Thirty Five Candles. Celebrating, Not My Life, But Being Alive

Yes, THAT many candles

A year ago to the day I decided it might be a good idea for me to go into hospital for a while, because of my depression. I realised that my ability to cope with the day-to-day had become severely impaired, and that I had been more stressed than ecstatic to have my friends over to ‘celebrate’ my birthday (which is today, by the way.)

Me last year

The worst symptoms of my depression and anxiety were in full flow: I was trying to do everything possible to make everyone at my party have a good time. It had been a miserable failure of a plan, since the bouncy castle I’d organised for the fun of it and trip to the park with friends and their children all had to be called off on account of rain (just like most sports days I remember) and I was rushing around our flat instead, frantically getting drinks, food, conversations going and feeling my heart beat quicken and quicken in my chest.

Enough. Time to talk. Time to act. Time for the truth.

The final straw was when I had a wobbly moment with a good friend I thought I had offended. To a people pleaser like me, to please is the goal (a short term goal, because I believe I’m only as good as my next act of goodwill towards others) and to displease is catastrophe, causing internal combustion.

Ugh. Hate displeasing people. 

So, the next day, sitting on the sofa and tidying after the night of many drinks, laughter, conversation and lovely people, I quietly called the hospital where I see my psychiatrist and enquired about in patient care for the first time. I wasn’t a suicide risk, and I knew from past experience that my mental illness was not (is not, has never been) bad enough for me to be admitted under the NHS. I learned that there are usually beds available at the hospital. I learned I needed to speak to my insurer. I

learned that I could arrange the whole thing with relative ease. (Thank goodness. I was not well enough to do anything difficult.)

It was the first step towards admitting to myself that my depression (and anxiety, which I hadn’t even realised I had, despite running around like a headless chicken and running (literally) myself into a skinny nervous wreck of a person) had become so debilitating that work was becoming impossible, and social gatherings also a major challenge.

It’s pretty bad when you see your best friends around you and you feel utterly disconnected from them, and from the world you’re living in. Yes, I was smiling and laughing and passing around drinks, making conversations happen and passing the canapés, but all at top speed, almost as if to slow down and drink in how I genuinely felt would be as calamitous as a car smashing into me at top speed, obliterating my whole being into the mess of blood and cells and harmful thoughts that I was subconsciously aware were what made up ‘me’ at the time.

I didn’t know anyone who had ever been in hospital for mental illness, except a distant cousin’s mother of my mother, years ago, when that sort of condition meant a long term stay in the type of institution that can rarely be found anymore. I made that phone call to hospital because, practical as always, I wanted to know what my options were. I realised I couldn’t go on. It’s not ‘just the way life is’ to cry at spilled milk, spilled anything in fact, all the time, or at a lost book, a broken pencil, at the thought of getting off the sofa and walking to Marks and Spencer just across the road. It’s not normal, i.e. healthy, to dread going to work and to cry every morning about it because of the untouchable contractors who are ignoring you or bullying you with snide comments and belittling at every opportunity (well, it would be normal to dread going to work, but I would certainly say to anyone, don’t put up with it if it’s happening). I am a planner, I am practical, I am resourceful even in the face of damnable, draining and dreadful depression, and I suddenly realised that perhaps there was an option not to feel so terrible every day; not to wake up and wish that I had actually not woken up at all.

The steps on from there have been mostly documented in my posts over the last nine months or so. I have morphed into someone who not only accepts her depression as something acute and (currently) looking like it may be with me forever, despite best efforts to relieve the symptoms through medication, rest and cognitive behavioural therapy. I have also, in the last year, spoken out about it, and with every conversation (and I don’t have that many, I’m not one of those people who, when asked “How are you?” gives you a twenty minute account of the minutiae of having depression) I have felt a little more self-accepting, which is the biggie. Everyone else has been lovely. I have been hard on myself, as I always am. Do better. Do more. Do everything. Do it now.

Okay, okay, depression, I'll do it, I'll do it. Now please sod off out of here.

