In short, behave yourself

We have an invitation to dine, informally, at The Hat's.

The Hat usually hosts this gathering of a dozen of us every Christmas Eve, but this year the party was postponed. The cause is three new-born babies, M's father in an Oxford hospital, a nervous breakdown, and a neighbour who has gone into care.

I never really know how to behave at The Hat's. It's all more polite than at ours, and the cups are bone china. Usually, I come away feeling I have messed it up. I drink the 1982 burgundy reserved for H which has been hidden behind the refrigerator, the children eat all the grapes, and then I eat all the crisps. Talking with my mouth full to deny it is the prelude to someone saying Is that the time? It must be time to go.

I expect it will be the only social event to which I am invited all year. The evening usually serves to ensure no more invitations anywhere are forthcoming.

But I thought, this year, I will try and carry in my head a few hints on how to behave conversationally at social functions. As you might see, I am trying already. But a few pointers from the wise might stop me getting into trouble this year, especially with that little woman who dresses in black. Peepah has already given me advice by way of saying how it always gets awkward when you tell that joke about the nuns and then realise you're the only one laughing.

So here is my guide. Extracts from Cassell's Hand-Book of Etiquette: Being A Complete Guide to the Usages of Polite Society (1860) London: Cassell, Petter, and Galpin.

'Attention to the following rules will put you on your guard against becoming either boring or offencive in conversation, or of committing those faults that etiquette condemns.

Look at the person to whom you speak, but do not stare at him. Endeavour both by your expression and manner to show confidence without boldness, and ease without familiarity.

Be sparing of puns and proverbs. Too many of them render conversation trite and stiff.

Ill-natured reports are among the sins of conversation. Never be the bearer of them. People may listen greedily to the report (which, after all, may be a slander), but they will beware of you, as being likely to speak ill of themselves.

Never flatly contradict any one, and show especial deference to the opinions of the aged and of the fair sex.

Recollect that the drawing-room is not a debating club, and it should never be made a field for disputants.

Do not be led into angry political discussions before ladies, and avoid controversy.

A lady cannot very decorously challenge a gentleman to a future argument, but she should always firmly dissent from opinions that savour of immorality or impiety.

If you interrupt a speaker in the middle of his sentence, you act almost as rudely as if, when walking with a companion, you were to thrust yourself before him and stop his progress.

Profane swearing, always an infringement of religion, is now, in conversation, a great breach of etiquette.

By constantly putting questions, you render yourself wearisome, and sometimes very impertinent in conversation.

Conversation should bring into play all the amiable qualities of kindness, politeness, patience, and forbearance. These qualities may be shown by the learned and unlearned, and they contribute greatly to the charm of the conversation.

In polite society, it should be understood that what passes in conversation is, to a certain degree, sacred, and cannot honourably be repeated to the prejudice of the speaker.

Finally, remember not to eat all the crisps, nor deny it with your mouth full. And never, ever, ever, tell that joke about the nun. Especially when there is one in the room.'

Christmas preparations underway

We all scour the car boot sale for Christmas presents.

As Squirrel rightly says, we have to do the bootie, because 'the skips have locks on them'.

I commend Befana to you all

La Famille Grit has this story. We stole it from a confused Italian and made it our own. But I utterly recommend it to you.

Use it, and let it become for you, as for us, the final nail in the Christmas festivities.

Yes, this little ritual story-making will finish off celebrations nicely. With it, you can attend to what the offspring wanted all along, but were too dense to tell you. Then was it any surprise, on present-opening time, how it was all a sad disappointment? Like this year. When gritlet after gritlet opened up their wrapped present in great hope of finding dangerous weaponry (not that they actually told Santa they wanted knives), but received instead one pair of socks, a tin whistle, a Teach Yourself Geometry book and a Kit-Kat with one bar removed (and no apologies about that).

Never mind! We can be redeemed! Thanks to Befana (or Befano, depending on how I remember).

Then here is our telling.

The three wise kings set out looking for Baby Jesus. They carried presents of gold, frankincense and rum. (Yes, it is like that. I told you it is our own.)

On the journey the three kings became tired and emotional after drinking all the rum. In this state they would never steer their camels on the right path! Indeed, they were soon in danger of falling down a mountainside and plunging to a certain death. The only solution was to stop their journey and hope the star stayed put while they slept it off.

