Christmas 2007
From Wilson
This appears to have been Corrie’s highlight of the year, when pressed for material to fill this letter. I don’t even remember decorating the room, but then I don’t remember much these days. Nor do I do much decorating. So it must have been one of those many events that just happened around me. Even the questionable pleasure of lawn-mowing has been whisked away from me, now that Corrie has discovered that the lawnmower weighs less than the Hoover.
Further outsourcing of household chores has been facilitated with the arrival in the area of an enterprising team of Polish window-cleaners, who somehow get into our back garden even when we’re out. This was a job that previously none of us had been doing, so it has been something of a revelation to look out through the windows and notice that we do still have a back garden, and yes, that’s Corrie mowing the lawn. But I can’t yet look through all the windows, because not even the Poles will clean second-floor windows or first-floor ones that overlook an outhouse.
Earlier this year, and without mentioning the state of our windows, the people next door left. Our new neighbours are very pleasant, but they have come with five cars. We have just three, so you can imagine the squabbles over parking spaces that would occur if we just weren’t so well-mannered and understanding about the whole thing. Mentioning it in a Christmas letter is as close as I get to taking revenge. (My sister-in-law, by the way, has just obtained her PhD. The only use I could see from my obtaining a PhD at such an advanced age would be the opportunity to go out with a tin of white paint, and daub ‘DOCTOR’ on the space by the road outside our house.)
Over the summer I took to running, rather than driving, to Kingston, in order to lose some weight and make up for the tennis that I no longer play. However I quickly worked out that shopping at the halfway point of a run wasn’t a very pleasant experience for anyone, and it’s always difficult to achieve a streamlined profile on the return jog, with a LIDL bag in one hand and a John Lewis bag in the other. Besides, the neighbours would talk.
To increase our motivation, Erika and I entered the eight-mile “fun” run which looped round Kingston and Hampton Court bridges in October. Erika was 10 minutes faster than me, but she is one-third of my age and half my weight. (I’m sure there’s a simultaneous equation in there, if you treat it as a Christmas Brainteaser.)
I’ve tended to find that, scholastically, December is a time of relative peace. No-one has any exams – well, not until next month at least – and no-one has been at school long enough to have been thrown out.
However, as Erika is still 16 (and that was ‘x’ in your simultaneous equation, by the way), she can’t drive. Thus the Wilson taxi service is obliged to operate way past his bedtime on Friday and Saturday nights in the more obscure parts of Epsom and Carshalton.
On Saturday mornings Erika attends rehearsals in Wimbledon for a school friend’s production of ‘Little Shop of Horrors’. However it appears that his management skills require improvement, and half the cast were “let go” yesterday, just 13 days before the curtain goes up.
Next term however, James will be sharing a house in Canterbury with a male friend and three female second-years, which could herald very good news for his general tidiness, the state of the lawn, the windows etc.
Anyway, I appear to have come to the end of my allotted two pages, even at font size 10. There is so much more to say, but so few of you still reading this far. We are very aware, and acutely sensitive about, the imminent arrival of a large number of half-centuries. Goodness knows what we will do to celebrate. All of us are now registered with Facebook – probably the easiest way to look us up is to sign on, search for ‘corrie mccann’, and view her friends.
Very best wishes for Christmas and the New Year
Gavin, Corrie, James, Erika and Zelda (the dog)
