have a sip of water from the large bottle at the side of my bed. I drink a lot of water at night and so a glass is never really sufficient for my needs. But a bottle is a big, ungainly thing to manhandle when you’re still half asleep, and this morning, for some, strange reason I tried to take a sip of water with my eyes closed. The bottle was still several inches away from my mouth when I decided it was time to pour…. I successfully managed to miss my mouth entirely and tipped an ice-cold torrent of Evian all over my somnolent head. I have no idea why I did it, but all of a sudden I wasn’t half asleep any more, I was very wide-awake and really rather wet. And that’s never a good way to start the day.

And now I’m awake and refreshed I can talk about the subject of today’s entry. It is a delicate subject, and one that’s bound to arouse a good deal of indignation in the people who read my diary. Today, I want to discuss the ‘C‘ word. The ‘C’ word is abhorrent to many people, but it has a long and distinguished history and it’s a word that’s hard to ignore in today’s society. You hear many people using it nowadays, but if, like me, it makes you upset to hear that particular word, then its impact does not diminish with repetition. So, I’m going to spell it out, and in that way I hope that you might eventually become able to read it and say it without feeling revulsion. So here goes….. Christmas. Christmas. CHRISTMAS.

There, I wrote it. Do you feel it now, that empty, sick feeling in the bottom of your stomach? Do you see nightmarish visions of sugarplums dancing in your head? Do you have an uncontrollable urge to run rampant down the aisles of Sainsbury’s and pull every last piece of glittery tinsel, every string of lights, every jolly, laughing fucking Santa off the shelves and send them crashing to the floor? I know how much you all hate Christmas, and believe me, I hate it too. Even after six years I still consider it the very worst part of my year, and the worst of it is that nobody ever truly understands why widowed people cannot hear the ‘C’ word without feeling sick and anxious and so terribly, terribly alone.

Lucifer himself could not have designed a better method of prolonged torture. Christmas is evil, it’s not the season of goodwill, it’s the season of emptiness and sorrow. And even if you are feeling even remotely festive, then just try dealing with the fact that you are no longer invited to all those jolly Christmas drinks parties and social gatherings that you used to frequent. Just try walking into the butcher’s and asking for the smallest turkey in the shop; I’ve done it, I’ve stood in a queue and begged Mr. Wilkinson to look in his cold room for a Tiny Tim of a bird; a lame, feeble fowl that will suffice for two small girls and their mad, sad, bahhumbugged mother. I didn’t want to cook the ghastly gobbler in the first place, but certain things are expected of you as a mother, and I really wasn’t going to get away with serving up a Bernard Matthews compressed turkey portion to my expectant girls. I did the whole bit; I wrapped sausages in bacon, made my own chestnut stuffing, and then the girls gleefully helped me stuff the turkey and sew it up with needle and cotton.

They later declared it to be the most delicious turkey they’d ever eaten, and I knew that its succulent tenderness was not jut down to Saint Delia’s loose foil cooking technique, but to the fact that it had been tiny and lame, and had spent almost the whole of its poor, short life wearing a calliper and standing in the corner of the shed looking forlorn and saying ‘gobble, gobble. Gobbless us, Every One’.

The cooking bit isn’t really so bad at Christmas, it’s the enforced jollity, and the expectation that being given lovely gifts by relatives is in any way going to make up for the fact that you have nobody to love and nobody to hold. You’ve had a gut-full of looking at presents that you can no longer buy, and now you have to spend the day watching loved-up couples showering each other with lavish gifts and spice-tinged kisses; and it’s painful and pitiful and you know you really should be enjoying the moment for the sake of the others, but something deep inside you is crying out, and all you want to do is take the remote control and the box of Quality Street and run away from everybody and everything until the tree is down and the mistletoe is shrivelled and dry.

Happy Christmas is an oxymoron for us poor widowed folk, but it’s not going away, so we are just going to have to grin and bear it. I know there are a couple of months to go before the dreaded event, but I just wanted to express my solidarity with all those people who are already getting stressed at the thought of it.

Yuletide schmuletide - think of it as a test of your courage and resolve, don’t expect to feel anything remotely approaching joy, and try to remain at such a level of alcohol-induced stupor that it all passes in a lovely, eggnoggy haze.


© Kate Boydell 2004. All rights reserved. e-mail: [email protected]. Close window.