Luckily! They came upon a peasant hovel, the humble home of Befana, an incredibly old and kind-hearted woman. She must have been, right? Because here are three men with hats and camels stinking of rum who bash at her door demanding a free night's sleep. Let us rest there and have a glass of sherry.

In the morning, the three wiser men got up to a delicious breakfast of gruel and donkey pee (which for a peasant is a very fine spread indeed). Then, with ne'er a thank you for her kindness, they mounted their camels and made ready to leave. Befana (kindly, old, wise) asked them, 'Whither are you going?' They became very rude and surly. One snorted We are off to see the Baby Jesus with our gold and frankincense, so what is that to you?

Befana overlooked their rude manners, but in very humble way asked, 'Can I come with you? I would very much like to see the Baby Jesus, and I have this carrot.'

The three kings became hoity-toity. They said things like 'Shut up you old woman, we are much too important to talk to you with our camels and our hats. We are certainly not waiting for you, old crone.' Then they left. (Happily the star had hung about a bit and waited.)

Now let us pause there to have another glass of sherry and contemplate the folly of men who are supposed to be wise.

Well, Befana was bloody annoyed and rightly so. She had given up her floor and her morning glass of donkey pee and for what? For some damn ungrateful blokes on camels with pointy hats, solidified tree sap, and a glass of gold (which you are sure is glitter painted on a jamjar because he would have been mugged by now if it was real gold). Cheapskates.

So Befana set off behind the rude and rather foolish men thinking I'll show them! I shall take my special present to Baby Jesus, which is even better than my carrot, and it is not fake gold, nor a bit of tree sap dolled up to make you think it's special.

That's what Befana does. She takes the special present and walks for many miles over hills and dales and mountains and rivers and swamps (you can make up this bit, add crocodiles and killer ants and poisoned apples and everything, depending on audience participation).

Then she arrives at the stables.

Oh dear! Baby Jesus has gone.

But Befana (wise, old, extremely shrewd) is not deterred. She leaves her special present in a magical place (maybe a tear in the time-space section of the stables, or a free-floating fragment in the time dimension, dunno, depends how many sherries I've had), and - get this - the special present is still there! Or here! Depending on where it is!

And that, gritlets large and small, is Befana's present, the last present, the missing present, which will magically appear under the magic tree on the magic morning i.e. January 6th (or 5th), the date we take down the tree and put it in the box for another year.

Now let us reflect how the wise men were foolish!

They bought unreasonable and inappropriate presents for Baby Jesus. They would have bought a tin whistle and Teach Yourself Geometry if you'd let them. But rum, solidified tree juice, and gold? What is a prophet going to do with gold if they go on about the virtues of giving away all material possessions? Duh.

But consider this about the old woman. Befana is wise. She brings you the present you wanted all along! In your case, my darling gritlets, knives.

Open the presents, quick!

 Presents! Presents! PRESENTS!

I didn't deserve them!

Okay, maybe the corn dolly reindeer. Yes, I did deserve that. In view of the awkward moment I introduced round the Christmas tree.

But the best and most deserving writ-for-Grit present, here. I totally recommend. If you are a lover of window sills.

Santa's not real

I agree.

Not because I am a miserly niggardly little bastard hoping to destroy all shared cultural values, spread my miserable cantankerousness, and undermine every decent shred of behaviour in your civilised society, taking the innocence of childhood with me. Pft.

All days are special, from beginning to finish, start to end, cord to nail. I see my job as a parent is to open my arms wide to the feeling of it all; whether prompted by the tiniest detail or the biggest view, and it doesn't matter if it's unknowable at both ends, there is still human emotion to be found there.

So I fully agree with this:

'Arguing that a belief in Santa Claus injects magic into childhood is, in my view, rather cynical. It tacitly implies that the world by itself is insufficient to inspire a child with awe and delight. That is simply untrue. A child can be astounded by the smallest brush-flick of nature – the spinning sycamore seed, the sea, snow – they don't need to be lied to.'

Yes, yes, yes. Plus I am crap at lying. Especially about something so blatantly unsupportable as a bloke in a red one-suit. I would probably find it easier to lie about an adulterous affair than Father Christmas. At least I could invent an entire fantasy rationale about that. But the first question about Father Christmas would send me spinning into a mumbling wreckage of um. umumumum. um.

Although I have to observe that any honesty I've used with my children has not worked particularly well either, if the goal has been to coerce children into agreeable behaviours.

 Squirrel, there is no fat man dressed in Coca-Cola brand identity to come busting down the chimney.

