A Thing of Beauty

Merrrrrrrrrrry Christmas!!!!

What? No….whaddaya mean that’s not till tomorrow? Feels like Christmas in my house, I can tell you. Got home last night to Merthyr, and our little place is magical. Small and perfect, like a Faberge egg, if Faberge eggs came with lots and lots of boxes.

d, clearly, and probably Ma too, have been working their assess off while I’ve been – and let’s make no bones about this – sitting on my ass on an air mattress for a week. For the first time in eight years, we have colour schemes! We’ve never had colour schemes – we haven’t been allowed by our landlady to vary the colours of our walls. Which presumably is why, at about 5.30 yesterday morning, as I went from room to room trying to conjure up memories to dwell on and generate some melancholy about moving out…nada. We’ve had happy memories of course, but in terms of the flat in Stratford…meh.

But we have colour schemes now. Our living room is red and brown and stripy and modern and with a beautiful rug to tie the whole thing together. Our bedroom is kinda like a spa – all pale sea colours and more space than we really know what to do with. I realise of course it’s very middle-aged to suddenly think your house is the bees’ knees, but now, ours really is.

Today, we had a wow-ish kind of day. Went out to a local café for a kickass breakfast (the kitchen, and my office, are currently serving as box-rooms. They’re awesome, but they’re awesomely full of boxes), then strolled into town to do some last minute Christmas shopping -  drapes for the living room, mattress pads to turn our couches into heated chaises from which, frankly, we’ll probably never want to move (Ahhh, work-from-home, come to me my proud beauty…), cushions, and our Christmas tree.

We’ve never done a Christmas tree either. In fact, weird as this sounds, tomorrow will be the first Christmas Day since we’ve been married when we’ve slept in our own beds – we’re usually at my folks’ place, and indeed will be tomorrow too, but we’ll be home in our own place before the Doctor Who Christmas Special….so decorating our own Christmas tree was a beautiful ‘together’ moment that was still new to us. But the point is, just being in this new place feels like togetherness, and home, and everything we’ve been craving and never had the time to do in London.

In Disappearing terms – hey whaddaya want from me, it’s Christmas! This is weird – it’s the first year I’ll have done a Disappearing Christmas, and I’d be lying if I said I was going to be some miserly ascetic; indeed last night when I arrived in Merthyr, we went out to a Chinese buffet, and I ate without fear. I’m going to eat my Christmas Dinner, and enjoy it too, but Disappearing knows nothing about Christmas; I’m gonna do my by-now-usual thing – little bits of the good stuff, no desserts.

In case anyone’s wondering, I’ve clearly given up the idea of losing the next half-stone by New Year – in fact, if I can maintain my weight at 16 stone, I’ll be more than happy, I’ll be bloody ecstatic. But the whole point of New Years, I guess, is that you can shake yourself down and get a new lease of energy on your projects.

So I guess today really isn’t Christmas Day. It’s more like New Year’s Day – day one of the rest of our lives, to overuse a cliché. But of course, that’s why clichés become clichés – because they perfectly capture the mood of moments. And that’s what today feels like – a brand new page, and a thing of beauty.

Oh yeah, talking about things of beauty, and shaking, and new vigour and purpose, I reckon I need some of that, because I've found myself not actually caring very much about Disappearing of late. I should say, I've changed pretty radically during the course of this experiment so far. My tastes have changed, my clothes have changed, my sense of self has changed. Which means recently, people have been telling me they like what they see - I have 'a look' now, apparently, and people seem to respond well to it. Which is fantastic of course, but seems to have given me a comfy bed of complacency to wallow on. Because of course, for the first time in a long time, I like the way I look too, and the subconscious impulse runs through me - "Ahhh, it's OK...what do I want to carry this on for...?" 

So come the new year, I definitely need to leave out thing-of-beauty maisonette and kick my own ass again. We're only half way through this thing, we're not, not, absolutely bloody not there yet...Think I need to slap that on a Post-It note on reflective surface in the new place. Still lots to do, but for now, of course - Merry Christmas!