Taking stock

The house is full. Grandparents and grandchildren, American guests, the rest of the family. Three dogs and four visiting dogs, a cat who gives us Thai Paw massage every morning, ignoring the fact that Jumbo is allergic. We are seventeen in all, maybe eighteen, enough to make a ruckus at the pub when we arrive for lunch and enough that sometimes the gumboot supply runs out. The hall is usually full of children playing Spoons, the card game, by the fire, alongside the Christmas tree, the books and the ribbons of Christmas cards. Red Swedish candles and pots of Poinsettia adorn every surface, and dogs nest on one's feet or occasionally slither up onto the sofas when no-one is looking, or even if they are. The fridge is full of sausages and brussels sprouts and large bottles of milk and the dishwashers do three loads each per day. My mother's dog finds me every morning and befriends me, eager to go out on the hill for his walk. The bookcase is full with tattered copies of books from my childhood, Riddley Walker by Russel Hoban, The Glass Bead Game by Hesse, Sylvia Plath's Letters Home and the Faber Book of Modern Verse which I've had my nose in all morning. We're preparing to go on a walk, a big old hike of a walk, to try to absolve us of the guilt of having eaten like pigs for the last week. I suppose this is what Christmas is like for everyone -- overindulgence on an epic level. My brother and sister-in-law could not be more welcoming or forbearing with us all, smiling at every situation, producing great feasts for every meal, patiently picking up the cards and toys and newspapers that litter every surface. But the walk is imminent.

It does feel somehow that on the last day of the December one should take stock of the old year and bring in the new with fresh vigor.