Feature

Mine the Gap

© LUCIA FOSTER-FOUND 2022 WWW.LUCIAFOSTERFOUND.COM

Behold the dingy, dark, drizzly days of January! The decs came down and she packed away the fairy lights.

She was, however, quietly confident that in eleven months’ time they would reliably twinkle once more - these days they did. Years ago, the annual unpacking and plugging-in of the tree lights had been a thrilling festive family experience. Sometimes they’d work and all and sundry would go “aah” in wonder and relief. Mostly relief. Occasionally they’d briefly, fiercely glow and fuse the electrics - the blackout filled with expletive littered calls for candles. Generally though, the little coloured orbs remained stubbornly dark. Someone could be relied upon to state the obvious “they worked last year” and there would be a frantic search for spare bulbs, followed by a tedious testing of every... single... light.. Yet somehow it had been just as much a Yuletide staple as the box of seasonal satsumas; orange spheres individually wrapped in tissue paper. But without the sparkle and cheer of the warm LEDs, the world appeared as if through the grey translucence of tracing paper. She looked wistfully out of the window and sighed… Christmas Day had come and gone. Again. So anticipated and, this year in particular, so needed. But it was, at the end of the day, just a day. As a child, it seemed to last forever. From the pre-dawn excitement of the parcels at the bottom of the bed, to the last game of ker-plunk in the early hours. Then, tummy full of turkey sandwiches and dates, crawling back under a duvet scattered with shreds of wrapping paper. Boxing Day next; cold meats and bubble-and-squeak. She remembered it so well. But the days between Christmas and New Year? Not so much. All a bit of a blur - a gap in the calendar largely filled with turkey soup and lots of films. Films watched between dog walks in damp weather. These were the lost days, the vague days, the not-still-Christmas and the notyet-New-Year days. Nameless days. Then one year she’d spent Christmas in Germany and the period after 25th, before New Year’s Eve assumed an actual identity. The Germans call it ‘Zwischen den Jahren’, ‘Between the Years’.

Yes! Wasn’t it, though? Nothing counted – especially not calories, yippee! – because this was no-when land; neither this year, nor the next. In Germany it was a time of snow, of Christmas markets and glugging gluhwein. And back in the good old, grey old GB, she could legitimately float about in her pj’s, scoff the remaining After Eights and knock back the advocaat. Bliss. Now, it transpired, that here too the nowhere days were nameless no more. The hospitality industry had given birth to ‘Twixmas’. After banishing the initial mental image of a chocolate coated caramel shortbread (other biscuits are available), she warmed to the name. There was a twinklyness about it, a sprinkling of festive fairy dust. Apparently hotels offered ‘Twixmas’ breaks - and with the embryonic notion of booking one, she’d mentioned it to Himself. “So what about it, darling? It’ll give us something to look forward to in the come-down after Christmas.” His habitually affable expression was replaced by his faintly horrified one. “What – go away after Boxing Day? I need a spell of nil-by-mouth before New Year to recover from my food coma, not buffet breakfasts and three course dinners.” Yes, well, there was that. “Although” he considered “I like that it’s something original. Not Yule and Samhain hijacked and repackaged as Christmas and Halloween. We’ve enthusiastically embraced Black Friday and it’s probably only a matter of time before we go all stars and stripes and adopt Thanksgiving and 4th July too.. So this ‘Twixmas’ might become a big thing in its own right. Filling a gap in the market and mining the festive season for all it’s worth. Smart.” So conceptually, Himself approved. Sort of. It gave her something to work with, anyway. Next year she might try and skip Christmas altogether and move straight on to Twixmas – cut out all that interim hard work. Hmmnn… tempting, but unlikely. Turning away from the monochrome landscape outside her window and the depressing post-decoration dreariness within, she could only hope that someone would come up with something to mine the gap before Valentines... Then she spotted that someone already had. Of course. Silly - there it was on the calendar. Suddenly all that haggis in the shops made sense. But she wasn’t Scottish and, frankly, Auld Lang Syne made her weep. Should she let little details like that get between her and the delicious Chieftain o’ the Pudding Race? Not likely! Burns Night supper - Bring it on…

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