Symbolic Forest

Have spent the whole day in a rather tipsy haze. Not just booze, but thick creamy Christmas headache-giving booze. Yum. Now I’m off to bed, and I do hope I’m not going to regret this tipsy haze in the morning.

Keyword noise: Yuletide, Christmas.

My mother is rushing around tonight in a bit of a panic. Being a regular churchgoer, and church organiser, Christmas is obviously a busy time of year for her. Tonight, though, the mother and all the other church organisers are all rushing round in a panic, searching all the cupboards at the church, searching each other’s houses and attics, searching and searching and saying to each other: “well, where did you last see them?”

Being a church, they have to have a nativity scene in one of the side chapels off the nave. It’s all set up already, with the stable and the animals. Mary and Joseph get added on Saturday, I think, and then the Baby Jesus on Sunday morning.^* At the moment, though, there’s a slight problem. Well, a major problem, when it comes to setting up your nativity scene. The Holy Family have gone missing.

* Or possibly at Midnight Mass – not being a believer myself I’m not sure on the details.

Keyword noise: Yuletide, Christmas, church, nativity, nativity scene, The Mother.

It’s the shortest day. From now on, things start to get warmer and lighter again.

I wish we could celebrate in the traditional way, by burning a Yule log to bring us health and happiness. Unfortunately, we don’t have a hearth, so that’s out of the window. We’ll have to make do with holly, mistletoe, friendship and over-eating. For me, the solstice is when the festive season properly starts.

Keyword noise: Yuletide, Yule log, celebration, Christmas, festive, seasons, solstice, winter.

Colleague M’s sister Lydia is having trouble with ghosts.

No, really. I’m not making it up, and I don’t think M is either. I don’t know her sister, and I think that a lot of this story sounds a little unlikely. But Lydia’s scared, because she’s having trouble with ghosts.

The first M or I heard about it was a couple of weeks ago, when we were visiting M’s mum, and Lydia phoned up in a great panic. She’d gone to bed early, and had been drifting off to sleep, when a man whispered something in her ear. She awoke, startled and panicking; you can’t blame her, because her small daughter was the only other person in the house. Lydia was convinced – for no apparent reason – that this meant her father was dangerously ill and didn’t have long to live.

Anyway, leading up to this, Lydia and her daughter had been having a lot of trouble with things going missing. The sort of problems, in fact, that might be blamed on poltergeists. Little things would disappear, be unfindable, then mysteriously pop up in somewhere they’d only just looked in. Things would vanish from Lydia’s makeup bag, for example – and then would reappear impossibly, on top of it, even though it definitely hadn’t been there just before.^* Secondly, just recently, Lydia got a kitten. Most of the time the kitten was happy, sleepy, purry, the way kittens usually are. Surprisingly often, though, it would start hissing and yowling, the way cats do at things they don’t like – but when there was nothing at all there. After thinking about the mysterious voice for a few days, Lydia started to wonder if all these things were connected; so, she went out and found a psychic.

The psychic she brought in was, I’m told, a very experienced psychic who is an expert at sorting out This Sort Of Thing. I’m not sure how you tell, or how you find psychics – is there a psychics category in the Yellow Pages? – but anyway, the Expert Psychic came in, sniffed around the house, and told Lydia that the house was very much haunted; which was why things kept going missing, and why the cat kept hissing at empty spaces. In fact, there were two ghosts living in Lydia’s house; they had quarrelled when they were alive, and they were quarrelling now. One of them – a man – was a nice friendly ghost; the other – a woman – was not. The friendly ghost was trying to protect Lydia from the other one, which was why she’d suddenly heard a man whispering in her ear: he was trying to warn her. The non-friendly ghost, on the other hand, kept stealing things and trying to possess the cat.^** The psychic said: “I’m going to take them both away with me now – but be careful, because after a while they’ll probably come back.”

Lydia, then, is terrified. Her house has apparently been occupied by two warring ghosts who could return at any moment. At any moment, one of them might try to possess her cat, or even her daughter. Even worse, her mascara keeps going missing. As fas as she can tell, anything might happen. If anything does, I’ll try to let you know.

* I was sceptical about the significance of disappearing makeup in a house where a young girl lived; but M assures me that it wasn’t her niece doing the disappearing.

** Seriously, I’m not making any of this up. The psychic might have been, but I’m not.

Keyword noise: Colleague M, ghosts, ghost hunter, haunted house, poltergeist, psychic.

Something feels wrong – it’s only December 1st and I’m already feeling all seasonal. Not so seasonal that I’ve started wrapping presents or writing cards, but seasonal nevertheless. Colleague M has already started putting up Christmas decorations. Big Dave is telling everyone what he’s getting his dad, and The Manager In Charge Of The Christmas Party is spending most of her waking hours pondering over the party seating plan, shuffling names around a complex spreadsheet with everyone’s food choices listed. I’ve been exchanging emails with all the friends who are coming back here for the holiday, planning trips to the pub; and I’m not even bored of Christmas music yet. This is definitely unusual.

