It’s the Thought that Counts…

By the time you read this on Sunday morning, there will only be three more sleeps until Christmas Day. Are you ready? Or are you the sort who likes to live dangerously and leave everything until the last minute? I’m more or less ready. Sadly, I have to work today but only until 4pm and then I’ll be off for a whole three days! Ooh, being spoilt here, the joys of working in retail.

As I work Boxing Day, the decision was made to bring everything forward a day, so therefore Monday is our Christmas Eve, Tuesday is our Christmas Day and Wednesday will be our Boxing Day. It just makes Christmas a bit nicer for me. I’ve had to work the last two Boxing Days and it really puts a serious crimp in the festive revelry. To be constantly checking my watch, to be aware that I have to turn up at work next day on time and sober, ready for one of the busiest days in our retail year. By shifting everything forward a day, I can enjoy myself as much as I want on Christmas Day (Tuesday) and still have Boxing Day (Wednesday) to rest and recover.

We’ve tried to cut down on presents this year. Last year I went totally overboard with everyone and ended up with a debt I didn’t finish paying off until this November. Which is ridiculous and a bit obscene, so my parents and Miss F all agreed we’d not buy presents at all, although obviously I would buy some little things for Miss F to open on Christmas Day. But then her phone broke, as regular readers of my blog will know, so we got her a new phone on my Argos interest free card and I will be paying £200 towards it.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Christmas presents this week, about things I’ve given and received over the years. About the great presents I’ve had, the not so great and the downright bizarre. Buying presents is something I pride myself on being particularly good at, in that I try hard to think about what the person would really like. If you know someone, then it should be easy to imagine what would give them joy to receive and then buy that. Of course, the absolute best presents are those that the recipient had no idea they wanted until they open it, and then they love it. Sadly, all too often, people give what they would like to receive, not what the person they’re giving to wants.

I’ve lost count of the smelly body lotion sets, scented candles which smelt like furniture polish, tins of biscuits, slippers and other such stuff I’ve received over the years, all of which I’ve politely said thank you for and then put away ready to be regifted. It is particularly galling when you’ve invested a lot of time, money and effort in a wonderful gift for someone that they love, and in return you receive a tin of biscuits! Speaking of giving and not receiving, are Christmas cards now a thing of the past? This year I’ve handed out all my cards to the normal people and a large number of them have turned around and said “Oh, we’re not doing cards this year”.

Not that long ago, I needed four of those long card holders to contain all the Christmas cards I received, this year I’m down to barely filling two. I don’t know if that’s a reflection of the waning popularity of Christmas cards or perhaps the waning popularity of me. Either way, it is a little sad. I love giving and receiving cards, but, as I save all my cards until the next year and use them as a guide as to who gets a card from me, it means all those who didn’t bother giving me a card this year won’t get one from me next Christmas.

And then there’s presents. Always a tricky subject, the buying and giving of presents. When clear budgets are set and stuck to it helps to alleviate inequality in spending, so long as all parties stick to the budget. I have on occasion been told a £10 budget which I have rigidly stuck to, only to have a gift clearly worth a lot more than that presented to me, making me feel cheap, mean and ultimately resentful I’ve been made to feel that way. I know that’s not the spirit of Christmas, but it is the spirit of most of us.

And of course, I’ve also experienced it the other way around, when I have given a lovely gift which is smack on the nose, or maybe a little over, budget wise, only to receive a gift in return that is clearly lacking in thought and value. I’m not that hard to buy for and if you’re really stuck, then a book voucher to spend on new books is always a winner.

Sometimes, I wonder if my friends and family know me at all, based on some of the gifts I have received. I remember one Christmas, a very long time ago, I had a big Christmas Eve party and all my friends had brought their gifts to me and each other to open by the tree. Lovely, thoughtful, wonderful gifts came out of brightly packaged boxes and we were all thrilled, until I opened the present from one of my closest friends.

You know when you’re opening a present and someone says “Oh, it’s nothing special” but it is and it’s lovely, well, this wasn’t one of those times. She said, “it’s nothing special” and it really, really, wasn’t. It was a basket of an assortment of Mrs Bridges pickles, jams and chutneys – for your 25 year old best friend? Bearing in mind, my gift to her had been tickets to see a West End Show in London, it seemed a little unbalanced and lead to a rather awkward moment, and, I won’t lie, a cooling of our friendship. It wasn’t so much the disparity in spend, although she earned a lot more than me so could well afford the pre-agreed budget, it was more the lack of thought that hurt.

