Friday Thoughts

When I left you I was splashing around in November. Now I am back with the dark chill of December evenings. Winter weather always seems to arrive slap-bang on December 1st, and this year was no exception. I smelt it as soon as I left my front door in the early hours, that special crisp coldness that crystallises your thoughts and makes you glad to be alive. As long as I have many knitted layers I am invincible.

The Cup-a-Soup compulsion has reached new heights at work. I have decided that Ainsley’s Sweet and Sour and Waitrose’s Chicken Noodle in a Cup are the best, the rest are pale imitators. I have also failed to resist the temptation of the giant chocolate buttons in WH Smiths. Two packets have disappeared in two weeks. But I don’t think Hercule Poirot’s little grey cells would be too taxed. The culprit is obviously the girl busting out of her jeans.

I spend most of my time at work ducking underneath my desk to turn on or turn off my little heater. Am freezing – on! Am boiling – off! And so it goes on all day, duck up, duck down. I must look as though I have ants in my pants.

I made it to chapter ten of the redrafting. I was ever so pleased. But then I started picking at the ends of chapter nine, and the last few pages unravelled faster than you can say ‘plot’. It is set in 1954, and the song I wove into it was not released in the UK until 1956. That was a little annoying (and how did I miss that the first time around, huh?). So I unpicked the song, and then unpicked some more, and now I have to knit the darn thing (hee!) back together again, sans song. Sometimes I think I am writing this too much as if it were a movie, already thinking of my soundtrack. I like to think big.

Little Christmas trees have started appearing in odd places. The grumpy man at the train station has one in his kiosk. I wonder if very early in the morning he had a moment of happiness setting it up, and then quickly rearranged his features to scowl at the first commuter. Or maybe a higher-ranking colleague plonked it in front of him and now he has to frown over tinsel all day.

Some girls have set up little trees at work by their desk. One asked me if I was going to get one, and instead I replied that I wasn’t into Christmas this year. It was like Ebenezer Scrooge had materialised in front of her wearing a pinafore dress. I felt like the poop in the party. I usually like Christmas I wanted to say, ask me next year! Next year I am bound to feel festive. This year I just want to eat humbugs.