TWISTED GILDED GHETTO by Eric Page

SLAY AT HOME

Creeping quietly around, with just the rustling of tissue paper to betray my presence, I’ve dropped off the husband’s gifts.

It’s hard getting a PlayStation in a stocking but I’ve managed it and have slipped back on to the sofa, toes cosy in my sheepskin slippers, sipping home-made sloe gin at 6am, peeping out in the dawn light over a city blanketed in glittery white snow. All is calm, all is white and, apart from the loud farts trumpeting out of the bedroom, parrup-pa-pa-pumm, it’s peace on earth. He sleeps above in deep and dreamless sleep. I turn the golden ring on my finger and smile warmly, giggle to myself, another unlikely event from this very different year.

We knew Xmas was going to end in tiers, Miss Rona is sticking around for a while yet, but we’re used to it. Life has become the size of a cosy village and, although the raging frustrations of our FOMO’d globe-trotting party animals are glowering like a cross between Mrs Danvers, Rebecca and Nurse Ratched, defeated behind the shuttered Manderley of Missed Things, we’ve decked the halls, and bowed the holly, fa la la la la la la la. I poke the embers of the fire, give the Ghost of Christmas Past the side eye as it lurches home from an all-night party, kilt askew, clutching a blow-up reindeer and a rather fetching gurning Venezuelan muscle boy, the remains of the sawn-up driftwood collapse in a sigh of ash and I pop the last chestnut on to roast.

The house looks like Mr Dickens has been round, goose and all, and wrapped us up in pagan Yuletide joy. We’re staying home this year, first time ever we’ve both been together at home, not with the farflung folks in their ancestral villages deep in the mid bleak winter, performing the rituals of our youth, returning like swallows, westward leaning, still proceeding. We create our own rituals this year. A midnight walk along the Downs, stars glittering like the tears of orphans, earth stands hard as iron, our hearts almost worn out from worry.

I made the wreath, it’s like a drag queen door knocker, lit up so it can be seen from space and so fat you need to turn sideways to get in and out the house, I added in a lot of holly, the berries redder than Lola’s lips, the green twisted thorns scratch at you like Jack Frost’s fingers, grasping from the door; but the Pando means we have few guests, at least inside. We share Mrs Cradock’s home-made PlumRum on the doorstop, sweet pies then mince off into the night. Bye, bye, lully lulay.

Last Christmas I gave you my heart, but the very next day you gave it back, with gratitude but explaining you’re now a vegetarian and offal is off. Even traditional Welsh Boxing Day roasted hearts, stuffed with faggots and tiny onions, can be an unwanted gift. We’ve made a lot this year, pickles, preserves, gins and rums, no knitting, or crochet thank goodness, it never got that bad, we always had sex to fall back on!

I’m the Mrs Rochester of Wrapping, with a resting Grinch face, clutching tiny silver scissors, rustling in the shadows. I can’t sleep, I’ve run out of things to do, but wait there’s Myrrh but I’m sleighed. The decanter glugs and I look the Ghost of Christmas Present directly in the eye and shrug. We clink schooners.

O tidings of comfort and joy, the snuggle is real Dear Reader, may nothing ye despair, so be exquisite and never explain.