Another friend for every birthday and Christmas for ten years, always insisted on buying me an article of clothing. Now, clothing is a tricky thing to buy for someone. You need to be very, very sure of sizes, tastes and fit before attempting to buy anything more complicated than socks or a scarf for someone, and always make sure you give them the receipt. But this friend was confident she knew me well enough after all our years of friendship. She didn’t.

Every time a soft, squishy parcel was handed to me my heart would sink, wondering what awful thing she’d got me this time. A teeny tiny denim mini skirt that would barely cover my arse. A dreadful white frilly blouse that looked like your Great Aunt Nelly’s net curtains and was so itchy no one could wear it longer than two minutes. A tarty, off the shoulder, black sequin top that made me shudder to look at it. A peach chiffon top that washed all the colour from my skin.

All clothes that she would wear, but not clothes that I would ever even give wardrobe space to. She was making the classic mistake of buying what she liked, rather than thinking about all the clothes she’d seen me wear over the years and realising that white isn’t my colour and I don’t do short, tarty apparel, it’s just not me. There was never a receipt included and usually she’d ripped all the tags off so I couldn’t even exchange. On the rare occasions a tag was left intact, I would take it back to the shop in question only to find that she’d bought it in the sale, and it had an exchange value of £1.50.

All too often with buying presents for people, it’s the “what the heck do we buy them” that causes problems, not the actual buying and wrapping. Most people nowadays have enough money to buy themselves whatever they want, so Christmas is no longer a chance to give people things they really need but couldn’t justify buying themselves. Now more than ever, presents are about the thought you have put into them. My ex-in-laws (the outlaws) are a good example of this. They live in a tiny retirement flat, crammed in with all their belongings they simply cannot give houseroom to “stuff”. There is nothing they want, need or desire, so buying presents for them was always a challenge.

Then, a few years ago, I hit upon the idea of making them a hamper and wondered why I hadn’t thought about it sooner. Now, you can of course, buy hampers ready-made, but they are always hellishly expensive and always contain a ton of stuff that you know the recipient won’t like or want. So, what I do is simply go around the supermarket and buy about £30 worth of food and drink I know they will use and enjoy, but I buy a nice version of it – Twinings English Breakfast tea instead of a value pack – that sort of thing. I then make a hamper from an old, sturdy box and arrange everything neatly. It looks great and is full of things they will use, things that won’t clutter their flat, well, not for long. It was a huge success and ever since that’s what I’ve done.

My mum, bless her, has had one or two spectacular fails with present buying over the years. When Miss F was young obviously my mother would buy her things to give to me for Christmas, and Miss F would run into my room on Christmas morning, her stocking clutched in one hand and her present to me in the other. More excited about watching me open mine, she would eagerly wait with quivering anticipation as I tore the paper off. One year, I opened the beautiful package to find a tube of foundation for coloured skin tones.

I was stunned. So stunned, I had to phone my mother there and then.

“You’ve bought me foundation?”

“Yes, I knew you were running short and it’s so expensive.”

“Ok, so nice thought, but Mum, this foundation is for coloured skin tones.”

“Well, that’s alright isn’t it?”

“No, Mum, it’s for black skin.”

“Can’t you still use it?”

“Have you seen the colour of me, Mum? I’d look like the lovechild of Judith Chalmers and David Dickinson!”

For those of you unfamiliar with this pair, they were TV presenters well known for their love of fake tan and the rather alarming tangerine colour of their skin. After Christmas, I related the tale to a friend of mine who is black, she roared with laughter and offered to buy it off me. In the end we did a swap, she gave me the bottle of rather nice red wine her work had given her which she didn’t want, and I gave her the foundation.

Another year I was very excited to see three, book shaped presents with my name on under my parents’ tree. In excitement, I ripped the paper off the first one to find a book on hedgerow foraging. Surprised, I looked at it, then opened the second parcel, only to find another book on hedgerow foraging. Sensing a theme, I wasn’t too surprised when I opened the third parcel to find yet another book on hedgerow foraging. I looked at my mum.

“Umm, why?”

“Well, I know you’re into that sort of thing.”

“I go blackberry picking once a year and I don’t need three books to tell me how to do it.”

I sold all three books on eBay in the new year and bought something I actually wanted, but are you beginning to see why I don’t get very excited about Christmas presents?

My ex-husband always bought me things he wanted himself, and although he did stop short of buying me a power drill, there was a camera I didn’t want or need that he then took as his own, DVD boxsets of shows I’d never heard of, and things for the kitchen I didn’t want that then languished in the cupboard after one use when he found it wasn’t as much fun to use as the ads had suggested.