No, mummy. But there is a child-eating eagle living in the rafters. Which is why I'm not going up for a bath, not going upstairs early, and not going to bed before midnight.

It's a time for children, so I'm told

Tigger, the irrepressible bouncing chum of Shark, Squirrel and Tiger, is off her face with joy.

Mostly thanks to having the world's best parents. They know exactly how to set her Christmas Joy Switch to a permanent state, ON. Simple. Turn your entire house into Santa's Grotto.

Result. Tigger is bouncing off the walls because did you KNOW? It is CHRISTMAS! Come and see our LIT UP REINDEER and SANTA and FAIRY LIGHTS and it is all WONDERFUL and mama makes a GROTTO and it is BRILLIANT and there are STARS and that is usually the point where I pass out, and someone has to slap me round to bring me to consciousness.

But Tigger makes me realise how awfully wrong I have got this Christmas lark. Here I am, with my strugglings to regain a patch of front room decorum, I have totally failed to lie about fat men with presents entering your bedroom late at night. Then there is all my Soviet-style military marchings backwards and forwards to the 10p bauble sale at the Community Re-use Shop, where I come over all control-freakery with the front door wreath.

No darling DON'T CHOOSE THAT ONE. It is so vulgar! Choose these discreet silver baubles instead! They are much prettier, ARE THEY NOT. Right, shut up crying. We're having them, because every time I enter the house, I have to look at your choice and quite frankly a dangling thing that looks like a tinselled stool on a stick will make my face melt as well as alert social services to what we get up to behind closed doors.

What I should have done, I now realise, was proudly and defiantly tip the contents of the local skip onto the front door step, chuck six foot of fairy lights over the lot, garnish it with a blow-up Santa, and declare it a grotto. Then I would have raised three children similarly off their heads with joy at the spirit that is Christmas.

But I fear, with my curmudgeonly ways, that I have done the stiff and judging British thing with my offspring. I have introduced them to social anxiety, made them aware that they will inevitably get on the wrong side of the scales of social judgements, and I have brought them to that point where they must apologise it is Christmas and they are not even Christians. That is what I do, and I can say it is not exactly healthy.

Well I am going to change my ways. Tigger, with all her uncomplicated joy and delightful bounce, has taught me wisdoms about the needs of children. It is not enough to shove the plastic Christmas trees at my offspring, then tell them to decorate them up to the eyeballs with crap in their bedrooms where I can't see them, I must proudly declare my altered child-led vision of Christmas in public.

I am going to tell Shark, Squirrel and Tiger to decorate the cherry tree that stands in the front garden and which is visible to the WHOLE WORLD.

This, I feel, will be a sign that I am finally led, totally, generously, and fulsomely, by children at this special time of year.

Thank you, Tigger.

Edited to add: When Dig enters the house from his long, long journey home from Hong Kong for the Christmas holidays, his first words are not Hello my lovely family! But Call the Police. Someone has tipped rubbish all over the front garden. Honestly, the vandalism that goes on in England is one reason why I stay in Hong Kong.

How can you teach everything?

I had this again. Hmm. Christmas might be an example.

It is one reason why I was driven to home educate, frankly. I want to be in control of Christmas.

Nursery - the experiment we foolishly tried when Shark, Tiger and Squirrel were aged four - gave us a size 24 classroom assistant wearing tinsel elf ears, eagerly anticipating Christmas starting in October when Santa falls down the chimney.

I'm sorry? Isn't it a bit more complex than that? I want the mini grits to grow up with a much wider awareness than offered by a pair of tinsel elf ears. I want my little grits to be aware of how many stories and how many voices compete for our attention and time in our Northern hemisphere's mid-winter.

Relying on Coca-Cola's Santa with his red-nosed reindeer, 200cwt of school glitter, and a school assembly for Christian Teaching Resources delivered by BoxTick.Gov.UK merely glosses over the issues raised by organised religion, commercial power, and social expectations.

Sure, we'll track Santa with Norad, watch Miracle on 34th Street, and read A Christmas Carol (again), and yes, I may even wear tinsel elf ears myself, but I want to take time to position all this in some intelligent and interesting debate.

It comes down to who's in charge of this culture? Whose message do I support? I could not imagine for one minute being able to shut up for long enough to suffer the quickly-delivered school line on Christmas without wanting to punch the classroom assistant and start a fight. Ultimately I'd want to make the event all more complicated than they'd want (a donation to the Christmas Fair organised by the PTA).