I’m still that person who wants to do it all, now, to perfection. I have my manic phases where my brain goes into overdrive trying to predict every possible outcome from every upcoming conversation or exchange to ensure that I have planned my behaviour to be ‘correct’ (and, really, what the hell does that mean?). If I am on a non-sedative night my legs will shake and shuffle around with restless leg syndrome that stops me from sleeping and my brain will kick in to that mode of restlessness, endless opening and closing its many filing cabinets to pull out all the items on my various to-do lists, work to be completed, meetings to be held, weight to lose, events to organise, friends to see. It’s exhausting. It’s impossible to maintain.

Take that, Depression (and, naturally, David Bowie)

That ‘me’ can’t last, so I’ve allowed some other characteristics to enter my personality: the ability to relax (okay only sometimes, but sometimes is a lot better than never); the ability to be honest about how I’m feeling, even at the risk (in my mind) that people will judge me for it and that I may never get promoted at work because I have an acute problem complicated by a catalogue of physical injuries.

You said it Cher.

But it’s worth accepting those risks, those potential, may never happen but possibly might risks, because I can’t live without changing into the ‘me’ that is sitting here, typing this on her thirty fifth birthday. I don’t know that I’d be typing anything, doing anything, if I hadn’t taken that risk and started being honest to myself and others about the fact that I do not have an unbreakable exterior shell. In fact I’m all eggshell, to be broken again and again and again.

Just because it's an awesome song. Nothing's gonna stop us!

When I blow out my candles today (and yes, of course there will be candles, because I do love birthdays even though celebrating the fact that I’m alive seems like a bad idea to me (sometimes) because I (sometimes) wish I were not) I will sit and acknowledge the past year. I’ve said ‘Here I am’ and then jumped off a cliff into the rocky seas of honest living. It’s terrifying and tricky and hard to stay afloat, and I will keep being bashed around by depression a while longer. But I made it, and if that doesn’t deserve a hot dog with all the trimmings, Champagne and a day where I celebrate being still here at all, then I don’t know what does. Happy birthday to me. Jessica, you made it. One foot in front of the other and maybe you’ll make it to 36. 

Me this year. Well, not quite, but time to dance!

The Story of Us: Ten Year Anniversary Post

Wednesday, 17^th June, 2015. 10 years, 11 months and 364 days post courtiship commencement.

I’m taxiing out of JFK as I write this to return to London after a beautiful New York wedding and a precious few days spent re-exploring and adoring the wonderful city that I was once, for two years, so lucky to call my home. My eyes always dart around expectantly the various paths leading from gate to runway because I am so accustomed to this being the place I depart from, not just to return to London, the town I call my home, but to return to Mat, my now husband, but always lover and friend, who is my home.

Cutting the cake on the happiest day of my life

Again and again, by habit, I look out of the window as once I did aged seven on my first ever flight. “Will this be the turn that takes us from ground to the sky?” “Surely we’re travelling too slowly? How will we ever get off the ground?” “Surely we’ve been taxiing for hours. When will we take off, when?” “Is it time to take to the sky now? It must be, it must.” “Are we nearly there?” At every turn or surge of the engine from the plane my heart beat quickens, my breathing shortens. I am, with each slow turn of those three small aircraft wheels one step closer in my mind, always, from here, to being back ‘home’: back to my beloved.

Goodbye JFK and NYC. See you soon!

Tonight it is different: here we are together sitting side by side on the aeroplane. I’m not finishing up wiping my eyes and ordering Thai food from Enthaice to help create a carbohydrate food coma and lull me to sleep as he flies off. He’s not sleeping already as I excitedly board the plane and wait for every tiny movement forward towards being at home with him once more. We are travelling, hand in hand, to the place we have made our home, but which is, in reality, wherever we are together in all of the world, as long as together we are.

Here's a little more about my husband, whom you know less well than me. Mat has just jeopardised any chance of sleeping soon by delightfully extracting a stray eyebrow hair (very discretely, of course) with a spry finger and thumb, and now sits with eyes watering and nose recoiled beside me. I’m changed into my flight gear, i.e. comfy jungle pants and sweatshirt, wiggling my toes in sadly non-couture red and navy striped furry flight socks. We are – as ever – carrying on the life that we have built with one another day by day since we first met more than ten years ago, and since we started “going out together properly”, as I put it, ten years ago this day.

