christmas

 

It really is the best possible day of the year - family, food, presents, playing games and singing together in your best clothes with drink in your hand. And while I may have over-done it somewhat regarding the latter, it was worth it for a night as festive and jovial as I could have hoped for. 

waiting for santa

It seems that, like an excited 9 year old, I'm still awake at almost three on Christmas morning, despite my best efforts to drop off before page 600 of Anna Karenina. Excitement over presents, or lack of sun messing with my sleep cycles? I don't know. In any case, I thought I'd post a poem I wrote about four years ago now - how time has flown. Yet some things don't change. 

Mass on Christmas Morning

This morning it’s different

My fingertips, skimming holy water,

Have lost their brisk impatience.

Pews full of foreign fathers and alien clans.

Old biddies wheeled out guiltily.

Normally scattered morse code, today

We rub shoulders like recalled truants, a medley

Of fine, cool smelling coats, shoulders

Rain-strewn with mercury,

Of renewed Celtic hoops

And the rustling fibres of unwrapped costumes.

Four lighted candles and the spindly tree

Loom over the mute children’s liturgy

Uncoaxable and unamused.

And I’m bubbling among the cronies,

Thoughts on stomach-fluttering packages;

Window-misting oven smells.

I know next week I’ll pick mental holes in the sermon,

Endure the syncopated choir and the neverending

Parish Bulletin.

But today-isn’t this enough?

I’ll welcome the respite, add my voice to the chorus

Letting it melt into the gaggle

The old-known words brimming with the unarticulated

Reaching and relief of unexceptional lives.

I’ll sink into the transient comfort

Of happiness en-masse, without squinting

Beyond the curtained tabernacle. 

christmas ingenuity

 

It's been so great having my parents on holiday for Christmas. In between learning Spanish and booking beach hotels for Peru, we watched movies by the fire, ate a lot of anti pasti, and constructed this excellent Christmas cake. We think he looks a little bit crazed. 

driving home for Christmas

 

 

 

For some reason, it feels especially good to be home this year: I've never appreciated a fully stocked Christmas cupboard and my electric blanket more. Tonight we decorated the tree in true, fastidious Patterson style. The words "Now it's a conspiracy of baubles rather than a dialogue!" may have been uttered. 

the beginning of the end

I am in the middle of a two day take-home exam, so, naturally, I have made a little film about the start of fourth year. In between singing Judy Garland songs loudly in my empty house, eating a lot of peanut butter squares and watching Gossip Girl. 

I felt kind of sad making it, because there are so many 'lasts' in it - last end of summer before another academic year, last autumn and Raisin and Thanksgiving and Christmas  in St Andrews. Time passes differently when  it doesn't stretch out into the distance. This year so far has been permeated with a sense of the fleeting, making me appreciate things all the more. 

REVISION

There has been a serious lack of photos/ life events on this blog recently, mainly because my life right now mainly revolves around the library, watching Gossip Girl with no make-up on in my friends' beds, and getting travel vaccinations. None of these contexts are particularly photogenic. 

So, I've decided to share my exam procrastination with you in the form of animal-themed links. 

1. Cat friend versus dog friend
2. Real birds send messages on Twitter
3. 33 Dogs and Cats that just don't know anymore 
4. DOGS

Over and out, until I have a life again.