Towards a Christmas collapse – hopefully

It’s the end of the week and Christmas is looming. I think everything is done. For many it’s a tricky time of year, and it certainly is for us with recent and traumatic bereavements.

But with three other children and lots of different things going on it is hard to catch a breath, maybe mercifully so. Daughter three is playing with her band at a party for daughter one tonight. They’ve been rehearsing hard. In fact, I was due to record a podcast for another job earlier in the week when five minutes before daughter three rang to say the band were on their way and preparing to rehearse in her room directly above where I was doing the podcast. Thank goodness for earphones. Four minutes before daughter two, who is just back from university and seems to surface at around 3pm on average, announced that the bucket under the leaking kitchen sink was about to overflow and I was on the phone to the plumber. We swiftly removed the bucket, emptied it and returned it to its place, in eager anticipation of the plumber – who has twice cancelled – turning up before xmas. The podcast went well.

Everyone seems to be ill at the moment, even the nurse who was due to do the flu vaccine. I have never had the flu vaccine before, but a colleague got flu and Covid at the same time and was off for weeks sounding very ill. I signed up immediately. Covid on its own is bad enough…

Meanwhile, daughter three seems to be getting up earlier and earlier – the polar opposite of her sister – to get to work. 5.30am this week. Which, sadly, means her parents also have to get up to take her to the station. She looks exhausted, mainly because she never gets more than one day off at a time and uses that day for rehearsals. I think the rehearsees left at around 2am on the night of the podcast.

Only son toyed with reprising his Christmas concert before deciding that he’d prefer to sit through a history lesson. He really doesn’t like the Christmas song he was forced to play guitar on, but the mere fact that he did agree to do the Christmas concert is a bonus.

My partner has just got back from Spain, having got the only remaining plane ticket to be at the funeral of his brother-in-law.

In the last few years, life has thrown a lot of things at a lot of people. I think most of us are just about clinging on. One step at a time. Hopefully there will be some good news for people soon. Happy Christmas!

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