One year, in desperation, I sat down and wrote a very long and comprehensive list of things I really wanted and needed. Even that didn’t work. Whilst most people did buy off list, my mother is a free spirit who won’t be told what to do so instead bought me frumpy slippers (I hate slippers, they make my feet too hot) and a large gift pack of Marks & Spencer Magnolia body stuff (it smells like cat pee on me and makes me itch).

One year, she gave me two tops, two lovely tops, perfect for me, there was just one problem.

“Why have you bought me these?”

“Well, when I saw them, I could just see you in them.”

“There’s a reason for that. You have! I already own these exact same tops.”

Then there was the year my poor mum forgot to tag any presents. That was an interesting Christmas Day. Like some kind of festive Russian roulette, we’d all choose a tag-less present from under the tree, shake it, squeeze it, and try to guess what might be in it. I ended up with a tie, an XXL hoody and a cordless screwdriver. Once all the presents were opened, we then had a Swap Shop session.

One year, we had a party the week before Christmas. A lovely evening, it was all very festive and a huge success and, as a friend was leaving, she put her arm around me, thanked me for a wonderful evening and told me she’d slipped us a little something under the tree. I thanked her, we wished each other Merry Christmas and she left. For the rest of that week we couldn’t figure out what on earth the disgusting smell was in the house. I bleached bins, we cleaned drains, we moved furniture to see if the cat had left a dead mouse anywhere, but no matter what we did this foul smell prevailed.

Then it was Christmas Day, and I lit scented candles everywhere to drown out the smell. We opened our gifts, including the one from my friend, only to discover it was the ripest, stinkiest, smelliest piece of Stilton cheese! In a box, under our tree, in a warm lounge, for a week! Needless to say, it went straight in the bin. I asked her what on earth she’d been thinking of. Yes, lovely present for my ex-husband (I don’t like Stilton, so again, lack of thought) but it needed to go into the fridge, not be slipped under the tree for a week. She got quite shirty at my lack of gratitude.

Did anyone make cherry brandy as I showed you a few weeks ago? Well, if you did, then you need to be bottling it up this week. It’s really simple. All you need to do is strain the fruit infused brandy through a linen or muslin lined sieve into a large jug and then pour them into clean, screw top bottles. You can use the bottles you fermented it in but obviously you’ll need to rinse them out first. The four 75cl bottles I made was enough to decant back into one 75cl bottle and then three 40cl bottles which I then labelled and gave as Christmas presents. I had a sneaky taste and it’s lovely, very warm and Christmassy.

By the time I blog next week it will all be over. All the work, expense, stress and preparation that goes into one day will be done for another year. I hope you all have an amazing Christmas Day, and if you don’t celebrate Christmas then please let me extend well wishes to you and your family.

Thank you for once again taking the time to read my ramblings, and I’ll see you on the other side.

Merry Christmas

Julia Blake

Tis the Season for… Presents, Party Frocks and Panic!

Another week closer to Christmas and I’ve been on holiday this week, but, as usual, my crazy busy life doesn’t allow for much in the way of resting, and this week has been purely for me to catch up on Christmas preparations, as I only get three days off over Christmas itself.

I am just about ready now. Monday was spent getting those last few presents for the people I am buying for. An aunt and uncle who always buy for Miss F and for whom I always struggle to buy. What do you get for people you don’t know very well, who have no interests or hobbies you know about and don’t seem to want or need anything? Answer, a delightful set of four placemats and matching coasters in duck egg blue with adorable funny ducks on. I mean, who wouldn’t want them?

Tuesday, I had to go into my freelance job for a few hours in the morning, then I went to the supermarket and did THE shop. It wasn’t too crowded, but it still took me almost two hours. Considering that was a normal weekly shop, the contents of a couple of hampers, all the drinks and food we’ll need over the Christmas period and a mega cheeseboard which is my contribution to Christmas dinner, I didn’t think that was too bad.

Wednesday, I went to visit an author friend of mine who lives nearby and had a lovely long lunch and chat with her. Then Thursday morning I went shopping for an outfit for my works Christmas do which was on Saturday night and also find something for Christmas Day. Now, I’m not great with clothes shopping. Well, when you’re (a) only 5’ and (b) have womanly curves and (c) no money, trying to find something that (a) fits (b) looks alright, and (c) doesn’t cost a fortune, is a real challenge. I hate the whole process as well, the trailing around in overheated shops, picking things off the rails and looking at them, clueless as to whether they’ll suit you and wondering if it’s worth the bother of queuing for a changing cubicle and then having the hassle of stripping to try it on.

