Some Random Bits

My head, heart and other bits are filled with a mixture of excitement, apprehension and panic. It's Monday morning, it 7.39 AM and it's close to Christmas, which you probably know.

I've booked myself a bit of time off over the festive period and this is the last week in which I make a vague, some might say businesslike, attempt to get a few bits and pieces organised at work, to hand some things over before I go.

This year will be a big Christmas for me and for the girls. Our first one apart and I'm sure it will be trying at times, but for very positive reasons and there will still be a lot of smiles and joy to be spread.

Last week I wrote out a list of things that I need to do before the holiday starts and puzzlingly the first three items on the list were to write lists, about other things. It was one of those moments when a chap sits there and does a bit of Laurel and Hardy head scratching, saying things like "WTF?".

Isn't it rather fascinating how we all say to each other every year that the year has flown and we can't believe it's Christmas already? One would have thought we'd be used to it by now, what with it falling on December 25th virtually every year. I might, a bit sadly, actually try to count the number of times I have a conversation along those lines just for one day. I've already had one today.

Here in London we've got that pleasant crispiness in the air. Temperatures are cold, below freezing and there's ice on windscreens, frost on the ground and thick woolly jumpers on torsos, not that I really have a torso. The sky is a clear blue and there's a continual feeling of "will it snow?" All a bit Dickensian without the snow, the interesting stories and the buckets of excrement being thrown over you in the street. Except in some parts of Kingston.

And rear wheel drive in a slightly powerful car is a lot of fun in these conditions too. A few slides with the back end hanging out in a very Stig sort of way have been brightening up my journeys to and from work on occasions.

In what seems like a bit of irony but probably isn't I've been wearing my new favourite scarf for the last few days, the irony (?) being that I bought it at Odel in the summer.

It's interesting to think of you lot in Sri Lanka and other hot places at this time of year, but I'm confident that George W and a few others are doing their utmost to let you experience snow in Sri Lanka very soon. As long as the American economy grows who cares about "foreigners" anyway!

The week before Christmas always has these mixed sensations and atmosphere. Last minute shopping, wrapping and tidying, desperate attempts to get loose ends tied together and preparations finished. All surrounded by that slightly false but sometimes genuine air of goodwill and warmth.

Here we are in the cynical and materialistic world we've made for ourselves yet we can somehow, out of the madness, conjure up a bit, just a bit of Christmas spirit.

Maybe we're ok after all!

Happy week before.