So yes, I do think I can teach my kids about Christmas better than any school. I want to convey rounded awareness rather than blinkered ignorance.

Now, December 1st. We are not Christian. I can't pray to anyone how I never want any of my little grits to burst home, declaring their born again evangelical status. I can only hope the family gene for that isn't dominant.

Even so, we're up for the carol service at St Giles in the Fields, the Poets' Church. Listening to Tallis' Videte miraculum, sung by Pegasus.

Christmas discussion starts here.

 

Learning how to turn up at a Church not looking like a scruff-ball;

learning how to shut up, sit down, listen to someone else;

and learning how to take part in a wider cultural event 

alongside an audience mostly composed of those aged over-50. 

(And when the kids have learned all this, they can teach me.)

Ahead and behind

Well, people of England, we have a time difference here, which puts la famille Grit eight hours ahead of you.

Rest assured then, that by 10am your English morning, I have hit the evening dry sherry and opened Squirrel's bag of cheesy wotsits. They serve as as a delightful hors d'oeuvre to my supper feast of noodles and tomato sauce.

By the time you are considering your afternoon cuppa I will be several glasses of red gone to bed, hopefully remembering to do my Mrs Santa duty. Of course I shall not forget. Midnight Christmas Eve is a traditional time to start turning the house upside down in the hunt for a pair of scissors.

The children have been tracking this time difference all day long, and now have set about tracking Santa on Google Earth, thanks to Norad and Dig, who made the plugin work.

I wonder in passing if British English might not be the first language of Norad's programmer, what with the Elf Toss. If it is, they need to acquire an urban dictionary, and quickly, before the letters on behalf of outraged family values begin to pour in.

Also incidentally, Dig has been in strangely jovial mood all day, encouraging the children with this Santa bothering business. He might have got me some divorce papers for Christmas, which would be fair, because I've got him sod all.

Thus I am signing off another Christmas Eve, this year without the annual happy party at the Hat's, but in fond recollection, and probably a quiet teary self-pitying sob, or two. I have found that wishes never come true.

But hope yours does, unless it is for my untimely end, or for your liver to be eaten by wolves or something equally odd.

Happy Christmas.

Stitch, stitch, sew

Anticipation is rising round here. (We'll soon sort that out, come Sunday morning.)

In deep concentration, creating a silence suitable for cathedral or mortuary, Shark, Squirrel and Tiger spend all the hours of daylight sewing their stockings.

This is a grand feat of needlework they accomplish every Christmas, for which, I proudly take my hat off to myself, smug home educating bastard that I am. For years I have required the children to create their own cards and novelty gift items. (I am falling short of knitting with my own hair, but only just.)

They might, of course, do this not in pursuit of mastering craft skills, but because they intuitively know a stocking's not coming from anywhere else, so they may as well get on with it.

Tiger

Shark

Squirrel's stocking is missing. I am not allowed to photograph it because it is not finished.
The possibility that it will ever be finished is remote, so I have put in a picture of my favourite garment, ever.
It is a tongue costume. I bet I would look irresistibly sexy in this little number.
It has the bumps and white bits for when you are diseased and malnourished and everything.

We did nothing else as a consequence of hours of silent stitchery, so nothing to detain you, except maybe the moment I brought home from my exhausting shopping trip three lemons and six eggs.

Squirrel's eyes lit up at the idea of some lemony curdy tarty treat in store. Until I told her that the lemons were for my tonic and the eggs were for balancing on my nose to show how amazingly clever I could be after half a bottle of gin.

Dragging something from nothing

I am determined to enjoy the lovely festive season.

First stop, I take the kids ice skating in the Elements Shopping Mall.

Shut up about how ice is kept sub-zero in the sublime retail experience of the air-con sub-tropics.

Remember, now is that special time, when we ignore the bleeding obvious, perform acts of self-defeating stupidity, commit ourselves to wilful blindness, and basically lie while paying for the privilege of doing so. I have to find a happy Christmas somewhere.

And of course I'm not ice-skating, so don't ask whether my Christmas joy extends there. It does not. I haven't grown to my wise old age of fifty-plus by thinking it a good idea to strap metal blades under my feet and try walking on frozen water.

I push off to Starbucks with the rest of the expat home ed mummies, where we grumble about Christmas in Hong Kong, plus the fact that we'd go home, except you English people are inconsiderate enough to have an economic crisis and are only offering work that doesn't pay enough for ice skating down at the Elements Mall.

