Merry Christmas

Well hello to all you, family and friends; it’s time to get to it and unwrap those pressies under the tree!

Hope you find what you were looking for, hope you receive what you asked for, hope there is room for happy surprises as well.

It’s been incredibly cold during these past few days, the shortest of the year, minus zero and there is a promise of snow over the weekend. We’ll get our white Christmas after all.

I’ve been steadily going to gym classes and working out new step routines while the instructor’s favourite Christmas compilations were blaring through the stereo. The instructor wears Rudolf-the-reindeer antlers while he does the grapevine to Jingle Bells.

I’m baking panettone in my new bread maker and Nicholas returns home from work cradling bottles of Veuve Cliquot from the office.

In town, Christmas market stallholders with rosy cheeks are wrapped in woollen shawls and Peruvian berets, they rub their gloved hands together while stomping on the frozen ground and blowing clouds out of their mouths.

City streets twinkle with rivers of fairy lights while fancy boutiques mark down their luxurious goods to fifty per cent off. Meanwhile frenzied last-minute shoppers, laden with bags and parcels, bump into each other on the narrow sidewalks.

The sky is a transparent blue and the air is icy, the lake is a sheet of glass. I wonder how the waterbirds and fish can survive the cold and immediately, I feel the urge to dive into a cosy tearoom. Hot chocolate and raspberry mousse: the only effective antidote to winter.

We hope to spend the holidays unwinding with our friends and perhaps taking a short drive down to the Tuscan seaside and Pisa. Then there’s the Warhol exhibit at the Triennale in Milan and if there’s snow, a sled run through the hills awaits!

For New Year’s Eve our friend Matt is giving a party and we’re invited. B.Y.O. bottle of champagne and a keg of beer. It’s going to be a big party! Matt is very popular with the lads because he owns one of those Heineken Beermasters, a machine that hooks up to a keg and pours beer like the ones they have in pubs. I reckon it’s the only true appliance designed for men since the jaffle iron.

I will commence the New Year with a cleansing fast. This is not a new year’s resolution; I usually detox each spring and every autumn. But I missed out this year because of a trip to Dublin during the fall, followed by a week in Holland, both of which veered me off-course.

I hope you will commence the New Year in good health and with love in your hearts and may the New Year be better than the last!

Happy Holidays.