In The Smith, having brunch. Note Mat's inability to smile naturally 

for the camera. I love it when Facebook friends comment that

 he's looking as if he would rather be anywhere else. <3

I have planned to write a post to celebrate our ten years together for at least the last two months. “Mat,” I said (although we call each other by different, special, just-for-us names which I will refrain from citing here, since something of our private life must, I believe, be preserved just for us) “would you mind if I wrote in my blog the story of how me met and started going out as a celebration post for our tenth anniversary? I would so love to tell it because it makes me happy every time I think of it.”

“No,” he replied, neutrally, “that’s fine sweetheart. That sounds like a lovely idea.”

He is so giving. One of the shyest people I know, and he consented to my whimsical fancy of describing the miraculous wonder of our two separate souls coming together as one. Thank you, my love, for giving me this anniversary gift. The fact that you have shared it is yet another display of your acceptance that I am the way that I am and that we are especially suited to one another in spite of our differences.

Friday, 19^th June, 2015, 10 years, 1 day post courtship commencement.

So, how did it all begin? Like many of the great romances, it began by being a total non-starter. I had just left Oxford after my final exams and a great friend and tutor had recently passed away, which had left me spinning in grief and devoid of my usual structured direction; A kind mutual friend of my late friend helped me to continue to live my dream of being in London despite the additional complexities that grief brings to moving away from one, safe, known life to a sprawling metropolitan new one, by arranging a short term position from me at the Institute of Education, working for the (then named) London Leadership Centre. It was an admin position paying a basic starting salary for such a city-based public sector post, and we were to be based in Tavistock Square. After leaving all my designs on a Brideshead Revisited life in Oxford, here was the entrance to another such dream-like existence, among the Bloomsbury set and within one of those talled terraced houses with their Juliet balconies and French doors, from where I continuously expected Mrs. Dalloway, or one of her descendants, to emerge.

Such was (is?) the lack of any kind of disability accessibility support in those buildings that it was to the third floor (i.e. up three tall flights of stairs) that I must climb each day to my new administrative post. Our office rooms were tiny and housed at most two desks at a time. Dorian* was my office mate, a thirty-something officianado of the place who not only knew everyone who was anyone (or wasn’t) but could also tell me how to swing two council flats out of the London borough of Hackney, plus apply Touche Eclat and eyeliner to perfection before our (many) outings for lunch and dinner in the area. 

(*not his real name)

Bloomsbury, where romances begin...

Dorian was a gossip specialist, and with an extremely practised and rarely convincing air of disinterest, politely asked me for my background: university education, origins, love life etc. At which point he declared when I confirmed that I was without a boyfriend currently, that he had the perfect match for me, a Cambridge-educated Philosophy graduate with a PhD who was to be found somewhere in the basement of the building, and apparently was also single and potentially slightly melancholy and quiet. Dear reader, I confess these qualities did not present themselves to me as recommending traits for a future suitor. Added to which, the thought of being matched on a blind date I found abhorrent in the extreme: think: if you are matched up with someone by a friend, if you find yourself going out with someone who is markedly less a) intelligent, b) funny, c) good looking (okay, clearly ‘c’ was ‘a’ but I didn’t want you to have ultimate confirmation of my propensity (especially in my early twenties) to be shallow).

No, oh please no, not the multi-coloured jeans and shell suit combo!!!

As it turned out, the mysterious basement man was as reluctant as I to proceed with the proposed blind date, and so it was called off. It was not until four or five months later that I finally came face to face with him, in the basement, which also happened to be the stash for stationery. In case you are not aware, allow me to enlighten you that working for an institution linked to education almost undoubtedly links you inextricably with a world where post-it notes are king. Scarcely a day goes by where the tiny sticky multi-coloured paper pages are not employed for a multitude of means. I ventured down to the basement in search of this very thing, but was almost mortified with embarrassment at the prospect of meeting someone to whom I had not been formally introduced (I really was still very much in the Oxford world) and with whom I had been suggested as a potential romantic target. Therefore I marched, face downcast, past this chap who appeared to be wrapped entirely within a navy overcoat covering all of his person except his slender neck (and it was a very cold room) and muttered a quick “Hello” before retreating once more to the safety of my tiny cubbyhole four floors up.

Not that we still have any of these. No, not at all.