I tend to look all round the shop first and then try on a great armful of all the potential candidates. Seriously, I only want to do this once! I really wanted to look nice for my staff Christmas do, I wear a uniform for work and the rest of the time look like a bag lady who got dressed in the dark, so for once, I wanted to look and feel feminine and, well, put together.

I had my heart set on a dress. Now, dresses and I are not really a thing – see points (a) (b) and (c) above, but this year I wanted to wear something different from my usual trousers and top combo. Then, in almost the first shop I tried, I found it. A sleeveless shift dress, fully lined, in a lovely velvety material. It was subtle and pretty, with a softly muted pattern of blue, burgundy, reds and yellows, the overall effect of which was like an old, worn Turkish rug.

With a bubble of excitement rising inside me, I took it to the changing room. To my delight it fitted, but I wasn’t sure if it FITTED, if you know what I mean. It’s so hard to make a rational decision cramped into a cubicle with your hair a windblown bird’s nest, no make-up on and your jeans yanked down to your knees. I thought it looked okay, it was beautiful, so I decided to take a chance. Buying a long-sleeved burgundy body to wear underneath – my days of going out with bare arms being a thing of the past – I hurried home in time to meet another friend for our pre-Christmas lunch.

Friday, I ran Miss F out to her work placement, answered a few emails, booked a taxi for Christmas Eve (£15 to get us home at 11.30pm, bargain!) and then dashed to Marks & Spencer to grab a pair of burgundy tights to go with my beautiful new Christmas frock. Rushing through the ladieswear department, I spotted a rack of new in jeans and stopped to have a quick look.

Now, there are only four different types of jeans I can wear – bootcut, slouch, boyfriend and sometimes slim, depending on the cut. Forget all the others, and especially forget the torture of skinny fit jeans. Why, oh why, are they called that? When they neither fit nor make you look skinny. But the stores have decided skinny and super skinny (really?! Have they seen the size of the average British woman?!) are the style of jeans we all want and so the shops are full of them. Seriously, I mean rammed with them, to the extent it’s as if the other cuts no longer exist.

I glanced over the racks. Sure enough, skinny, skinny, super skinny, ankle grazer skinny, high rise skinny, low rise skinny, mid-rise skinny – you get the point. But then suddenly, one lone rack of slim fit tucked away right at the end. They’d already been plundered. Desperate women like me had clearly descended on them like a plague of locusts and ransacked the choicest sizes. With a sinking heart I rattled through them. Nope. My size wasn’t there. Slowly I went through again, this time ignoring the size on the hanger and checking the sizes inside the jeans themselves. It’s rare, but it does happen that sometimes a size will be incorrectly put back on the wrong hanger. Yes! I crowed with delight. I was in luck, there was one pair of slim fit jeans in my size lurking on a size 20 hanger.

What to do? I was on my way to a coffee morning with the Suffolk Authors and didn’t have time to try them on. Luckily, Marks & Spencer have a brilliant returns policy, so I knew there’d be no issue with bringing them back if they didn’t fit. I grabbed them, just as another woman who looked about my size suddenly discovered the rack, and, with a gasp of hope, began rattling the hangers.

I legged it towards the nearest till, just in case it ended in a smackdown. On the way, I passed a rack of gorgeous “going out” blouses. Silky soft, with a bright red base colour and a pattern of large golden dahlias, they were beautiful. The pair of jeans I was holding were a dusky black and the blouse would go perfectly with them. Not stopping to think, I grabbed one my size, figuring having two outfits for the whole Christmas period was not too extravagant, not really.

Friday was its usual busy frantic rush, so I didn’t get time to try on the fruits of my shopping expeditions until Saturday morning. Miss F was home getting ready to go to work, so I asked if she’d have a look and pass judgement, on which one I should wear that evening for the staff Christmas do. Carefully, without removing any of the tags, I tried on the dress first. Burgundy body suit underneath, burgundy tights smoothed on, knee high boots zipped up. Nervously, I went down to get her approval.

She looked at me. Her eyebrows went up and her mouth pursed. She was silent.

“Well?”

“Umm, perhaps if you wore a pair of spanx underneath?”

“I am wearing a pair of spanx underneath,” I informed her through gritted teeth.

She paused and pulled another face, and I could see her urge to be honest warring with her desire to be kind.

“It makes me look fat, doesn’t it?”

“Well, not so much fat, as… chunky.”