Apart from paying through the nose to trash the environment, give the kids something else to complain about, and find a therapeutic outlet for my misery guts, I decide to extend my complete enjoyment of the festive season by walking the children across Kowloon in a spirit of happy trial, from east to west.

Yes, I know you said it was a stupid idea and that my sense of direction is so bad I seriously have trouble finding my way out the bathroom. Shut up.

Alright, I ended up two hours later hopelessly lost before realising I was in Mong Kok, having negotiated a flyover and a building site, but I blame the map, which had a ruddy great hole thanks to Squirrel leaving a chewy sweet on it.

If only we'd brought the jumbo, we could have got out of here

Despite that minor three-hour setback, it remains a celebratory day suitable for a Christmassy outing. I did not weep and the children did not fall to fighting (well, only once).

Indeed, there are many successes. We saw a tortoise walking down the street (I was not hallucinating); I found a cook's shop on Shanghai Road selling spoons with long handles (needed round here); we met Daddy Dig for the exhibition on imperial examinations; ate at our preferred down-market, formica-table Indian restaurant; and finally went shopping in Temple Street Night Market, where I threatened Dig with a Chinese burn unless he bought me a medallion of Alice in Wonderland to use for my book art.

There. A day of profound success. I am counting it all joy. Maybe I can now feel the Christmas spirit begin to overwhelm me as I type.

And shut up about the Merlot as well.

Not a must-read for the joy-filled

Christmas is a great strain. I think it is made worse, being in Hong Kong.

In England, I can see the point. The lights and the tinsel are needed, because a December mid-winter is damn dark and cold. We have to bring sparkle into the bleak somehow.

Straight off, don't tell me to do it with the Christian. I am a gal of human blood, gristle and bone; earth, light and dark. This winter festival comes from feeding need. But I don't mind the religious believers overlaying my primitive with fine spiritual sentiments and the loveliest language, of course not. I'll get in on the act myself if it means I can take a time to join them, and listen to the music inspired by their devotions.

I believe it's basic fire and warmth which keep the cold from taking the hardest toll. And we can hope a bit of glam might bring anticipation; perhaps we could have rewards after all, even though in reality most of life outside looks dead and done for.

Show a few pin pricks of light, and we might also enjoy our imaginations. We can grow stories from dark places in long nights. For that, bring company, and add some over-eating to remind our bodies of human satisfaction.

Full stomachs, warm toes, shared minds, all safeguards in the moment against the lean months ahead, and yes, I can see the point of Christmas in dark, cold England.

But I am out here, and denied my December England. I don't have the props. No dark and starry nights, foot-stomping in frost, or winter breath showing me undeniable evidence before my very eyes. The weather in sub-tropics Hong Kong is lukewarm sunny, like an early English summer. The people stroll by in shorts, no-one looks to their own breath, and there are no hearths.

I can't give myself up to any widespread self-deception, either, as I can do in England. Few of the traders around us share this festival, so there's no cultural conspiracy which I can look to, to sweep me along. The shops will stay open throughout, the Christian families take their observations seriously, and the retail experience is just that. Christmas comes fast in the sales opportunity calender of round-the-world retail festivals, just after the Golden month, Hallowe'en and before the New Year.

I am left then, with a denuded Christmas of one plastic tree, 24 dented baubles and three strings of lurid tinsel.


But because I have an imagination and a bottle of sherry, I'm thinking up means to make one or two days more special than the rest. I will enjoy watching the children be delighted by chocolate and puzzles.

And I know, on peering into her stocking, Tiger won't ask, like me, What is the point? Well, I'm opening the sherry because we all made it through another year. And look, even though I am not in England, I'm still alive! That has got to be worth a moment of reflection. Please don't blow it to tell me otherwise.

International just ain't English

Today, we home educating group of pan-global mamas and papas use Christmas as an excuse, and go out together for Christmas dinner.



There wasn't much I recognised of Christmas dinner in a vegetarian Indian meal made by Hindus in a Chinese district of Hong Kong. But I guess it was the route of least offence in bringing together a large mixed crowd of expat home educators, drawn from a range of nations, round the same table under the one banner of Christmas.

Then, for a moment, even though the company was very warm and lovely, I admit, I felt a teeny bit homesick.

