La Vie en Beige

I'm writing this yesterday (6th Jan) on my least favourite day of the entire year. Twelfth Night is on January the fifth and so it's this morning that Christmas ends. The decorations come down, the shortbread tin goes away, non-glittery life resumes.

Since everyone in this little household either works (Neil and me) or is a cat (work-shy wasters), the decorations don't *actually* come down till tonight, but I don't light the fairylights today. And so, since I work at home, I spend the day with a dark Christmas tree looming in the corner like Hamlet's father.

I've washed my Santa pyjamas and the robin tea towels, ready to pack away for the year. I've had coffee in a mug with no snowmen on it. I've weighed myself and then breakfasted off a whiff of smelling salts. And now it's time to face the music and make some resolutions:

1. Last year I resolved for the second time to read some Dickens. Third time lucky.

2. Also, (fifth time lucky) I'm going to shed the immigration weight. It's a real thing.

3. And I'm going to carve out three different kinds of protected time. I'm going to have a summer holiday - two weeks on a beach with a pile of books; I'm going to go to a mid-week concert, play or film at least twice a month; I'm going to have an afternoon and evening every weekend or one whole day every other weekend away from chores and cares. Like a housemaid at Downton.