And that was it, with that one word – chunky – she’d completely killed any love I had for the dress. Dispirited, I trailed back upstairs to change into Plan B. The jeans fitted perfectly, good quality ones, they hugged where they should, held in what I wanted them to, and flattened what I needed them to, but the blouse… it was ridiculously large and billowy and the sleeves flapped halfway down my hands!

Duly, I went to show Miss F and another face was pulled.

“You look like a kid dressing up in her mother’s clothes.”

Better than chunky, I suppose, but still not good and I was now left in the terrible position of having gone from having two outfits, to having none! Something had to be done. Assessing the situation, I felt if I merely went down a size in the blouse that would solve all the problems and have the added bonus of making me feel better. There had been dozens of blouses in Marks & Spencer only the morning before, so I was confident of being able to simply swap one size for the next one down.

Quickly, I got changed and put the dress and blouse in a bag, along with the appropriate receipts, and scuttled up town – thankful that we only lived a couple of minutes walk away – and took the dress back first, no problem.

Fully committed to the jeans and blouse outfit now, I trawled the shops and found black ankle boots with gold zips, a black belt with a gold buckle, a very useful sized black bag with gold trimmings and amazing dangly black and gold earrings. Then I reached Marks & Spencer and hurried to where two racks of those blouses had hung just the day before. They weren’t there. Quickly searching, my heart rising in panic, I finally located a few tucked behind a horrible brick red shirt. There were only four left. A size 6, a size 8, a size 20 and the same size I’d already bought.

Bugger! Now desperate, I located an assistant, who got panicky with me when I explained the situation and set off to check the stock levels, just in case one was left hanging outside a changing room somewhere. There wasn’t. We looked at each other. A lady about my age, she was clearly feeling my pain and that helped a bit, misery really does love company. Trying to be helpful, she set off on a scavenger hunt around the shop, suggesting lots of different tops but none of them were what I wanted, and the few that were, the sizes had been picked through so I was left with two choices – either lose, or gain, half my body weight by that evening!

I’d like to take this opportunity to send a plea to women’s clothing stores. You know which are the most popular sizes, so please, stock up on those ones! Let’s face it, even if you do have stock left to go into the after Christmas sales, you’re more likely to sell items in the sizes most women are, than the freakishly small and large ones.

Finally, we found a blouse very similar in cut and look to the red and gold one, but in black and gold. Again, only stupid sizes were left but there was one in the exact same size as the blouse I was still clutching. We looked at each other again.

“It’s the same cut as the original one, so will that mean it won’t fit either?”

“I don’t know, but it’s worth a try.”

She was right, it was worth a try, so into the changing room I trotted. Was it a perfect fit? Not particularly. Will it do? Yes, I bought it. Time was ticking by and I didn’t have the luxury of being picky. The same price as the original blouse, it was a straight exchange, Funnily enough, on the way out of the shop I passed the racks of jeans and noticed of the slim fit ones there were only a scant few left – sizes 6, 8, 20 and 24.

On the way home, I found a gold and black choker style necklace to complete the look, and I’ve even been to the hairdressers and had my hair styled into an elaborate up-do. But it’s blowing a force ten gale out there and it fell apart a bit just on the walk home. Rain is threatened for the evening and it’s a ten-minute walk to the restaurant. Will my hair survive? I very much doubt it, but there’s nothing I can do about it other than give it a good blast of hairspray and hope for the best. And, by the time I’ve had a couple of glasses of free prosecco, I probably won’t give a damn.

Why is it that clothes shopping gets so much harder the older you get? Is it because our bodies let us down? We get saggy bits and our tummies bulge, our bottoms droop and our bingo wings flap. Our skin tone changes and colours that once looked great, are now deeply unflattering. I also think we get fussier the older we get. When we’re young we can get away with wearing almost anything, relying on our youth to make us beautiful, but, as age takes its toll, we rely more and more on clothes to be our armour against the judgemental gazes of others.

Women, especially, have it the hardest. We want to dress youthfully, but there’s always the fear of being “mutton dressed as lamb”, that overwhelming dread of appearing ridiculous. For women of my age, we’re caught in that hinterland where skinny fit is no longer an option, but we’re still resisting the siren call of elasticated waistbands. Where the much-loved brighter coloured clothing can clash badly with menopausal hot flushes, yet we don’t want to give in and wear beige.

