Year's End

Another month seems to have slipped by without either of us remembering to blog. It's been a quiet Christmas. Three weeks ago, the tornado that ripped apart houses in Kensal Rise hurtled through Crouch End but much defeated in strength, leaving us with the grey, stagnant fog that lulled everyone's mood over the festive season and prevented those richer than ourselves from jetting off anywhere for a holiday. We didn't have to travel anywhere, having visited most of our relatives in the Lake District and Leeds the week of Dave's birthday (December 10th), the wettest week I have ever seen in all of my 33 years of going to Grasmere. About 4 inches of rain fell every day through driving winds, turning fields into lakes, lakes into floods, streams into waterfalls, paths into quagmires and mountains into definite no-go areas. I made Dave watch all of Heimat on DVD to pass the time, punctuated with breaks to eat Grasmere gingerbread or more of Nanna's cakes or open another bottle of wine. So much for fresh air and exercise.
Christmas is strange when you don't have relatives around you. There are no arguments. Everything gets done in record time. You don't spend an hour gathering everyone together to try and leave on a constitutional walk; you just go. Present unwrapping isn't a chaotic bunfight of ripped paper and exaggerated coos of appreciation; it's calm, coordinated and over in minutes. Dinner doesn't consist of roasting a gigantic bird in the oven for hours and hours; we had two tiny partridges, done in 30 minutes, with a pear sorbet for dessert. ("On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me...") And there's no one to stop you watching Pauline Fowler being killed off in EastEnders.
I had to work between Christmas and New Year; grateful for some employment in an otherwise sparse December. The This Life ten-years-on special, a debate about Bloody Sunday and the final series of Drop The Dead Donkey came my way: surprisingly rich pickings. Commutes in were almost glorious: buses turned up regularly, there was a seat on the Tube every morning and even air to breathe. Commutes home with frazzled, burned out sales shoppers and confused tourists were at their usual level of unbearability. We've also managed to take in the Velazquez exhibition and the RSC's latest production of Much Ado About Nothing, starring Tamsin Greig and set in a humming, sultry Cuban town.
And as we said this time last year, this will be our last Christmas in London...
REBECCA

2006: The Year In Pictures