Buying Time

As Isabel Allende put it in her latest memoir 'The Sum of Our Days', this time of year 'the 1000 tasks of maternity and matrimony' seem to multiply tenfold, so this post is for anyone who needs to buy themselves five minutes - why not put the kids in front of the monitor and let Tom & Jerry do their Christmas magic. Isn't it amazing how available everything is now? I remember seeing this cartoon - only once - when I was little and have never forgotten Jerry sliding gleefully round the candy cane, playing with his reflection in the baubles. I've always hoped they'd replay it one Christmas but today is the first time I've seen it in around thirty years. Good old Youtube

Allende talks at one point about her tribe of best women friends 'The Sisters of Perpetual Disorder' - we joked in the pub the other night this might be a good nickname for our bookclub. Perpetual disorder just about sums it up at the moment. A friend started saying yesterday how she had written all her cards, wrapped the gifts, and it was all I could do to smile admiringly rather than stick my fingers in my ears and go lalalalala to drown out the contented tirade. Christmas is going to happen inevitably - I just can't quite see how at the moment.

TODAY'S PROMPT: What are your best Christmas memories? Forget about family feuds, frenzied shopping, overeating (oh, go on, just one more Quality Street, you know you want to ...). Why not cherrypick one or two of your treasured memories and work them into the plot of a short story? D'Arcy mentioned yesterday how the scent of oranges always makes her feel festive. One year I remember Dad coming home with a whole crate of tangerines still with their leaves attached from the greengrocer in the nearest moorland town. Sounds crazy, but I had never seen so many tangerines (I told you I grew up in a remote place). It seemed crazily extravagant and luxurious. You could write a whole story just based on a single memory like that.