There is a serious gap in the clothes available to us that a clever clothing manufacturer could fill. After all, most women my age have money to burn and would be more than happy to spend it on well cut, nice quality clothes that are fresh, youthful and, crucially, fit. Clothes that make allowances for bumpy bits, and sticky out bits, and the fact that not all women are 5’7” stick insects. In short, clothes that boost our flagging self-confidence and make us feel good about ourselves. Now, what woman wouldn’t pay a little extra for that? I know I would.

Anyway, it’s now gone 4pm on Saturday afternoon and I need to start getting ready. I’ve suddenly realised that stupidly I wore a jumper this morning, and now have to try and negotiate it over the gazillion hair pins it took to tame my hair into a posh, grown up style.

This wasn’t the blog I set out to write, I had intended to have a light-hearted ramble through the Christmas presents – good, bad and downright hilarious – that I’ve received over the years, but that can be a blog for another week.

Take care of yourselves, and I really hope you all have a great week. As usual, I would love to hear from you, so please drop any comments here or you can contact me on Facebook and Instagram. See you next week, the last blog before Christmas, when hopefully, I will be able to tell you I’m ready and waiting for Christmas to do its worst.

All the best

Julia Blake

The Goose is Getting Fat… Christmas Past & Present (or possibly no presents)

This week I’m going to be using the C word a lot. I apologise for using the C word and know that halfway through November it is still way too early to be using the C word, but, events have occurred that have left me with no choice but to think about and say the C word a lot. Christmas. Sorry, I know most of you don’t want to hear it yet, but there’s no escaping from it. Christmas is coming whether we like it or not.

I always think that nothing illustrates the law of diminishing returns better than Christmas. Think about it. When you’re a kid you do absolutely nothing to contribute towards Christmas – except throw a strop on Christmas Day because you got Barbie Princess, and not the Barbie Diamond Princess you actually wanted but your poor, harassed mother didn’t realise was completely different from plain, boring Barbie Princess. Or by helpfully puking your guts up with excitement on Christmas morning. Or by refusing to go to sleep until gone midnight on Christmas Eve, thus meaning your exhausted parents are falling asleep on the sofa they’re so tired, but can’t go to bed until after you’re well and truly down – well, they have to sneak into your room and quietly fill the stocking at the foot of your bed.

Tip to all new parents, start the tradition on the first Christmas of hanging up their stockings either downstairs or on the handle of their bedroom door – so much easier for sneaky Santa shenanigans. If they really insist on having the stocking in their bedroom, then buy two identical stockings. Hang one up in their room, the other one is hidden in your room already filled to the brim with their presents. Then the moment their little peepers are firmly closed, it’s a simple case of creeping in and doing a switch. You’re welcome. This has been a Public Service Announcement by Julia Blake.

Anyway, as I was saying, when you’re a kid you do NOTHING to help with Christmas, yet you get EVERYTHING. Christmas plays, parties, carol services, lunches and trips to Santa in his grotto to give him a list of your demands. Your excitement levels ratchet higher with every door you open on your chocolate stuffed advent calendar. You enjoy decorating the tree, without giving a thought to the poor parent who’s had to tramp around a muddy field picking the “perfect” tree, wrestle it into a car too small to take it, manhandle it into the house and into a suitable pot and then play the ever popular game of “will the lights work this year”? Even if your parents opted for a plastic tree, they’ve still had to climb into the loft to find it, risking life and limb crawling over a year’s worth of stuff that’s been shoved in front of the boxes of Christmas decorations.

As you get older, maybe you start to contribute a little more – you have to write the cards for your school friends, maybe mum makes you write cards to family members, perhaps you even have to help choose and wrap presents. As teenagers, yes, you do a little more, actually buying presents for your family and maybe helping a bit on Christmas day with food preparation and serving. But as kids grow, so the things on their wish list grow smaller and more expensive – iPhones, PlayStation games and money – being the most asked for teenage things.

Once you get beyond the teenage years then it’s all downhill, and as soon as you get a place of your own, Christmas begins to gobble down your money like an ever-hungry festive fledging. Suddenly, all the things that mum and dad bought and you always took for granted, you’ve got to buy for yourself – and you’re starting from scratch having to not only buy a tree, but all the ornaments, lights and other Christmassy bits and bobs to make your new nest a Noel ready retreat. Every Christmas since Miss F was born, I have bought her one beautiful tree ornament, so she now has fifteen plus a few others she’s acquired over the years. That means by the time she eventually leaves home, at least she’ll have enough to make a good show on her very first Christmas tree.