For the next few months I drifted down from North London where I lived to Bloomsbury each day, enjoyed outings to the museums and bars nearby and felt quite the thing at times, especially when a good friend and I blagged our way into a London Review Bookshop event and he and I both ended up giving interviews to camera in celebration of its publication, in spite of the fact that neither of us had the faintest idea for which occasion we had crashed the party…and I ended up in the BBC2 programme about it (vague sentiments of praise are clearly useful to editors everywhere). I also dated a young French man and had a fun time visiting some swanky restaurants in my London-styled looks. That was not to last, but luckily it was my pride rather than my heart which hurt more as that liaison ended shortly after it began.

Great Shop. Great Party.

At some point I realised that I really must find something to do – some direction – and that this could not happen at the Institute. Over a lunch at Heals with the same wonderful friend who helped me to find the job there in the first place, she suggested I apply to the Teach First scheme, which apparently was ‘very up and coming’ and a good idea for a bright graduate. It appealed to me because it was a two year programme. I thought, “Well, I can probably stick it out for two years, if I get in, and it would be good to have something like that on my CV perhaps.” A tome-sized application form and an assessment centre later, I was lucky enough to gain a place. Great!

Heals: where great ideas are formed and great lunches had!

Wait, though, I don’t actually know anything about teaching. (Not so great.) So what will I do now?

During the time of this application, our Bloomsbury existence had been uprooted from its styled, decaying glamour, to a chic new location just off Tottenham Court Road, with security badges, glass and chrome and spacious open plan design. This meant a move, of course, plastic crates for the removal of our belongings I.e. the post-it notes) and a reshuffle of desk arrangements. And thus it came to pass that I was allocated a place in the ‘temporary staff’ section of the floor, opposite that same young over-coated gentleman who was my one-time blind-date to be, Dr. Matthew Carmody.

Mat (as he is known) came in once a week just for the afternoon, since he was administrator for the course “Working Together for Success” or something like that, and sat quietly at his (brand new) white desk eating a baguette sandwich and eating his Walker’s crisps, usually plain, sometimes salt and vinegar. Reader, I may have been too bashful to attempt a self-introduction when we had no reason to speak, but at the rustling of a crisp packet I could no longer resist. I. Had. To. Have. A. Crisp.

We started to make polite conversation, once a week, as I sat there pretending to work despite the fact that my programmes had largely concluded, and he sat there doing (I assume) the same. We chatted about this and that and then we went our separate ways until the next week. It was only when I received a telephone call from Teach First to accept my application that it struck me to ask Mat for assistance. I had learned from our chit chat over crisps that he was also a teacher aside from his IoE job – and I needed (I really, really needed) some advice in that respect. Mat – thank you, Mat! – accepted my invitation for an after work drink for the selfish purpose of my learning what on earth I was letting myself in for by signing up to teach a bunch of kids in Walthamstow and Chingford aged eleven to sixteen.

Now then, it is time to point out that in no way was this invitation issued as a date or anything like. I was asking for advice from a work acquaintance. End of. To illustrate this point I will introduce the following evidence: that en route to our chosen venue of The Sun pub on Tottenham Court Road, I asked Mat if he wouldn’t mind stopping off, on the way, so I could go to Boots, and then proceeded to buy a packet of feminine hygiene products which I (quite publicly) purchased in full view of Mat. This was not, therefore, I repeat, not, intended to be a romantic encounter.

A very serious Mat. A very amused me.

In The Sun, I think I remember Mat kindly got in the drinks, a large glass of red for me and a pint of London Pride for him. And we talked about teaching: what sort of lessons did he teach? What were the students like? Did he give homework? Did anyone actually do the homework (yes I know, former teachers, I never did it!)? What format did lessons take?

In the hour and a half that passed I learned two things: one, that teaching in 2005 was different than anything I had experienced or was thus far expecting from my next job; two, that Mat Carmody was definitely amusing, interesting, and someone I felt suddenly a sense of sparkle in my stomach for. I did a figurative double take. “Huh. He’s really nice. Was there a frisson?” We parted and I went on back up to north London to see a friend, to practise some singing together and catch up post Oxford. “So, how's your love life, Jessica?” he asked (or something like that. Bridget Jones eat your heart out!). And I looked at him, straight, and said, “Well, maybe, because I think I actually just had a drink with someone who is really nice.”

And so, reader, we all lived happily ever after. 

Yep.

