the Daily Grind: December 2003 Archives

So much for my promised silence; it's a couple of hours in and I'm just about done wrapping, reading, putting off sleep. Pretty much ready for the laborious food preparation of the late morning; we've strung the string beans, chopped a squillion peppers, sticks of celery, even onions (weeps profusely, but that's really a different story), and baked the rye to perfect crispiness for the massive tray of stuffing we always prepare. Always from scratch, it's the best thing about the Christmas meal for me; the rest is nice too, but this is the one element that I would ever really miss come a Christmas without feasting.

In living memory, this is perhaps the least cheerful I've ever felt at Christmas time, but I take solace in the fact that come the busyness of the morning, the hordes of loopy guests, the general mood of the rest, that it'll be smiles and good cheer aplenty because that's how it has always been. Lying through your teeth and smiling despite yourself, if not utterly crushing, can often send you the other way. Fickle; I feel cheery already. Have a great one!

I left the National Portrait Gallery and hopped onto the Northern Line at Charing Cross, where I found myself surrounded by a proper troupe of older Indian gentlemen, who really seemed to have turned up in this one spot independently of one another.

As the train pulled into the Embankment, an old woman, tiny in stature and of kind face, pushed through them to get to the door. The train lurched, she stumbled, tripped over the feet of one of the sedentary gents, and fell forward; for one who lacks real coordination, I was surprised that my reflex movement to catch her met with success, seizing her left arm in a steady sailor's grip with my right, and sweeping my left up beneath her back in order to take her weight. The movement - and she reciprocated my grip like she'd anticipated it - was fluid, and for the briefest instant we were, freeze frame, the unlikely finish to some undanced tango.

I set her upright, she smoothed her jacket and, not looking to me for even a moment, took her leave of the carriage with the vaguest suggestion of a smile on her face. It was like a dignified, quiet thank you between friends. I felt that she expected me to be there, to catch her, and that made me feel useful. And warm.

As the train, in turn, pulled into Waterloo, I stepped out and, wouldn't you know, tripped. I would have fallen but for the saving grip of a middle-aged, handsome-of-the-moment, Jason Patric type who was waiting to board the train. Embarrassed, I met his amused grin with a blushing expession of my appreciation and walked off up the platform. It seems that my good turn was met with another.

The train was leaving as I started to turn off toward the exit; a glance back saw him still standing there... without train, looking my way. I chose not to notice, feeling, if anything, a hint of fear, and made away.

Make me Smile!

A benefit of having this little corner of the web to myself is that I can satisfy my own need for honesty without being entirely honest with the people around me; acts of omission; it's raining outside, it's warm in here, I'm exhausted, but I'm on some fucking high that has me dancing - still damp, fresh out of the shower - around the room in a pair of trakkie-Bs, mouthing to Andy Bell's covers (remember Erasure?). This morning is decidedly gay, and I'm going to enjoy the moment, and I'm not going into work, come hell or the tv licensing guy. If anyone asks why, it becomes one of those acts of omission; they can swing to camp music on their own time; this one's all mine and I'm not sharing.

Everything is white.

No, it didn’t snow, but the temperature fell a couple of degrees below zero during the night, and everything is covered, toe to top, in crunchy, crystalline frost. Hater of cold that I am, I took the view from my window as a sign and made like a polar bear. That isn’t to say that I lingered around a hole in the ice sheets and clubbed a seal to death with my claws before gorging myself on its inches and inches of nutritive blubber and bloodying my furry, white face; I simply wrapped up warm, which is cleaner, and enjoyed the snugliness of being toasty in the middle of a veritable hike through the Siberian tundra.

Happy, I are. But what’s this?! Tickets for Sting’s Royal Albert Hall performance are sold out already? Somebody kill me - that just isn't fair.