For a brief while, before kids come along, Christmas is still fun. But the moment you become a parent then that’s it, you’ve reached the bottom of the pile in that you do EVERYTHING to make Christmas happen and in return get NOTHING! Most women are sole co-ordinator and cook over the Christmas period. We’re the ones who make the present list, think of what to get for everyone, buy it, wrap it and usually arrange distribution of it. We’re the ones who plan menus and write endless shopping lists.

Going around the supermarket doing the big Christmas shop one year, I looked around at all the other women doing the same, frantically grasping their precious lists, muttering under their breath, eyes glazed with stress and exhaustion. A near fight broke out in aisle seven over the last packet of sage and onion premade stuffing balls. Husband’s – completely failing to understand the severity of not being able to find the right jar of caramelised red onion chutney to go on a cheese board everyone will be too full to eat – trailed miserably after their wives, and wondered just how much trouble they’d get into if they slipped away and went to the pub. And over it all, the strains of “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” floated down from the store’s radio onto the heads of women who every year swear Christmas won’t be the stressful, exhausting, disappointing hot mess it always turns into, yet know with a sinking sense of inevitability, that it will be.

I think we’re all in love with an ideal image of Christmas that simply doesn’t exist. An image created and fed by films, TV shows and magazines, by the longing inside us all to have the perfect Christmas that sadly, most of us never have. The reality being a group of exhausted, stressed out, disappointed people being forced to sit in an overheated room together, exchanging gifts they don’t want, and having to fake gratitude at getting yet another scented candle and bath bomb set that smells like primary school toilets, and for him, deep joy, socks and a mini car maintenance kit.

Why do we do it to ourselves? Especially, why do us women do it to ourselves? I have a sneaking suspicion that if it were left to men, Christmas would comprise of a pie and a pint down the pub, then falling asleep in the armchair in front of the TV. It’s us women who make it such hard work. Before Miss F came along, I used to almost collapse from exhaustion and stress trying to make it the perfect Christmas. Hundreds of pounds spent on presents that all had to be wrapped just so, handmade Christmas crackers and individually wrapped beautiful and thoughtful little table presents for everyone to open before Christmas lunch. Handmade place settings. And enough food and drink purchased to keep a small, third world village going for a month.

Every year it was the same. Every year I’d vow not to do so much, to not spend so much, to not stress so much, but every year I’d get swept up in the Christmas tide and every year I’d run myself ragged. Every Christmas Eve, I’d finally sink into an armchair with a sigh of exhausted relief, glass of something festively alcoholic in hand, with everything done, every card written and delivered, every present perfectly wrapped, all the vegetables prepped for the next day and the house a shimmering, shining homage to Christmas, and then I’d feel it – the ominous, scratchy tickle in the back of my throat which by Christmas morning was a fully-fledged throat infection – every single year, I’d be ill for Christmas Day purely because of the amount of needless stress I’d put myself under.

Then my marriage fell apart and suddenly everything changed. I had neither the money, time, energy or inclination to make everything absolutely perfect. I had a small child, and obviously her needs came first, but children don’t care if the tag on their present is handmade and they don’t care if the paper is responsibly sourced, fully recyclable and handcrafted – all they care about is that there are presents, a big heap of plastic crap under the tree for them to rip apart in a feeding frenzy of excitement.

Gradually, over the years, I’ve looked for ways to make life just that little bit easier for myself – cut down on the amount of food bought. It’s a family of four you’re feeding, not the whole of the Welsh Rugby team – you don’t need a 20lb turkey, make do with a turkey crown, bought all ready to go in the oven pre-stuffed and wrapped in bacon and in its own handy baking tin. The busy woman’s friend, it’s considerably cheaper than buying a whole turkey, fits in the oven, cooks quicker, doesn’t tend to dry out so much and doesn’t leave you with a carcase to try and cope with on Christmas evening. Cut down on the veg. One Christmas dinner spent at my brother’s house, my then sister-in-law had prepared fifteen different vegetables! Fifteen! A truly ridiculous and unnecessary amount of extra work, fuss and worry. Buy the Christmas pudding ready-made. Trust me, no one will ever know the difference.

Don’t be a martyr. Delegate jobs. If you’re hosting Christmas dinner this year, then get all the family in the kitchen Christmas Eve on veggie prepping duty, open a bottle of wine, put on cheesy Christmas music, arrange funny guessing games to play whilst peeling the mountain of potatoes, Brussels sprouts and parsnips. If you can, lay the table days in advance. Don’t worry about a starter, trust me, the amount of food there is, no one is going to be getting a takeaway on the way home. Or if you simply must have a starter, have plates of beautiful bite size canapes to serve with Prosecco before dinner instead.

