'Tis the Season to be Worried?

I'm never sure about capitals in titles. Should all the words be capitalised? Or only the long ones? Hmm, it's a pickle.

Well I'm back at the family home for Christmas, having left London after an early morning phone call from my mother (well, 9.30 - I'm a student, ok?) telling me that heavy snow was on the way, and to get a train quick before they were all cancelled. I duly did, and though the snow was thick by the time I got to Paddington, and all of the trains were at least delayed, the journey was notable for it being uneventful, except for reminding me of the Philip Larkin poem The Whitsun Weddings:

'That Whitsun, I was late getting away:
Not 'til about
One-twenty on the sunlit Saturday
Did my three-quarters empty train pull out,
All windows down, all cushions hot, all sense
Of being in a hurry gone'

That, and the classic Night Mail poem by W.H. Auden,

The view was like this for most of the journey, once I got out of London where the clouds still threw down snow like a pillow shedding goose feathers:

Rather lovely really.

Now I am back however, the snow is making everything difficult except those things one can do without leaving the house. Unfortunately the deadline for internet buying is over, and despite spending seven hours at Westfield shopping centre this week (all at once, I might add), I have only bought half of my Christmas presents. I suppose that's what comes of having a big family.

Those presents I have bought, I have begun wrapping. Having done three of them, I am now thoroughly fed up of it. This is unusual for me - I generally love wrapping - but this year I wrote and helped put on a show set in Father Christmas's factory, and this involved a set of cardboard boxes wrapped as presents. Many cardboard boxes. I would guess that the three of us on the production team wrapped perhaps a hundred each. In May. I cannot stress enough how hard it is to find Christmas wrapping paper in May. I won't tell the long and boring story of the show, but suffice to say we now realise how difficult it is to put a Christmas show on in May. This is the stage - it may not look like many boxes, but it felt like a lot:

Indeed this picture hardly does it justice, our houses were swamped by boxes. The boot of my car was full to the brim with cardboard boxes wrapped in Christmas paper, which I'm sure confused the mechanics when I had my MOT... These are just some of the ones I wrapped:

Anyway, I seem to have digressed. My real subject for this post is, as you may have already guessed, Christmas. In case you hadn't noticed, it's quite soon. And getting closer every second. This will be my twenty third Christmas, and for the first time I have discovered something strange and untoward. Christmas is not just a time for family, presents, food and all that jazz; it is a time of worry. I have been feeling gradually more festive every day this week, and being at my parents' house, with a tree and lights and food and the promise of all the usual excitement has condensed this feeling into sudden bursts of delight at the thought. And yet, I have found myself frowning and tensing, and it dawned on me that I am worried. Christmas is a big deal in our house - any attempts by anyone to scale it down a little have been thwarted by something, some magic in the air that means the cupboards are always full to overflowing and more food and drink and presents are brought in by every visitor. And I love it. Mostly. But here I have found the reason people get snappy and stressed, and I know I feel it too. I am worried about all the tiny things that don't really matter, but that add up into something easy to worry about, such as 'Will they like my presents?' 'Can I afford this?' 'Did I get them enough?' and even 'Is this wrapping straight?'. These are, I know, unimportant (except for perhaps the second one, to which the answer is 'not really') but at this time of year panic gives another flavour to the air, and these slight anxieties distill to become more than the sum of their parts. The other worry is, of course, the knowledge that after the age of ten or so, Christmas day is actually an anti-climax. It is fun, great fun, but never how you imagine it, and always over much more quickly than you remember.

Still, I do know that, despite my worries, I will have a lovely time as ever, and by this time next week it will be over - worries and all. Then it's only the several thousand words of essays to be handed in in January...

Unsettling Insomnia

I'm rarely awake at one o'clock in the morning when I have been in all evening - especially since I had a busy and tiring weekend and at around eight this evening could have happily gone to bed and stayed there until morning. In truth, I don't actually know why I'm awake, let alone up and typing. I was happily reading my book in bed and just before midnight I put it down and turned off the light to go to sleep, and was then struck by an immense feeling of...something. A worry, a bad feeling, an ominous, strange sense that something was wrong. It has still not fully escaped me, though I have found no reason for it thus far. Still, I now cannot sleep for this odd kind of worry about something intangible that is gripping me. So here I am. Logically, I'm sure it is nothing, there is nothing more untoward in the world than there is any other night, but I can't shake it. And i so want to sleep, I'm exhausted and have a busy week to come, filled with end-of-uni lessons and japes (read: drinking) and Christmas present buying and traveling home for the Christmas holiday, and one night of sleep lost is not going to be made up, but will be sorely missed.
I read somewhere that the best thing to do when insomnia hits (I assume this counts as insomnia, I don't know if there's a word for random wariness in the night) is to get up and do something gentle and not too stimulating to calm you and get you into the mood of sleep. This writing appears to be helping actually, the fear, or whatever it was, is dissipating and tiredness is taking over my eyelids and body, and I think soon I will be able to surrender to that welcome mistress of sleep. It also seems the more tired I get, the more poetic! Perhaps when I read this back tomorrow it won't seem that way - it will probably be clear just how tired I am, I realise I'm beginning to ramble somewhat. I think now may be the time to attempt sleep once more. See you on the other side.

