Further Under the Duvet (21 page)

I consider my list, an accumulation of dozens and dozens of people whom I think of fondly but haven’t seen for fifteen years and no longer have anything in common with, and a terrible lassitude overtakes me. I wish for a small but harmless domestic explosion, anything to get out of doing it. I could explain next year. ‘Sorry I sent no card last year but our clothes horse blew up. We were picking knickers off the hedges well into the new year!’

Then there’s the challenge of trying to remember the names of people’s partners. If they’re still with them, that is. Because although I might be dying to ask, Are you still with that weird bloke with the rabbit fixation and the beard that looks like pubic hair? I just can’t. I’m supposed to know. And what if they’d had children? A vague half-memory surfaces of being sent a photo of a squashed-looking newborn with a card saying, The world welcomes baby Agatha. Or was it baby Tariq? Or Christ!… Was it a dog this lot got? However, in such murky circumstances, I’ve found that a catch-all ‘Hope you and the gang are well’ usually suffices.

Far trickier is getting the tone right – to convey a message of warm-hearted goodwill so that they’ll smile when they open the card and say, ‘Aww look, one from Marian. Isn’t she lovely?’ BUT – and it’s a very big but – without being so pally that they’ll spontaneously lift the phone and arrange a night out after not having seen me for over a decade.

And so I get to thinking guiltily: this year, would it be so bad if I didn’t…? Who’d miss a card from me when everyone gets so many…?

And that’s it! The decision is made! With a light heart I tell Himself, ‘I’m not sending Christmas cards this year. Life is too short.’

‘Fine,’ he says, ‘you’ve enough on your plate.’ I study him carefully to see if he’s being sarcastic and I can’t be sure, so I go away. Which is when I start thinking: but I really like so-and-so, I want to stay in touch with her, not to actually
see
her, of course, but I wouldn’t like us to lose touch. But if I send one to her and don’t send one to her sister, then her sister will think I’ve snubbed her, which indeed I will have, but I wouldn’t like her to think I had…

The house is filled with Himself’s nonreproachfulness. Just because he’s sitting at a table methodically inscribing cards to everyone he’s ever met doesn’t mean he’s judging me for not sending any.

Nevertheless, my guilt builds and builds.

Some people get around the hell of card-writing by sending what they insist on calling ‘a round robin letter’, typed in fake handwriting text –
like this
. They usually begin ‘Hello, valued friend.’ Or rather,
Hello, valued friend
. And then they tell you about all the fabulous things they’ve done over the past year, with a load of people you’ve never heard of.
Back in June, Lacey, Cain and I did a Jin Shin Jyutsu workshop! We’re still walking funny!
And I’m thinking: who’s Lacey? Who’s Cain? What’s Jin Shin Jyutsu? These letters always end with something like,
Love, light and blessings to your loved ones and you
, the subtext being ‘whoever the hell you are’.

Obviously, it’s an idea… I could knock something up on the computer, lash out a hundred copies and send them off. Mind you, I’d still have to write the bloody envelopes, never
having mastered the printed label thing. That still wouldn’t get around the long address, Traveller’s Rest-type problem.

Anyway they’re kind of creepy and too impersonal and… and…
American
. Despite my objection to doing Christmas cards, I still prefer to handwrite a personal message. Even if it’s the same one on each card. Even if it’s always ‘We really’ – with the ‘really’ underlined – ‘must get together
this
year.’

Then the post yields up the first card of the season, saying ‘We really’ – with the ‘really’ underlined – ‘must get together
this
year.’ And I like the person it’s from – although not enough to see them, of course – so I think, I’ll just send one back to them. Then the next day five cards arrive, and I’m fond of these people too, so I dash off five ‘Really’ – with the ‘really’ underlined – ‘must get together
this
year’s. And then I’m thinking of all the people I haven’t sent cards to and the torment is bad. And anyway, the next day the post brings an avalanche of ‘We
really
must get together
this
year’s and I buckle.

I walk into the room where Himself is sitting, innocently watching telly or whatever, and yell at him, ‘OKAY THEN, I’ll WRITE THE BLOODY THINGS. HAPPY NOW?’

Previously unpublished.

Christmas comes but once a year and when it comes it brings good cheer. Or in my case, it brings The Fear – because this year, THEY’RE COMING TO ME. Lots of them. Thirteen, in fact. Unlucky for some… Well, for anyone who might have to eat something I’ve cooked. I inhabit a fantasy world where there’s always a delicious, nutritious casserole simmering away on the hob, so that if anyone pops in unexpectedly I can feed them up and when they – oh so reluctantly – have to leave they get a little goody-bag of my home-made rosemary focaccia to take with them. (In this fantasy I also have Nigella’s hair, I’m dressed in a floaty Marni rig, I’m barefoot and sporting several groovy earth-mother toe-rings on my Chanel-painted toes.)

However, reality – that old killjoy – goes like this:

a) I live on convenience foods and Vivioptal and I have to go to my mammy’s every Thursday so I get one hot home-cooked meal a week.

b) I wouldn’t know one end of a casserole from another.

c) The word ‘giblets’ makes me dizzy.

d) I tried wearing a toe-ring on my second toe but it managed to trap a nerve, sending shooting pains all the way up my leg and into my back.

See, we all have our gifts and cooking isn’t one of mine. But it’s not just the thought of sticking my hand up inside a turkey that I dread, it’s the coordination involved in preparing a meal – having to have everything ready at the same time gives me a knot in my stomach. I stopped having dinner parties (of convenience foods and Vivioptal, of course) when I realized that even making toast and coffee stresses me; trying to boil the kettle to coincide with the toast popping out of the toaster made me anxious and uneasy.

