28 December 2016
It has been Christmas. The house is full of gratuitous sparkle and more recycling than the Council will ever agree to collecting. The fridge is full of leftovers – and these will not get eaten because people are intrinsically uninterested in leftovers when there are cakes, biscuits, sweets and chocolates on every available surface, but we are keeping them nonetheless because the Keeping of Leftovers is an important British Christmas tradition. I have not checked my CIPA emails for several days. It is possible, then, that the Institute has meanwhile merged with Club 18-30® in a last-ditch rejuvenation attempt by Mr Davies. It is possible that Council has been disbanded. Or even that the CIPA kitchen fridge has been cleaned out. But the truth is that nobody else has been doing anything CIPA-related either, not even the Kitchen Fridge Pixies who were last seen in 1992 borrowing a couple of beers and a pasty. So, not checking my emails is no problem at all. My sister visits with her family; I cook delicious things for them but they prefer Heinz® tomato soup, they say. My mother visits too: I cook delicious things for her which she used to cook for me but no longer remembers anything about. My children are all home: I cook delicious things for them but they are too full of cake to eat them, except at midnight when I am not looking, because as every student knows, food tastes better when it is stolen. The things that get stolen the most are the things I was planning to use as crucial ingredients in the following day’s meals. This is inconvenient to say the least, but inconvenience is what kids do best, and at least these days they only do it outside of term time. When they return to university, I will discover in their rooms the unsubtle evidence of their midnight feasts, along with an equally unsubtle indication of which of their carefully-chosen Christmas presents were sufficiently attractive to accompany them back. Usually it is the carefully-chosen bottle-shaped presents which find favour. The Useful Gifts are abandoned. But then, the Useful Gifts have also been carefully chosen, with a view to their being Useful to me as well. So I am actually quite glad they get left behind. I am relying on it, in fact.
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