Happy Christmas! It is so cold I am wearing my sweater, coat, two pairs of trousers and my ugg boots even though I'm indoors. And gloves. And I'm still cold.
On Christmas eve we went for Midnight Mass, which started at 11.30pm, go figure. At the last minute for some mysterious reason we decided to chuck the original plan of going to the bigger church in Pulborough and go to our little village church instead. We arrived at 11.15pm, ready to impress everyone with our Christian punctuality only to discover small villages celebrate midnight the proper way, at 11pm. And boy, was everyone staring at us! It was just like those dreams where you're naked, except it was worse because the only free seats were right smack in front.
The whole church was FULL of incense. After practically every paragraph or verse or whatever, a guy would walk by with the incense-swinger and there'd be more incense. We were up to our eyeballs in incense, with incense, breathing incense, and to prove my point, an enormous fly landed on the floor next to my foot after the second hymn and proceeded to die very noisily of incense poisoning, God rest its soul.
During communion, we stayed in our seats while the confirmed Catholics went up to take the bread and wine. Everyone else who stayed had their head meekly bowed with expressions of peace and reverence on their faces as they reflected on the year or dropped off to sleep, but my step-grandfather decided this was an ideal time for a good chat, and at the volume that slightly deaf people hold so dear to their hearts.
WELL WHAT'S THAT AWFUL SMELL THEN? he shouted over me to my grandma, also partially deaf.
I DON'T KNOW I SUPPOSE IT'S THE INCENSE. she yelled back.
IT SMELLS PRETTY AWFUL, DON'T IT? WHY DO THEY KEEP BLOWING IT ABOUT LIKE THAT?
It took a long time to adjust to being the only one with normal hearing in the house, but I've finally learnt to turn off the speakers before I load up the computer, so I don't get blown away by the Windows start-up music jacked up as loud as it gets.
I am a bit at my wits end as the time of my homecoming draws nearer. THREE. DAYS. MORE.
1 comment:
Oy with the poodles already!
Not since the 26th of Dec? You have got to be kidding me.
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