It began as a discussion of the benefits of wearing a fleece in the icy weather. 'It saves money on the central heating, I suppose... wearing fleeces. Maybe a few at once.' I was resisting the urge to poke fun at onesies - hideous, adult-size babygros, designed for infants but taken up by teenage hipsters and the 'middle young'- when it happened. The words were spoken which would forever change the icy wasteland of Christmas in my mind. 'Aye,' replied the man behind the counter, a lugubrious expression settling into the contours of his face. 'But all the same... there are still people committing suicide.'
It seemed ridiculous at first. And yet... perhaps it encapsulates the hidden sadness behind Christmas. The darkness which makes the fairylights shine out. Because Christmas, for which we plan for such a long time, is over so very fast. Sometime in October, someone will comment that they know that Christmas is coming because they've seen the advert with the Coca Cola truck. The adverts are relentless, telling us, imperative-laden, how we must celebrate Christmas, and making us feel inadequate that our food isn't quite perfect and, though our living room may feature a glittering tree, we haven't bought a new sofa especially for the Festive Season.
And we comply. We prepare for the feasting and the festival, irrespective of whether we believe in the mythologies behind it, of whether we'll see the inside of a church at Christmas. We set budgets and exceed them, complain about the prescriptive menus of the traditional Christmas dinner but shop for them, groan that there's 'nothing on TV again this year', yet slump down and watch it all. And afterwards, when we see with delight that the binmen have arrived on the appointed day to rid us of the undesired memories of it all - turkey bones and ripped wrapping paper - mixed with the sense of relief and sense of purging, we're left with a slight shame... at our own excess.
On midwinter mornings, when I steel myself for the first brief mirror-glance of the day, I imagine, just for a second, that my face has come from the prototype of a Picasso portrait. Exhaustion and the grey-toned daylight seem etched below my eyes, and I imagine how I'm feeling inside is as visible as a light bulb to everyone I meet. That it's there, in the clearest of fonts, that I'm thinking too much about all of this wintriness... the landscapes, the weather, the ice beneath the prescribed conviviality of the parties and the jollity. In the same way that I worry about whether the road I'm travelling on will hold the hidden danger of black ice, I'm always conscious that the undercurrents of the happy flow of hugs and handshakes may be every bit as deceptive as the toxic mistletoe thrust jokingly above heads at a Christmas party.
As inevitable as Christmas are the finals of X Factor and Strictly. And we live in the scrutiny of our own reality shows. As we're hurt by a comment or a look - or a lack of words or regard - it's as though we're subject to a public vote or a judge's score for everything. How we dress. Where we spend time. What we weigh. What we drive, and most of all... what we do. I'm often asked, in tones of some disparagement, whether teaching was just some sort of terrible accident. Why I'm not doing something more exciting, more rewarding, more noticeable, somehow. I deflect the questions, joking: 'Oh, you know... I still want to be a writer when I grow up!' I don't have a Sat Nav, but if I did, I'm sure its imperious voice would be constantly shouting at me about roads not taken...
We shield ourselves against the cold in fleece and cashmere, and against the emptiness of our lives in the swathing comfort of routine. I try to write these blogs - my Diary of a Nobody - and persuade myself it's just a five-finger exercise to keep my creative mind alert, in preparation for writing that novel I so often dream about. And yet, supposing this really is it? That the end of my timespan will bring forgetfulness, a bit like now when I look back on my own schooldays, half-forgotten because of the routine which kept so many days the same?
Success is as deceptive as a roadway of black ice, which needs sunlight to shine on it to make its hazards glisten. It's as ephemeral as Christmas... as all-defining, heralded, and brief. As fickle as a friendship. As the old year creeps, in the dark, towards its baton change with the new year, we do what we can to comfort ourselves against the cold night around us... the bleak midwinter meantime of being nobody.