Of course we didn’t! This is Britain. It took me long enough (and him for that matter) even to say “Hello,” let alone to acknowledge an interest beyond simple, uncomplicated, no strings friendship. What did happen was that we were very definitely friends after that night.

Truckles: Where much red wine was drunk in the London summer sunshine

We arranged drinks again, this time just for fun, in a couple of weeks, and spent a happy two hours drinking red wine in the courtyard at Truckles near the British Museum talking all things, Classics (me), Philosophy (him), music (both of us) and his dashing tales of derring-do, such as being so squiffy at a friend’s wedding that he looked out of the window and his glasses fell off his face, to be retrieved the next day in the flower patch outside, and the fact that in the car going back the combination of hangover plus student car vibrations meant he temporarily lost sensation in both arms. (I then went off to the opera, quite half (or more) cut, myself, after that. The opera I saw is a distant memory. But I’m sure it was very good and the Champagne at half time was excellent.)

No idea what was happening but it was surely very good.

We had another such drink, and by this time I knew that I was, pretty much, in love with Mat Carmody. He was so funny, interesting, kind and gentle that I had set my cap at him, but even had I not my heart had decided that he was for me. At this point he had still not asked me out, but I had invited him to attend my birthday party with other friends, a dinner in central London in a few weeks’ time. I had had a long experience of the classic Oxford ailment that is unrequited love throughout almost the entirety of my degree, and had no desire to repeat two and a half years of a similar experience. Therefore, I thought, there is only one option. You cannot wait for him to make the first move in case he never does. You must ask him out. And so I (sort of) did. And what is more, I told myself, you must hope that something happens before that, but if nothing does, then you must ask him out (properly!) yourself, and if it doesn’t work out, never see him again until your heart has 100% moved on. No more nonsense waxing and waning. Get on with it!

At our last drink before this event, knowing we were both soon to leave the IoE anyway, there was little risk of meeting Mat again should my bid (if it had to be me who made the move) so I had a plan in place which meant I could thoroughly embarrass myself at my birthday party, in the presence of all my closest friends (which, in reality, doesn’t separate this birthday from any other). Unfortunately we had relatively little time together at this drink as Mat had to go home to mark essays.

…

At this point I wasn’t exactly optimistic. I mean, what guy picks essay marking over drinks with me? Answer: someone who is clearly not interested.

Despite this, we walked together to the bus stop and I still hoped that we might at least reach that ‘awkward moment’ where, waiting from the bus, we might share a first kiss? As we walked there I said, gesturing towards Rathbone Place, “So, I’ll see you on Saturday?”

“Yes. Hang on, so when you said you were having your party at the Eagle, I assumed you meant somewhere in Clerkenwell, not the Eagle round here.”

Great. Not only is he dashing home to mark third rate philosophy essays rather than staying in town for dinner and drinks with me, he very nearly lost any chance of turning up at my party at all by heading to a place miles away from the actual venue.

And no. Transport for London did not deliver our first kiss, because, contrary to every other time, the bloody bus turned up right on time. Thanks a lot TFL. You really outdid yourself this time in your support for romance.

Thanks a lot TFL. Crushing romantic liaisons by turning up on time. How dare you?!

So how did the story end? With the help of my best friend and me drinking Champagne at 10am (as she couldn’t attend because of a very serious back injury), we had our little birthday brunch of our own with some cheesy chick flicks and brut Champagne to give me Dutch courage before we left.

Champagne, giving la courage to les braves everywhere.

And at a dinner on one of the hottest days of the year, surrounded by my friends and being grilled by all sides, my beloved Mat (who hates hot weather and was looking massively annoyed and about to expire) took the oh so subtle hint I dropped as a practised flirt with the classic, never again to be used line, “Please come and sit next to me because I want you to sit next to me,” and finally. Finally. At after dinner drinks he bought me a gin and tonic, and as we waited for it to arrive, he put his hand on my hand. And that was the start of us.

Our first date venue. Happy Memories!

Ten years later, here we are, still holding hands. A fair few challenges along the way, the path to true love never did run smooth, and there were job changes, commutes, many tough times with our health and trying to be together across London and also across continents, but here we are. We went back to our first date venue - Putney's Boathouse down by the river for a celebratory drink to toast ten years together.

