Reader: I’m a year older than when we last spoke. My birthday was yesterday, and I’ve fought hard all my life to keep it distinct from Christmas. Increasingly it’s swallowed up in the general gaiety, and as time goes on I feel more and more like adopting the late Queen’s policy of having two a year: I must make sure though that I lose six months in the process, rather than aging faster. In theory we don’t put the trees up until today, but in practice now they are wrestled into place whenever we have the bodies available to do it. Fire lit, I fight with the lights and then sit back while the others get creative with baubles and tinsel and all things gaudy, that have been stored in the bat infested upstairs since last year. (Getting them down is definitely a blue job.) And then the oooohs and aaaaahs when the switch is flicked. Lovely.
THE PASSAGE OF TIME
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