Because from here, in the slide down to the big day, I know I will miss my local time-of-the-year ways of England. I have no neighbour with whom to compare shovel action; no Doreen at the Co-op with her Christmas tree earrings; no menacing threat of visitations made by extended family; no anguished considerations about whether to tip the paper boy; no ambush by tinselled charity muggers; no real opportunity to compete on points of mince pie snobbery; no enforced reindeer-antler wearing; and no repressed evening gathering where giggly and risque behaviour appalls everyone, if only they could remember it. (I certainly hope no-one can.)

I will miss all that. For the second year running.

I worry that the children too are far gone from England.

Here I am, teaching Shark, Tiger and Squirrel the multi-national, cross-cultural behaviour suitable for a global scale round the dining table, but are they in danger of being a little culturally lost, and even failing to pick up important local identities?

Like tonight. I fear that my children simply do not know how to behave properly, like English people should.

They refuse to join in the table running, cannot join the rowdy game of throw-balloons-about, and even fail to be drawn by the lure of Santa hats.


After an hour, I observe how my mini grits depressingly begin to resemble the middle management team at the office Christmas party. The tee-total ones. Despite the fact that everyone else's nationhood of kids is running around the tables and playing throw-balloons-about.


It tells me one thing. I must, for the sake of my children, forget I am international in Hong Kong, and get into the proper spirit of Christmas. Then I can teach my gritlets our fine English Christmas customs.

I will tell myself, it is all very well being a global citizen, but some local customs can never be bettered.

We will start gently with whiny complaints about trees, baubles, tinsel, the weather and the cost of everything. Then we will move on to complaining while over-indulging in mince pies. Next we will try social etiquette, where we alternate between being over-polite and downright offensive, before we try advanced skills: making cruel and acerbic judgements on someone else's Christmas decorations while pretending not to.

Finally, I will ensure everyone understands how your mother has a god-given right to get a bit tipsy and launch herself face first over the sofa because it is Christmas.

I think the lessons should begin tonight, ladies, with my large glass of port.

Kid Christmas, love from Hong Kong

You can see the relief

After yesterday's suggestion by mama, the relief is tangible.


The ritual begins.

Ta-dah!


(Thank you IKEA, 50 minutes before closing, 90% markdown on the last Christmas tree of Hong Kong. Origami star, by Shark.)

Christmas tree

Here we are, stuck in reality, trying to execute Emergency Plan B. Create a happy and memorable Christmas for the little grits in our temporary lodge in Hong Kong. To do that, we're putting into place all the signifiers of a British Christmas. Fairy lights. Santa socks. Hints about presents.

We're putting into place the Grit Christmas too (probably anti-patriotic). Do not make a big deal. Make our own presents. Yes, we are having baking potatoes.

But there's one thing lacking. The British Christmas and the Grit Christmas share something in common, and we can't get it. A tree. We need a proper Christmas tree shape that we can bomb not with our usual range of shuttlecocks and toilet rolls, but with tasteless plastic shiny stuff we already bought from the sad cat charity shop.

I know there are trees here. I have seen them. Not jungly ones, obviously. (Although as time ticks on, I wonder about the price of chainsaws and getting caught.) I know there are proper Christmas trees here because, over the past few weeks, I've seen expats carrying them on the ferry. But until Monday we assumed we would be at home, where I could disappear into the eaves and drag out the five-pound bargain tree from Help the Aged, where I wouldn't need to join this expat game of lugging Christmas trees around the Hong Kong transport infrastructure.

Now of course, we're here, and in the market for a Christmas tree. It seems to me that the Hong Kongers are big on shopping mall trees (up to thirty foot high and difficult to steal), which are used as extensive Christmas support for the manufacturing and retail growth of China. But they are not big on propping up Norwegian fir, floor to ceiling, in their domestic interiors. Strange.

Of course we may be simply too late. There are no trees to be had at the local grocers, coal merchant, or Saturday market like in Smalltown. Homebase doesn't exist, and we couldn't find them in Wing On.

We have searched. There is no second-hand plastic tree at the Hippie Shop, because it was sold. We tracked one down on the island at the laundry. The washing lady was touting an eight-branch wire and fringe arrangement for one hundred and fifty dollars. It's about four foot high, been round the block a few times, and has a couple of branches missing. The family gathered round it and looked at it, miserably, yesterday. Dig said he thought he could do better, then crawled over Kowloon and Central, twice, and discovered he could source a decent tree for about four thousand dollars. But he is from the north with relatives as foresters and memories of taking an axe to Kielder, thus came away empty handed, except for the argument that four thousand was a little steep for Emergency Plan B, especially when you're on a UK tax rate.

