Yorkshire Writers' Lunch

So it’s done. All over. All those weeks of shopping and planning, of fruitcake-sousing, of mincemeat mixing. Of house-decorating and relatives-appeasing. The pantos. The carolling. The ‘what-on-earth-am-I-going-to-give-Great-Aunt-Jean’-ing? Then the day itself when we gorged ourselves. On food, on drink, on presents, on tinsel. We surrounded ourselves with the ones we love and filled our eyes, our ears and our belly with treats. And then 24 hours later, it was over. Well not quite, of course. There are still a load of leftovers to finish (turkey curry, anyone?). There are still a couple of needles yet to fall off the tree. And the batteries in the new lightsabres are just about clinging on in there.  But it’s done. What now? Now.  This time in-between. This brief moment when the world seems to pause on its axis, just for a blink and you’ll miss it instant. A time of quiet, of stillness, when the old year is done and the new one hasn’t yet begun.  ...

It’s coming up to Christmas, a drama whose cast and location has changed completely, several times, in my life. When you form an important relationship or get married, or have children, or lose a loved one, the form which Christmas will take can be a source of inner and outer conflict, a feeling that what is proposed is somehow not quite as Christmas should be. Our idea of what Christmas should be is formed when we are very young, created from those first remembered gatherings of our own peculiar tribe, when food was unusually varied and plentiful, when bedtimes were not enforced, when games were played, when brightly coloured pop was drunk, and when the grown-ups were a lot less serious than usual. This is me aged three and a half, on the first Christmas Day I can recall. I am in the back yard of my grandparents’ house in Mitcham, proudly showing my presents to the Brownie camera - a tricycle and a bus conductor’s outfit. My parents had lived with my grandparents when they were...

To make the perfect Christmas Start September! Be prepared! Write a list, or two, or three, Hang tasteful baubles on your tasteful tree. Start September! Be prepared! Check out this years’ must have gifts Hang tasteful baubles on your tasteful tree Stuff home-made stuffing in your giant turkey. Can’t afford those must have gifts? Will your loved ones know you care? Drag slimy giblets from your grotesque turkey Dread the rowdy family festive feast. Give time to loved ones, show you care, And stuff the list or two or three Relish the rowdy family festive feast To make the perfect Christmas.

  It’s the run up to Christmas and the shops are filled again with an abundance of chocolate, biscuits, cakes and booze, and I wonder whether this year I will fill my shopping trolley in quite the same way.    Like many other people, and as had been my ritual for years before, I over indulged last Christmas.  I drank more alcohol than usual and ate a lot of chocolate.  I couldn’t leave the large tin of Roses and Quality Street or the cakes or prettily boxed biscuits to waste, could I?  The more chocolate, cakes and biscuits I ate, the more I wanted to eat. I knew it was bad for me, but I craved it and enjoyed it.   I cannot only blame the Christmas period either.  Since giving birth, I had swapped the odd glass of wine after a stressful day at work for a new vice.  Chocolate, biscuits or cake would be my quick fix when I felt tired - hot chocolates with marshmallows and whipped cream too.  What better way to give yourself a...