Thank you Mat Carmody for sticking around with me, and for being so understanding about everything. My partner in life, love and laughter. I love you always. (And thanks for all the post-it notes. They've come in very handy over the years.) x

Tis the season to be...whatever you wish. Make your Christmas happy. Your way.

En route to a Christmas Party, with a smile. See, I'm not all Scrooge.

I've been a bit miserable about the Christmas season recently, I've realised, mostly because I do find lots of things about this time of year very hard and getting through it is a challenge. It's not easy being depressed and feeling like you have to go out and about whilst miserable in the presence of everyone else being jolly. However, although it's true that I'm hardly a saintly Tiny Tim about the whole affair, nor am I a curmudgeonly Scrooge pulling down his nightgown and ignoring the fact that the stairs sound as if they're in the midst of a marathon steel band session.

Tiny Tim teaches us all a lesson about accepting people and seeing the good in them

Actually there are lots of things I love about Christmas, especially now that we've got into the ironic spirit (pun intended) of the thing properly. Sincerity is strictly reserved for good will to all men: the part about loving one another and "God (or the higher power of your choice) bless us every one" is the only part I really get on board with from that perspective. In my view Christmas is what you want to make of it. And in my view that's spending time with ones I love. And irony. And food.

This would be fine, except clearly this woman is taking the whole thing DEADLY SERIOUSLY

When I lived in America I spent a memorable Halloween in Southfield, Michigan, where I was working at the time. I was amazed as I went to my beloved (and much missed) local Chipotle to see cars pulling up as usual, but emerging from them not the casually dressed office workers I usually saw in line ahead of me, but instead, a pirate, a teddy bear and some sort of fairy princess. Yes, Halloween in America is a Whole Other Proposition. We've all seen the films of adorable little darlings parading the streets in their cute miniature spaceman or cowboy outfits, a sort of Toy Story Comes To Life parody; but adults? I could hardly believe what I was seeing.

Home Alone Lives in Ironic Christmas Jumpers. LOVE

Of course, this is a country which loves its candy, so I don't know why I was as surprised as all that, but I was quite shocked by the lengths to which people would go to dress up and embrace the 'holiday' which carries such little weight in the UK and elsewhere. We find sincerity of this type quite the challenge in the UK. But last Friday in Britain, we had a holiday we as a nation can all, just about, with all our 'I'd like to but really it's terribly embarrassing and I couldn't possibly' reserve, get on board with: Christmas Jumper Day. Or, as I like to think of it, dress-like-your-mum-and-dad-would-have-in-the-seventies,-except-without-a-hint-of-irony day. I have to admit that this title does not quite have the same ring to it.

Lampooning. Irony. Except that in reality families like these really exist in a suburb near you

I spent Christmas in the USA with a great friend in 2003. As we went to buy our Christmas feast we marvelled at the lack of irony of the earnest shoppers all around us in their not quite ridiculous enough 'seasonal sweaters'. I'm talking about the single coloured-jobby with the white patterned reindeer dancing across the front. Or with big stars covering bigger bellies. Surely these people realised that they looked like extras from Home Alone? Apparently not. And Britain being Britain, we couldn't possibly engage in a jolly jape like Christmas jumper day without it being obvious that we're doing the whole thing for a proper giggle, and aren't taking ourselves seriously in the slightest.

Pigs in blankets. Nomnomnomnomnom.

So, back to what I love about Christmas. Food, obviously. And specific types of food at specific times. These have become a tradition with me. Crazy meatballs for Christmas eve dinner, slow cooked pork meatballs with cranberry sauce, brown sugar and sauerkraut mixed up and made into a sttick sauce, baked in the oven while my husband races around the nearest high streets frantically panic buying despite the fact that he's probably already bought better presents than I have anyway; Smoked salmon and (lumpfish, I'm not a millionaire!) caviar on tiny blinis with sour cream and a deliciously cold glass of Champagne to start Christmas day. Some sort of meat for Christmas dinner - I'm not at fussy about this actually, as long as it's not turkey, but with stuffing, port and cranberry-sauce braised red cabbage and as many little sausages with bacon as can be bought in a single trip to Marks and Spencer. And probably pommes Dauphinoise. Cream + potatoes = winning formula.

