TAKING STOCK PART II

It is Hogmanay, New Year’s Eve, the cusp between yesterday and tomorrow. Bloggiana and I are huddled in what passes for our drawing room, Our Dog licking his parts contentedly in the corner, the fire sputtering reluctantly in a wind-chilled grate. Upstairs, Teener, Bloggiana’s daughter plays with her Kiddy Set of Safety-Enhanced Razorblades; while Adolesco, Bloggiana’s temporarily resident godson, negotiates the by-ways of a hand-held device game, War of the Baby-Shredders. It is cold, cold. Outside, any sparrow brave enough to sneeze looks on in horror as its spit freezes into an instant minute hail shower. Ice grows apace. Pipes expand menacingly. Global warming seems to have taken on a sinister new disguise.

Keeping ourselves warm by lighting as many consecutive cigarettes as we can hold, Bloggiana and I reflect on the fact that we have enjoyed a very lazy festive period indeed. What with trotting down to London before Christmas for a week of Parties, then returning home for a further week of the same, we found ourselves not only worn out and bursting out of our jeans but to all intents and purposes, completely sapped. To the extent that by the time Santa Crunch was required to visit, it was all we could manage to dig out the shooting socks and count out two tangerines.

Even now, with the goose and its trimmings firmly lodged in the memory of Christmases past, I have to gird myself to press the On button on the Remote Control. Or indeed to take a bath. Gamely, Bloggiana, prostrate in front of the telly, catches up on last year’s retrospective of Ten Decades of Bruce Forsyth in Variety Television. Behind her, I fiddle with the pieces of a 100-piece jigsaw (theme: Robin in Snow) allowing the process to numb me into a kind of torpor, the like of which I know from experience is very difficult to shake off. On either side of us, half-empty beakers of PG give testimony to our creeping festive indolence. A box of chocolate covered MDF balls lies half-eaten by our feet.

Then suddenly, the old year turns round to bite us when the Brucie show comes to an end and we realise A. that it’s eleven o’clock and B. that the groaning coming from upstairs is in fact not the sound of hand-held device pleasure but the sound of pain. Adolesco and Teener are so hungry, they are actually in tears. Bloggiana and I exchange guilty glances. It is time, we chime simultaneously, to stir ourselves. It is time, we chime, inhaling deeply like a couple of steeplechasers snorting at the start of the Boxing Day race at Kempton, to stand up.

&&&

Fifty minutes later.

I have managed to wash enough pans so that we can cook some pasta with butter. Adolesco has come to terms with the fact that eating and baby-shredding cannot take place simultaneously. Teener has been persuaded to abandon her telephone call to Childline. Bloggiana is sitting down again, this time on a chair next to a table – much more handy for drinking.

As the pasta steams promisingly on the Expensive Cooker, the four of us sit in silence. It is the kind of silence which could mean we are all reflecting on the year that is about to come to an end. Assuming it is, I myself indulge in a spot of mulling. The death of a rabbit. The death of a dog. The arrival of two new hamsters apparently grown from a hamster starter kit. Freedom (Bloggiana’s) from That Miserable Shit, as she likes to designate her outgoing spouse. Freedom (mine) from any embarassment ever again about nits. The discovery of Internet Dating. The discovery of Facebook. Chutney.

And there are other factors to ponder as well. Adolesco is surely thinking about his rite of passage when he thumped Measly Twat-Sniveller. Teener must be reflecting on the joys that our friend Doris unleashed when he showed Bloggiana how to go barking.

Of course the year has brought us the credit crunch and more rain than we knew what to do with and unspeakable pain for stockbrokers up and down the land. It has brought us the news that we must move from the house that we love, leave behind the horses we are wedded to and the large bits of furniture we won’t be able to fit into a boarding house in Morecambe. It has brought us to a point of change, something Bloggiana and I would rather avoid.

It has also brought us to this silence and as I come to the end of indulging in mine, I ask Bloggiana exactly how she has been using hers.

Fuck me, Bloggiana trumpets, her voice scything through the air like a scythe, I was just reflecting on how bloody cold it is hereabouts. Any sign of that pasta?

And as I finally feed us all at ten minutes to midnight, Bloggiana pipes up once more. Pass us the PG, would you, old girl?

At which I reach out for a new bottle, unthuck the cork, pour.

And, observed wryly by Teener and Adolesco – both far more mature than their adult companions - we raise our glasses to another year. Jesus Christ, says Bloggiana wiping her lips and letting forth a small shudder, that was a blinder.