Instead of reindeer...

Christmas brings incompatibilities, adjustments and the unforeseen.

I'm sitting in the car in Hereford's County Bus Station. Professional Bleeder's bus (from Luton on the other side of the country) is over an hour late but mobile phones have helped cut my wait down to a manageable 15 min. Rain has been spitting without conviction, now it's getting heavier. As the huge National Express whale-of-a-vehicle swings into the station gobbets of water are forming on my windscreen, smearing the view into oblivion. I rush out to guide PB back to the car. Back home I'm forced to change my sodden chinos; heck, why not put on my PJs and my dressing gown?

The family group of seven (Zach is upstairs fiddling with his new computer thingie) is playing Dilemmas: If you were forced, how would you choose between two arms and four legs, or four arms and two legs? Which is preferable: being burned alive or drowning? The rest (all much younger) are complaining at the level of the central heating. Thermostats are screwed down and in Zach's case a window is opened. Next morning the heating refuses to come on. After a panicky twenty minutes the reason is traced to a switch marked Central Heating, obscurely located and never previously used, which cuts off system power. No blame, only relief.

The rest moves on to other relatives. PB, a teacher, stays. She's become an opera buff and we organise ourselves to watch Das Rheingold, first of four operas forming Wagner's Ring cycle, fifteen hours of DVD viewing. No go. The £60 boxed set, bought months ago, is for Blu-Ray players. Instead Bryn Terfel (John the Baptist) gets the chop in Strauss’s Salomé.

Lots of good stuff happens, of course, but it’s less interesting to write about.