Reading Other People's Blogs

I hate to alarm anyone, but it's getting pretty close to Christmas now. Two weeks and two days. My advent calendar is well and truly begun, and my shopping? Ah. I promised myself I'd be so organised this year, that I'd plan to buy a present or two every week from about October. This did not happen. I so far have bought several mini-presents, and nothing substantial - nothing from anyone's list. This is not a good start, I do not wish to do all my shopping on Christmas Eve. Again. So here's to actually getting rid of this cold and being able to go out to the shops!

As I have been pretty much bed bound by this bizarrely lengthy cold-type illness, I have spent a lot of my time doing unproductive things, as documented before. My current occupation, as well as keeping an eye on those penguins, is reading a thick book containing five children's novels called The Dark Is Rising Sequence. I started them on Sunday, and have just begun the last in the sequence this afternoon. They are fabulous. More serious, and somehow more timeless than Harry Potter, and yet not so serious as the His Dark Materials series. Both those sets of books I love too, and I'm pleased to have a new and excitingly different series to love.
This book, written by Susan Cooper, was given to me by a brother-in-law of mine a couple of Christmases back, as a book that he had read when he was growing up and, knowing the kinds of thing I like, thought I too would enjoy them. I read the first one not long after, put it down and promptly forgot about it. I'm glad it came to me to start reading them now.

The constant struggle between Good and Evil is a story told over and over again, and this book is a stellar example. I am a writer, with several unfinished stories biding their time until I am able to give them thought, one of which may well be another telling of this battle, though until now I have never seen it as such. I think now I have it is giving me a clearer imagining of how it should go. It is not the same as those mentioned above - and I wouldn't suppose to think myself as nearly a skilled writer as those - but I can see similarities. The good and evil forces in those books are incredibly cut and dried, Good is good and Bad is bad. My story has many more shades of grey to it; good can be bad and bad can be good, more along the lines of Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire, which I tried not to take as my model, but to keep in mind. It is interesting to me that this last book has become famous and particularly successful thanks to the musical Wicked that was based on it. The musical necessarily de-complexes the story, making it appear more black and white. This is something to think about in relation to my own story.

No time now though, with the speedy onslaught of Christmas and essay deadlines approaching, I should not spare too much time for other thoughts. I am enjoying sparing time for blogs though. I am only following a very few - I could waste hours of my life on the internet if I let myself - but am so far finding the experience enlightening, both the reading and writing of such. It is always fascinating to hear the thoughts of people who are different to you, with different views on the world, and yet close in friendship and/or interests.

One last thing: the ladybirds are relentless. They are beautiful creatures, and useful too, but they do not seem this way when they keep appearing in one's bed and curtains. I have no idea how to help them, other than explaining patiently that these places in particular are not suitable for hibernation. I don't know where is suitable, and I'm dreading the day that I take something from a drawer or under my bed, and disturb hundreds of the things from their peaceful slumber. I hope they find somewhere out of my way - I would of course not intentionally disturb them, but I live in constant fear of doing so. Well, not quite constant, and not quite fear. They are becoming a bit of a nuisance, but hopefully by the time I come back from my Christmas holiday they will have secreted themselves away somewhere they can be safe until spring.

Penguin Watching

The snow is white, running to grey,
revealing glimpses of green and black and brown.
The sky is blue, the sun is out,
depleting more and more of the whiteness.
I am glad.
Once a rarity, snow has become a
frequent visitor,
ruining our plans, our railway, our health.
The sun, weak though it is in the face of this
December morning,
is most welcome.

I have spent the last several days with one main occupation - penguin watching. Now this may sound odd as I am living in London, England where there are very few penguin colonies. I have, of course, been watching them online. Edinburgh Zoo website has a wonderful live feed of their penguin enclosure which I, brought down with a nasty cold (I blame the snow), have spent many content hours vaguely keeping an eye on, and it has helped to thoroughly cheer me up. Who wouldn't smile as the little things bicker and run around, or leap through the water, or just chillax in the sun eh? Not me, that's for sure. I can't resist their little tuxedo patterned bodies, waddling gaits and sunny optimism. Well, they seem pretty cheery, at least.

The other kind of animal that is in my life at the moment is the ladybird. And when I say in my life, I mean flying around my bedroom at night. This seems strange to me. I am guessing that they are looking for somewhere to hibernate, and are managing to get through my badly-sealed non-double-glazed window with ease. In fact, I can see one right now crawling along the sill. It isn't even the same one that landed in my drink last night - that one was black with red spots, this is the opposite. A few weeks ago I was seeing them four or five at a time, there must be a great ladybird hibernating spot in my bedroom wall or something. I wonder what will happen in spring...

Ah well, at least they're harmless, to humans anyway. To aphids, not so much.

For all you wannabe penguin-watchers:
http://www.edinburghzoo.org.uk/EZPenguinCam.html