But for Christmas dinner, I’ll be expected to produce turkey, ham, roast spuds, mashed spuds, parsnips, carrots, brusslers, peas, stuffing, bread sauce, gravy – all of them to be hot and edible
at the same time
. It makes me want to crouch in a corner and whimper.

So I’m back again to the eternal question, the one that has plagued me all my life: How Do Other People Do It? How come they were given life’s rule book and I missed out? Where was I when God was dispensing capability and cop-on? Looking at shoes, probably.

For a while there I seemed to be getting the hang of this adult lark – I learnt to drive, I got a kidney donor card – but this Christmas business has plunged me back into horribly familiar confusion. Someone (a proper grown-up) advised me that lists were the key to coordination, and briefly that dissipated the dreadful disquiet – I like making lists and I like crossing things off when they’re done. (Sometimes I make lists and include a few of the things I’ve already done, just so I can cross them off and get that warm glow.) But no amount of lists will teach me to cook, so I’ve taken the bold decision that I’m going to get absolutely
everything
from the turkey
to the trifle pre-prepared. I know, I know, it’s lazy and extravagant and yes, I feel like a failure. (No change there.) But it’s the only option I’ve got if I want the thirteen of us sitting down to an edible Christmas dinner.

Which brings me to my next problem:
sitting down
. On what exactly? I have four kitchen chairs. Which leaves me nine short, if I’ve done my sums right. I have two low little pouff yokes, on which the taller guests can sit and rest their chins on the table and there’s a step-ladder which converts into a chair. It’s extremely unstable in chair form (and also in step-ladder form actually) but it’ll have to do. The rest of us will just have to stand. Or maybe we can do it in rotas because I’m after realizing I don’t have enough plates either. Dear God…

To my shame, it’s only now that I understand just how hard my parents worked at Christmas time. There they were, racing around a steam-filled kitchen, preparing all this delicious food, while myself and my siblings were, to a man, thrun in front of Christmas
Top of the Pops
, ploughing through tins of Roses. Having trouble imagining such a thing? Well, let me help. Think of a crèche. Think of the pit of brightly coloured balls that the children roll around in. Well, instead of the brightly coloured balls, think of chocolates.

However, let’s not lose sight of what Christmas is really about, because Christmas isn’t just about eating yourself sick, Christmas is about something far more important. I’m talking of course of presents! And this is where I come into my own. At the best of times I’m an excellent spender of money; shopping, buying nice things, running up debt – I’m second
to none. But I especially love buying presents. It’s an opportunity to buy lovely things without the consequent guilt and, instead of feeling like a spendthrift, I feel like a generous, giving person.

Unlike most people (and every other area of my life) I buy my Christmas gifts MONTHS in advance. Contrary to what you might think this is not good.

a) Everyone hates me when I announce at the end of October that I’ve bought all my Christmas presents. Their faces go all cat’s-bum sour and someone usually says, ‘Well! Aren’t you little Miss Organized?’ and you can tell they mean it as an insult.

b) It doesn’t save any time at all. The face cream that my mother said she liked, well didn’t she only go out and buy it herself in the second week of November? The green cushions I bought to go in my sister’s bedroom suddenly became
de trop
when she spent the October bank holiday weekend redecorating and going very much for a pink theme.

c) If I’ve bought something particularly lovely, I hop around like someone dying to go to the loo, desperate to give it to the recipient there and then. Two years ago I buckled and did just that with a good friend, giving her her Christmas present in early Nov. So when she gave me
my
present several weeks later I didn’t understand her expectant face – until she complained to my sister that I’d become very stingy all of a sudden. She’d
forgotten
and it nearly ruined our friendship.

So when you’re racing around the shops at four-thirty on Christmas Eve, you’re probably just as well off.

Happy Christmas!

First published in the
RTE Guide,
December 2002
.

In the first volume of
Under the Duvet,
I wrote an account of my alcoholism, up to the point where I stopped drinking. But so many people contacted me, wanting to know what happened next, how I came to start writing, etc., that I decided to write the next instalment. Then I began to worry about those readers who didn’t know my drinking story: what kind of sense would my recovery make to them? So, to cover all bases, I’ve written the whole thing in its entirety. My apologies to those who already know all about my adventures on the sauce – just skip it and get to the ‘what happened next’ bit.

For as far back as I can remember there was always something wrong. Despite being brought up in an ordinary, loving middle-class family, all my life I sensed I was missing a piece of myself. It knocked me off balance; I was for ever out of step with the rest of the world and I never felt ‘normal’. Instead I watched other people being effortlessly ‘normal’ and tried to copy them, like a foreigner blending in by aping local customs.

The eldest of five, I was a skinny little girl, who was constantly anxious and terrified of just about everything – dogs, boys, being late for school, having to play rounders, having my photo taken (I hated myself, I thought I was the
ugliest thing on the planet). Most painful of all was my desperation to be liked – I was an emotional shape-shifter with no sense of self and my unspoken offer to everyone was: tell me who you want me to be and I will be it. Not that such magnanimity worked; frantic though I was to have a best friend, I always seemed to be a grim hanger-on in a triangle with two other girls who were proper friends.

People often ask if something had ‘happened’ to me. But nothing did – I think I was born this way. Which is to say I think I was born an alcoholic. An alcoholic-in-waiting.

So when, in my teens, I had my first drink, the world shifted on its axis and I fell in love. Giddy, soaring with relief, I
loved
the way alcohol made me feel and suddenly I felt how I thought everyone else felt all of the time. Now I get it, I thought. This is the missing piece of me, my saviour.

Although it took some years before I became physically addicted, emotionally I was in thrall from the word go and throughout the rest of my teens I drank whenever I could. Mind you, it wasn’t often – funds didn’t run to it – but when I did drink, I drank to get drunk. Chasing oblivion, trying to escape myself – I thought that was what everyone did.