December Blues

Despite umpteen projects this December is proving a real hard slog and I have found everything hard going and despite Mr S trying his best to cheer me up I have found myself sitting and crying over nothing.  The weather this year hasn't helped much either - wet, wet wet!  I hate rain it makes pushing a wheelchair a nightmare, wet push rims and the spray from the wheels and within minutes you are wet through and going no where fast.  Plus from at least the beginning of November shops have done nothing but push Christmas - why anyone wants to hear Carols in November is beyond me and certainly doesn't help with my yearly blues. 

Think that if I hear Noddy singing 'I wish it could be.............' one more time I might actually scream and news readers bemoaning the fact that people will find it difficult to get to spend the holiday with their families because of the weather just make me want to hide.  Families are greatly over rated in my opinion (you may disagree - fine) but my memories of family Christmases are not happy ones - my Grandmother and Father disliked each other with a deep deep hatred that stemmed from the 'you're not good enough for my daughter statement' made sometime after their marriage - or so I am told.  Christmas brought out the worst in both - sniping and back biting on a global scale, which left Mother in the kitchen getting quietly tipsy on sherry and then after the usual bickering over the lunch table I (as the daughter of the house) was required to wash up (well dry up actually) while my brother was allowed to play!  This as you can imagine didn't endear me to him and one year I rebelled and refused to dry the cutlery - saying it was unfair and that it was time he did some of the chores.  All hell broke loose - I was ungrateful, disrespectful and was sent back to the kitchen.................did I?  No I did not and I have never ever been allowed to forget this episode.  Can you believe that when Mr S and I decided to go away for Christmas rather than go through another family Christmas this was brought up as an example of my selfishness................

Since then we have only spent two Christmases at home - now we go away in our caravan and spend the time doing things in our way - no tinsel, no carols, no turkey and definitely no mince pies or cranberry sauce - just us and Molly and several bottles of red wine.  We have just got back home from a week in depths of rural Devon with little or no Internet and a very iffy phone signal.......  The place was cut off by floods during the week before we went and access was down a very small country lane.  But we did get to walk by the sea and throw pebbles and the sun did shine for a short period and there are now only three more days of December to be got through, I think that I might just make it.

Just to prove we were really there - see what I found on the beach