Keyword noise: Advent, Yuletide, Christmas, Big Dave, Colleague M, colleagues.

Christmas shopping for the second weekend running. I might not have bought any presents yet still, but I’m well stocked-up on cards now.

Stupid social worry #273: will people at the office mind when lots of them end up getting the same design of card? All the 10- or 20-card multipacks, you see, only have one or two different designs in. I’m worried that everyone at work is going to be comparing notes: “Oh, he gave you the same design as him, but I got the same one as her.” Which, clearly, is nonsense; but that doesn’t stop me worrying about it.

Keyword noise: Yuletide, Christmas, Christmas cards, colleagues, anxiety.

Yesterday,^* we had the first snow of winter. When I left the house in the morning it was cold but dry; ten minutes from the office a few flakes started to appear in the air, and by the time I was inside at my desk everywhere already had a good covering.

Today, I got up, and the snow was gone. I had to go in to work again; it was the first time I’d been working out of hours, in my normal clothes,^** since the Christmas holiday week last year. The weather was cold, windy, the air clear with a hint of rain. Normal English winter weather, in other words, and with everything in combination I felt seasonal for the first time this winter – it was Just Like Christmas.

(Sleighbells, to fade.)

* When I didn’t post, as I was rushed off my feet at work – hence going in today – and had been invited round to Colleague M’s mum’s house for tea afterwards.

** Even though I spend most of my waking time at work, and I wear office clothes five days out of seven, I still think of the other clothes as my normal ones.

Keyword noise: Yuletide, Christmas, ice, seasons, snow, weather, winter.

Colleague M has a cunning plan. A cunning plan to help me get a date.

This cunning plan is based around M’s theory that people suddenly get a lot more attractive when they’re unavailable. Bluntly put, if someone’s already taken, you’re much more likely to start crushing on them.

So, to help me look more attractive, M has invited me out for the day. “It’s not a date,” I was immediately told, “and I’m not going to snog you.” But, once word surreptitiously gets around the office,^* however much we say “we’re just friends” noone will actually believe us. Therefore, everyone will think I’m taken, and will therefore be more likely to try to pull me when they get drunk at the Christmas party next month.

I’m not entirely convinced that this is going to work. If it does, though, I’ll keep you posted.

* And, indeed, it already has. It hasn’t even happened yet, and people are already raising eyebrows and saying things like: “have a good weekend, you two“.

Keyword noise: Colleague M, colleagues, dating, work.

Popping into town at lunchtime, ambling down a side street, I passed a dirty-looking one-legged man in a wheelchair.

“‘Scuse me, mate,” he said.

“Yes…?” I replied, warily. I couldn’t see this conversation going well.

“Are you from here?”

“Yes.”

“Have you got any ten-pees?”

“No,” I replied. I had no idea if I had or not, but I definitely couldn’t see this conversation getting any better.

“Have you got any money at all, mate?”

“Not much,” I answered. “Why?”

“I’m from Doncaster, and I need to get back home. I need another £4.50 for the train fare.”

“Really,” I said, trying my best to sound unbelieving. I’ve never had beggars try to pull this trick on me since I moved here, so it made a change to hear it again. I also noticed that his accent was nothing like a Doncaster one.

“I’m a diabetic,” he said, pulling a hypodermic from a pocket of his dirty cardigan. “Look. Diabetic. I need to get back to Doncaster.”

If I was quicker at thinking, I might have said something meaningful and concerned, like: isn’t it convenient for you that you can wheel straight off the train into the street when you get to Doncaster?^* If I was more violent, I might have just grabbed the handles of his chair, kidnapped him, and wheeled him onto the next Doncaster-bound train, with instructions to the guard to definitely make sure he got off at the right stop. Being me, I just started walking onwards.

“I’VE GOT NO LEGS, MATE!” he shouted at me as I walked away. I felt like turning round and replying: look, I can at least count to one.

* For people lucky enough never to have to go there, or change trains there: if you are in a wheelchair, there are no public routes to, from or between the platforms at Doncaster station. The only thing you can do is to ask the staff to put you in the parcels-trolley lift.

Keyword noise: Grimsby, Lincolnshire, North East Lincolnshire, begging, charity, con trick, disability, scam.

After we had one office leaving party at the weekend, it seems everyone now is trying to do the same thing. People are updating their CVs on their lunchbreak, and flicking through the job pages of the local paper. My manager has been asking why Big Dave has been leaving early so much lately. I have no idea, and I told him so. Privately, I assume our manager has been going through the same thoughts as me: is he leaving early to go off to interviews? I don’t blame him if he is, because he doesn’t exactly look happy in his current place.

Keyword noise: career, colleagues, Big Dave, CV, job interview.