Perhaps that has something to do with the fact it occurs during the pre-Christmas frenzy with its enforced jollity, emphasis on excess, and expectations of warm family fuzziness.
Each year I dislike it a little more.
My fumbling attempts to acknowledge the season have been failures - a cake encrusted with burnt almonds (after I was so proud of my innovative use of steel-cut oats in my freestyle throwing together of ingredients) and a wannabe knitting gift which had to be unravelled near completion because it was far too small.
Also, this year, instead of my usual Christmas trick of ruining teeth with sticky toffees, I find my jaw is aching because I have been clenching my gnashers for weeks. (I doubt my dentist will see that as an improvement.)
My diagnosis (please, feel free to call me doctor) is that the tension in my teeth mimics that in society over Covid-19. There are likely to be uncomfortable Christmases for many families, where the V and C words will have to be banned, where the immunocompromised may want unvaccinated family members to keep their distance and Auckland visitors might be viewed with suspicion.
In public, I wonder when the use of vaccine certificates and mandates will turn out to be more trouble than they are worth. If the hope was partly that their use would lead to more vaccinations, there must come a time when all who were merely hesitant have been persuaded. Will making those remaining who are determined not to be vaccinated, but willing to comply with other measures like masking, distancing, or testing, feel increasingly pushed to the margins of society truly make us much safer? The lack of public input into the rules surrounding the introduction of these measures still makes me uneasy.
But back to the cat’s piddle. It adorned the coverings of a large foam rubber squab from a custom-made window seat upstairs. For some reason, the cat chooses to spurn the unsullied dirt box (don’t tell the vegetarians, but the litter is made from tofu) and piddle on the squab cover. Every time I think I have cracked this habit with a deterrent or unappealing coverings, she lulls me into a false confidence for a couple of days and then proves me wrong.
On the eve of my wedding anniversary, I decided that washing the squab itself might help. I wrestled it downstairs, soaped it up and trampled a dairy farm’s worth of water into it, before realising I would have to lift the waterlogged beast somewhere to dry it.
It was enough to almost push me over the edge (of the deck), but I managed to spare myself, and the taxpayer, an ACC claim.
Things were looking up on the wedding anniversary when it was sunny enough to almost complete the squab’s drying.
Without cat’s pee clogging my nostrils and weighing down my spirits, I could attempt some positivity.
I was sorry I couldn’t discuss the Government’s latest smoking moves with my husband, whose years of heavy smoking played a part in his early demise. He is one of at least six I can think of in my wider family circle for whom that would be the case, including my own father and my maternal grandfather.
As a family we are taking some credit, warranted or not, for the decision to make buying tobacco off-limits for the next generation. The First Born, who has had his own struggles with smoking addiction, raised the idea with a couple of political parties in election year, 13 years ago. He does not recall it being received with much enthusiasm then, but we want to believe his idea landed on fertile ground. (It is just as likely many other people had the same brainwave but, hey, if we can’t believe in the unlikely at Christmas, when can we?).
It is a pity there is no political appetite for bold dealing with the myriad problems widely available cheap alcohol causes, issues which are usually all too evident during the festive season. Big booze still has too much sway.
• Christmas tree update: The battered Ngaio replanted in the corner of the front garden to assume the role of Christmas tree last year is thriving. Its own little miracle is a last year’s sweet pea vine which wintered among its leaves and is now producing the occasional fragrant pinkness. Enough to take my mind off other things.
- Elspeth McLean is a Dunedin writer.