Mulled wine. Christmas dessert and hot water bottle in one

We sometimes go to a local pub for a Christmas drink on the day. This is one of my favourite times to go out in public, as I love to watch other people enjoying their day and one another's company. This seems like a special way to mark the day, and the neutral ground helps. The weekend before Christmas, my extended family and I come together for a Christmas feast and sharing of silly presents and jokes. Everyone dresses up and we enjoy a catch up and seeing the younger members of the family having fun on the day.

As mentioned in a comment in my previous blog, I don't hold that you have to spend Christmas with your family to be happy. In fact for many that would be a recipe for unhappiness, where resentments long-harboured, traditions which are upheld in the absence of any civil tongues, or where presents are shared with expectations of larger and more expensive offerings to make up for any real warmth or love in the room. That is a traditional Christmas for many, and I don't like it one bit.

One's onesie

My latest Christmas love is the onesie. Ah, the onesie, unattractive in most ways, but warm, snug and comfortable to wear. This is my perfect Christmas outfit. I also love the fact that I don't have to leave the house. I used to wear a variety of Christmas jumpers and pyjamas (and probably a hat too) that Mat will proclaim adorable despite the fact that I wouldn't even be allowed on Jeremy Kyle in such an ensemble. Now I can climb into my onesie and I'm done for the day. Just add woolly socks and my Ugg boots and I'm ready for the Christmas film marathon, sitting in front of our real Christmas tree decorated with tiny white lights and white card stars, shimmering with their gold and silver glitter in the soft lights.

 The films are probably worth a blog post to themselves, so I'll think about that over the next few days. In the meantime I'll take my Christmas radio times, bought once a year, and start circling my Christmas viewing timetable. Home Alone will definitely be on at some point, I bet.

Tourist in My Town

New York City feels to me like a place I will never have fully explored, and that makes it even more appealing - it remains quite the elusive figure: she whose depths will never quite be plumbed. Luckily, excited friends visiting often have their own ideas about fun places to go. And I can host and go along for the ride.

My great friend Nina visited me a couple of weeks back, armed with the latest copy of Time Out - circled in black throughout with the must-sees and the might-sees. I've known Nina for ten years, since we both worked on an American study abroad program(me) in Oxford, she as a visiting professor, I as British student mentor. On our very first day of meeting we discovered a shared love of literature, films and cocktails. A potent combination for friendship. Ten years later our weekend plans, perhaps unsurprisingly, included a bar or four, a movie and a trip to St Mark's book store.

The Original Speakeasy Look

A long established trend in the city of New York is a revisiting of the drinking heritage of speakeasies. Once the way around the prohibition era, the speakeasies paved the way for women's entry into bar life. (Well, if you make drinking in bars illegal for everyone, what's to say that some are more illegal than others?) An FBI study proved that the longest time it took - across America - to get an illegal drink in any such speakeasy from the time one arrived at any railway station, was about 3 minutes. (In New Orleans they even had a speakeasy in the station. Smart thinking!)

Two modern speakeasies of note are PDT (Please Don't Tell) - which I will obey and leave mysterious for now (though I'm pretty sure that those in the know need no telling anyhow) and Death and Company. Addams' Family-style doors and a sombre, soberly dressed doorman lead the way into the dark bar, lit by candles and not much else. Air conditioning and credit card payments the two key modern attributes of this otherwise authentic looking bar. Well, that and the hipster clientele.

A candle-lit Vesper - chilled and delicious

Further to the speakeasy trend, the prevalence of bearded New York city bar tenders only contributes to the air of casual subversiveness. I'm not quite sure why this is. Bill Bryson is someone I'd never describe as casually subversive in this way, beard or no beard, but the young, bristly bearded men seem like they've said, "Aesthetically I'm over the studied chic. It's time to let it all hang out." So maybe Sixties cocktail lounges will be next.

Visiting Gilbert and George's London Pictures, East Village NYC

Discovering new places with old friends is one of the greatest pleasures of catching up - when there's so much in the way of catch up conversation, but there's also enough new experience in the mix that one can fluctuate between the two - take a break from one and get back to the other. Bar hopping, gallery dipping, cinema viewing (we saw Headhunters - Danish crime / suspense drama) and book shop browsing provided perfectly poised antidotes for our incessant catch up chatter.

Sushi at Ooki, to finish it all off on Saturday night, was a perfect end to a perfect 'staycation' with a great friend.