Above all, do everything you can to make life a little easier for yourself. After all, this is your Christmas as well. No one is going to be happy if you’re too ill to enjoy yourself because you insisted on being a martyr and doing it all yourself. Ask for help. Demand help if needs be. This is everyone’s Christmas, so EVERYONE should chip in. Many hands make light work is at no time as true as it is at Christmas.

This year, Miss F and I have taken the ultimate step, in that we are having a practically present free one. It has taken me almost a whole year to pay off what I spent on Christmas Day last year. Think about that. Eleven months to pay off one single day. Looked at in the cold light of day, it’s ridiculous and a bit obscene. So, we discussed it, and jointly decided no presents. After all, as Miss F rightly stated, that’s not what Christmas should be about. It should be about family and friends, being together, enjoying good food and spending a stress-free time away from work and life. For me, it’s even more important that Christmas is a relaxing time because working in retail means I only get three days off over Christmas. The 23^rd, 24^th and 25^th.

For the past two years I’ve had to look at my watch all Christmas Day, thinking how I have to be at work by 9am the following morning – and trust me, that puts a real crimp on things. So, this year, we’re doing things a little differently. The 23^rd will be our Christmas Eve, the 24^th will be our Christmas Day and the 25^th will be our Boxing Day. At first a bit sceptical how this would work, my family are now fully on board as things have slotted nicely into place. My brother will be spending proper Christmas Day with his girlfriend and her family but can spend the 24^th with us. The village my parents live in have a beautiful “carols by candlelight” concert at the church every Christmas Eve at 6pm. Usually, we’re all too busy getting ready for Christmas Day to even think of attending, but this year we will have eaten Christmas dinner and be quite up for a stroll to the church for a bit of drunken carolling. Then on Christmas Day proper, I can relax and enjoy a completely stress-free day before plunging back into work and the madness of after Christmas sales. Oh, the joys of working in retail.

So that’s our Christmas sorted, and do you know, I have noticed immediately a difference between this year and last year. Not having to worry about what I’m buying for everyone and how I’m going to afford it has lifted an enormous weight off my shoulders.

It was the grand switching on of the Christmas lights in Bury St Edmunds this week – and I hope you’re liking all the photos, sorry they’re a bit blurry but I have a rubbish camera – I wasn’t able to go this year as I had to go to a college thing with Miss F, but it’s always well attended whatever the weather. And then of course, next week is the actual Christmas Fayre. The third biggest in the country, it is a massive event with practically the whole town closed off and busloads of tourists coming in from all four points of the compass. I remember last year, chatting to a couple of girls I was queuing for something with, they told me they’d travelled all the way up from Devon just to come to the Fayre for the day!

As I told you last week, myself and four other local authors are having a stall on which we will be selling our personally signed books. I am excited about it and also worried, I have invested quite a lot of money into this event – not only the cost of buying a good supply of my books to sell, I’ve also had lovely little scented candles made to match my books, I’m buying lots of gift wrap supplies to offer a free gift wrapping service and I’ve had to invest in a card reader as most people don’t carry cash with them, and the ability to take card payments should hopefully mean more people will buy my books. It’s just as well I’m not buying any Christmas presents this year! Fingers crossed my gamble pays off.

If there’s anyone local reading this (or perhaps you’re bussing in from the West Country), then why not pop in and say hello. We will be in The Guildhall down Guildhall Street from 10am to 5pm Friday and Saturday, then the others will be there 10am to 4pm on Sunday – sadly I have to work, so I won’t be there on the Sunday. It would be lovely to see you. I may even be wearing a Christmas jumper and if you’re looking for some unique and personalised gifts for Christmas then there will be a wonderful collection of books on offer, all personally signed by local authors, along with bookmarks and candles. Very importantly, there is also a café and toilet facilities in the Guildhall.

What do you think about Christmas? Are you an Elf or a Grinch? Do you love all things Christmassy or do you bah humbug at the whole shenanigans? I’d love to hear your thoughts on it. As usual, you can comment here or contact me on Facebook or Instagram.

Finally, many of you have contacted me asking about Queenie Ant. Thank you, it’s so sweet of you all to be concerned. I am happy to report that we think she’s still alive as earlier in the week Miss F is convinced she saw one of her legs uncurl then curl back up again so we’re hopeful that come the Spring she will wake up and we’ll have lots of little ant babies running about all over the place. Imagine that.

Anyway, once again it has been great chatting with you and I hope you enjoy the rest of your Sunday.

Take care.

Julia Blake