I’ve returned home from our festive travels with so many beautiful mental images. There was the Narnian lamppost in the churchyard on Christmas Eve, whose frosty halo lit my mum and I through the starlight night to Midnight Mass, the tips of our noses the only skin visible between our copious woolen layers. I wouldn’t have been at all surprised if Mr Tumnus had stepped out between the yew trees, hymnbook tucked under his arm, and had accompanied us inside.
There was a secret rope swing, hidden enticingly at the end of a natural tunnel of holly trees, in the middle of a beech wood. We swung out high over a damp gully, feeling the husky brush of wintery air against our flushed cheeks.
There was the view from the air as we took off from Exeter airport, the south coast of England glowing in wintery sunshine and dissolving in a dazzling haze in the far distance. As we flew north, thick fog clung to river valleys, parting respectfully for snow-laden peaks that glinted like mirages in the low sun.
A slightly less poetic image was of my mum exasperated with the present tense narrated style of the Call the Midwife Christmas special, voicing loudly how they would always mess with her favourite programmes. You didn’t notice the same issue? Well no, you wouldn’t have, unless you too had the audio description feature on.
So, I’m starting 2015 resolved to get back to the seasonality and simplicity those mental images invoke. Life with a new baby is all about essentials, day and night blend seamlessly together in one long trail of immediacy. It’s the way it is, and as much as nature has its seasons, so do we human beings. All the same, I’d like it if 2015 could be a bit less bleary-eyed.
