It’s November and I’m standing on the street with one of my neighbours looking up at our building. “It’s a disgrace,” says Sam, shaking his head. We’re watching the lights twinkle on a Christmas tree above us.
“I know,” I smile. It’s November and the silver-tipped fir is mine.For the first time in my life I’ve gone all out for Christmas, early, and unsurprisingly mine is the first Christmas tree in any window on our street.
I’ve decided to have a slow Christmas, for several reasons, and it started the day after Halloween. I don’t know why it took me so long to realise that doing it all in November was a lot more fun, partly because you’re not supposed to - which says a lot about my personality - but also because the last-minute Christmas rush-around for presents is never as festive as we tell ourselves it’ll be. Last year, having travelled a lot for work in the months leading up to it and finally settling back home a week before the big day, it seemed pointless to get a tree, so I didn’t.
My flat looked like it did any other month of the year, and I thought that would be liberating, to shun silly commercialism and refuse Christmas expense completely, but it wasn’t. It was just kind of sad. Instead of going back to my parents’ house in Bath, it being up in the air as to whether my brother and his new wife would be there that year for the first time and I would be the only single one, yet again (plus I was travelled-out anyway and didn’t fanc.