Abandoned, and happy about it

For the first time in living memory, I am actually looking forward to Christmas. And it's all thanks to my mother (now there's a sentence I never thought I'd have to type). She phoned me at the shop for "a chat" ("You should see the monstrosity that the Neales have erected in their front garden, Father Christmas with SIX reindeer - and it glows. Daddy is threatening to call the council. And don't even get me started on what Christine Clancy has done with her front gates..." I won't, mother, I won't). During this bout of logorrhoea, however, she casually asked what Lucy and I were planning to do over Christmas.


"Well, I assumed we'd come up and see you guys," say I, with a heavy sigh of resignation, a gruesome montage of thirty-odd years' worth of mulled wine and mince pies parties flashing inexorably through my mind.


"Oh, you can't do that,darling. Daddy and I are going to the Seychelles for Christmas."


"The... Seychelles?"


"Yes. You know, the islands. It's all-in, you know - breakfast, lunch, supper, you can eat from dawn until dusk if you want. And water sports too - Daddy's thinking of learning to water-ski, though I told him that it's not a good idea, not with his bad back..."


"You're going to the Seychelles?"


"Yes. Do keep up, darling."


That coffee-percolater sound you can hear is my mind, boggling.


"But... but... what about the mulled wine and mince pies party?"


"Oh, the village will have to make do without us this year. No doubt," (and here my mother's voice takes on a discernable patina of ice), "Christine will step into the breach. So what do you think you'll do? I suppose you will go to visit Lucy's parents in... Preston?" (the latter enunciated as if it were some particularly distateful medical complaint).


"No, Lucy doesn't get on with her parents. I guess we'll just... stay here."


And as I say this, a joyful glow spreads through my whole being. Christmas in the flat with Lucy. No parents. No mince pies and mulled wine parties. No crawling sense of failure and self-loathing. Just turkey and fine wine and fucking.


Merry bloody Christmas, everybody.


The Bottle Shop recommendation for today: CNVE Rioja Reserva 2000 (Spain). An upper-class call-girl of a wine, with hints of leather and caramel - like a dominatrix version of the Cadbury's Caramel bunny. And on Christmas Day I shall be drinking this until it comes out of my ears. £9.99
9.12.05 14:36