STANDING BY

There really is something about this place at this time of year.  We have huge trees around the house and on blowy, wet days like today they’re wonderful to watch - from the inside, with the fire lit of course.  We have a houseful for 24hrs from tomorrow and it’s all hands to the pump: log baskets to fill, things to polish, soap and handtowels and loo rolls to replenish, the piles of stuff to remove from staircases … there’s nothing like visitors incoming to make you look anew at your surroundings.  Here at any rate things take root in the most unlikely places.  Odd shoes materialise in Sizzles’ cage; empty suitcases left out; waste paper baskets on the stairs where they somehow haven’t made their own way back into wherever they came from.  Not now!  There’s a strong smell of clean floors and wax polish and it’s all the more wonderful because we all know that any minute now everywhere will be full of friends and family, and wet clothing, and filthy boots, and steaming dogs and the whole place will come alive with lamps on, fires blazing and curtains drawn.   We’ve laid in ridiculous quantities of everything and thawed a load of milk and made lots of ice and the fridges are full and the freezers almost empty and – dare I say it – I think we’re ready.  And by Tuesday evening … it will be all over.  Quiet and still again -  and that too will be rather wonderful: it’s all about contrast.   To prove which point, we then do it all again next month for Christmas and New Year:  all the work and bustle and fun, twice over.  Just lovely.