countdown to Christmas

It wasn't raining today, so I could theoretically have been out in the garden, but the ground would have been sodden, and I had cleaning to do.  I am rather dismayed at the way that the end of the house I started with is getting dirty again, even before I've got to the other end.  The cats have been treading bits of leaf on to my clean kitchen floor, and the Systems Administrator has left tea stains on to the worktop by the kettle, where I scrubbed the last lot off with bicarbonate of soda.  At the current rate of progress I can see the cleaning stretching into a third day, though the SA has promised to help with the vacuuming tomorrow.

Today the SA has escaped the domestic upheaval by going to London again for another lunch, this time the annual old lags' lunch.  It is an annual event.  I asked where they were meeting, as I drove the SA to the railway station, but that was a redundant question, because they are meeting in the George and Vulture.  They always meet in the George and Vulture.  Everybody at the lunch once worked with somebody else, and nobody worked with everybody.  Some of them are still working, which is partly why the lunch is traditionally held so close to Christmas, after the corporate entertainment season has finished.  The rest of the year they remain united by a shared love of cricket.

I took advantage of the SA's absence to wrap my Christmas presents on the kitchen table, instead of kneeling on the bedroom floor.  Carpets and sticky tape don't really go together.  We have a friend whose parcels are always marvels of precision, and I can never work out how she gets them so neat, with the same amount of paper folded over at each end, and no wrinkles in her cellotape.  Most of the things I have to wrap up are books, which ought to be straightforward, since they are both rectangular and solid, but mine tend to come out slightly wonky, even using the table.  The hopelessly lumpy and irregular presents are almost easier to wrap, since I just swathe them in gold tissue paper.

We are past the point of no return for Christmas cards, as the last posting date was yesterday, even first class.  I took the last minute decision to add a few names to our list, on the basis that if we've eaten a meal in their house in the past year we are probably now on Christmas card terms, and today's post brought a card from one of them to us.  Phew.  Got that one right.  I sent one last week to somebody I don't know terribly well, but who is waiting to go into hospital for surgery, offering help afterwards if needed.  Newspaper articles about offers of assistance to friends and acquaintances in a tight spot always say Be specific, don't just say to let you know if there's anything you can do, so I offered help with shopping or some home cooking.  It is hard to know what to say, since you don't want to be intrusive, but they rang this morning, sounding genuinely touched.  I was chatting about the usefulness versus wastefulness of Christmas cards with a colleague on Monday, and she was pleased to have received a card from someone she had lost touch with and not seen for years.  Even in the days of theoretical constant communication via Facebook, to have an annual ritual excuse to make contact with people can be useful.

I almost forgot that the world was due to end.  My theory about the Mayan calender is that they must have got to the bottom of the piece of stone it was written on and run out of space, like Thurber's famous dog with really short legs, that came out that way because it started off as a doodle on a notepad, and he got  to the bottom of the page without enough room for them.