A Very Blimpy Christmas

Christmas dinner suddenly became a huge deal. There were nine of us around the table: eight Brits (well, six English, one Scots, one Welsh)-and me. So I thought it would be prudent to watch myself and not say anything controversial. I needn't have worried.

I'm exaggerating, of course-but it seemed like there was enough food to feed a small third world country. The table was just groaning. Before long, we were all groaning. My old friend Terry is a really good cook. Her coffee could double as paint stripper, but that is a very British condition - everything else just was great. And we all ate too much, and drank too much...I felt like I could paint a stripe down my side and double as the Goodyear blimp. Really-I looked like a Zeppelin at the end of the evening. I didn't eat as much as anyone else-but I ate way too much for me. I'm not used to looking down and seeing a belly that looks like I have swallowed Manchester United. All of them.

And we drank. Of course. I had four drinks (wow, so much for me!!) and I discovered that I had drunk myself sober. I wish I'd taken a camera-or a tape recorder. Boy, could I have had some good stuff for blackmail! The more everyone drank, the more they all slagged off this country, the media, the royals, the government-you name it, and I was in my element. Brits slagging off Brits-go figure. I just sat and smiled. And drank. And ate. And thought I was going to explode. But it was a really good Christmas. And then, the next day (Boxing Day in this country), we did it all over again. Gluttons for punishment. Or-just gluttons.

Boxing Day was (allegedly-everyone has a different opinion) originally the day that the landowners presented a box to their employees: food, dry goods, money, whatever-as a token of thanks for all the year's work. That is, some say, the meaning of Boxing Day. Originally. Now, Boxing Day is the beginning of the after-Christmas sales. All the shops have huge sales that go into January (the January sales). So nutjobs who want to grab cheap, nasty sale televisions and crack open the skull of some poor sap who is after the same piece of junk have a second chance to do some real damage. Honestly? I keep a very low profile after Christmas when it comes to shopping. Who wants to reach out to grab something and have some lunatic break your arm?

Can you imagine if aliens came to earth and monitored our behavior? They would come to the Boxing Day and January sales and conclude that everyone here is totally insane, and that earth is filled with savages who aren't worth worrying about. Someone should do a film about that...

One of the topics of conversation was aging-a wonderful topic for Christmas, don't you think? We all agreed that one of the first things to go when you hit middle age-after lines, wrinkles, sagging skin, liver spots, aches and pains, grey hair, and assorted other grumbles-is the memory. Once you hit 40, it's all downhill from there. Who cares who says differently? You begin to forget things. You begin to forget things. You begin..(sorry, couldn't resist that. Terrible, wasn't it?)

I coined a name for this condition when I hit forty and the fertilizer began to hit the fan (Christmas. I'm being polite. That  ends tomorrow). I call it: CRS-which means Can't Remember Shit. I'm surprised I remembered that-but I cheated, I wrote it down. CRS got the seal of approval from everyone. We had all tried all kinds of memory training-but fighting CRS? My solution: writing things down. Now all I need to remember once I have written everything down is what I did with the paper...It's possibly with my keys. I can never find those, either. And CRS hits when you get to 40. Sometimes it hits at 35, or 25. If you're from Essex, it hits at 12.

That was my Christmas. And yesterday, there was ice on the ground (the borough never salts or grits the roads or pavement; they want people to fall over and break things and end up in the hospital. That is how they get their jollies. Idiots.), and I went, as the (cute) saying goes, ass over tit and ended up splat on the ground in the middle of the road. Some prat stopped his car and waited for me to get up and move out of his way. Did he help? Of course not. He just looked, looked at his watch, and waved his arm for me to move. I wanted to wave my arm-complete with one finger sticking up-but I was afraid he might drive over me. So much for the absolute myth of the Brits having manners. But I was only bruised-which is good, because I didn't want to be carted off to hospital. Who knows which part of my anatomy they might amputate?

Now I am getting ready for New Year's Eve-but I will do what I did on Boxing Day: eat very, very little.It took me two days just to be able to zip up my jeans! I will have a few drinks, though. After all, calories don't count until tomorrow. And I think I ate at least a week's worth of those last week.

I haven't written any new year's resolutions yet-not because I will write them and forget where I put them, but because I always end up breaking them the next day. But I am thinking about it. I do know that I have had a very, very bad five years-very bad. Gentamicin in 2010 trumps everything-all the bad chest infections, all the other stuff-but cancer trumps that. If I could wipe out 2010 through 2014, I would do so in a millisecond. But that all happened, and I need to somehow let it go. So I think that number one on my new year's resolution list would have to be to let go of everything (and everyone)-difficult to do, easy to say.

I'm working on it. And by tomorrow I will have a list of resolutions I will really keep. No shopping. No more stuff. Health-that comes first. If you don't have your health, what else could possibly matter?

Happy New Year. Celebrate. Eat (oh, no, not again!!), drink (absolutely), and leave 2014 behind. In my case, well behind. It's a new year. It's a new chapter. I don't know how long I am going to be here, but I can tell you that I will make the most of every minute. So-see you tomorrow!!!!