Which brings us to today. And no tree.

Then I made a big mistake. To fill the gap, I offered my design skills towards decorated dried branches with tinselled twigs. I reminded everyone, as silence fell about the room, that I have a piece of paper crediting me with some basic design skills. I will create a delightful and joy-filled design, I promise!

Squirrel, in an outrage, as if I had just announced I am leaving your father and shacking up with a Philippine lady boy on the beach, put on her hat and exited the house, slamming the door behind her. Shark went white and locked herself in the bedroom where I could hear soft weeping. Tiger took the attention-grabbing route by howling at the walls and wishing she were dead. Dig went out cursing for one last crawl of the day to see if four thousand dollars on Emergency Plan B looked a little more reasonable in the light of new information.

I think I would just like to say that my design skills are not that bad.

Say nothing, I might get away with it

It's all I could find at short notice, alright? Anyway, Santa's presents are sitting on the kitchen table in England. We'll meet up with them in April and we'll have Christmas then. Won't that be fun.

Primitive need

Oven.

I must have oven. I must evolve disaster. I must create Emergency Hong Kong Christmas Joy.

For that, there must be oven. What other thing can bake potatoes on Christmas day? I need oven.

But we have no oven. Nobody in Hong Kong knows ovens. What is the point of oven? Mr Chang's noodles need hot water, sesame oil, soy sauce and a wok.

But I need oven.

Option 1: Set the front room on fire. Balance potatoes on the burning flames of the upended sofa. Shout to landlord, No. This is not arson. This is cooking.

Option 2: Buy oven.


(Make slaves carry oven home. It is heavy.)

Ha! Satiated primeval urges!


Twenty four scones, one jam tart, one vegetable pie and civilisation is begun! Delirious with success! Find joyofbaking.com!

Dig says, Stop it now. There is no need to dance naked round the kitchen smeared in mud and goat blood and just put the ox bone down.

It brings us together and tears us apart

So. The consequence of a cancelled flight from Hong Kong to Heathrow is a strange out-of-body, other-worldly feeling.

A nagging voice in my head keeps reminding me that we shouldn't be here, where we are, surrounded by woolly hills, butterflies and jungly trees. But look, we are, because I can see my feet soaking in sunshine. I keep looking at my feet, definitely on the ground, my toes enjoying the warmth, and I tell myself that warm toes are a good thing. I can scribble out deep vein thrombosis on the to-do list for today.

But it was such a fixture in the diary, and has been for a long time. The return to England was written there forever, with promises to children, dinner dates with friends, meetings with families, and now they're all gone.

The children bit is hardest. I inscribed that date in my diary and affirmed Yes, there will be Christmas trees! And baubles made from shuttlecocks! Then I inked it in with my own mitochondrial DNA, such was my conviction that I could carry it through. Stupidly, blindly, ignoring those increasingly urgent pictures of England under white, I even diverted the Amazon sleigh to take a left turn over Buckinghamshire.

And now look, everything's gone in different directions. We're not there, we're here. The feet are wandering off down the family trail to Lo So Shing Beach, while the body's wandered off trying to find the head, which is somewhere lost, wondering where all the Christmas plans have gone.

Well now I've been forced to stop, and look hard, at your pictures of snow mountains, most of them it seems gathered on runways 1, 2, and 3.

I still don't blame it or hate it. Indeed, I am envious of your snow. Snow is one of those miracles. For every family it tears apart, it brings others close together. Locked out of the rooms where the heating doesn't work properly, or where the doors don't shut and the windows rattle like chattering teeth, we can all unite in the kitchen for comfort, and argue in a heap. But it's warm there, because Dig will have fixed the oven door back in its place, so we can cook spice biscuits and share out winter cakes. If we're brave enough, we can trek across the fields, and laugh at each other's noses turning scarlet.

And I know, really, lost from a flight home, I have nothing here, on the ground, to complain about. We have what we need. I'm not a refugee transiting an airport terminal wrapped in emergency silver foil. I haven't got my weeping granny in a wheelchair by my side, nor three toddlers staring uncomprehending because this year, Christmas made it only as far as Athens. If the snow loses us our time in England, we still have warm toes, night time beds, and we can mark the day when we decorate the sunshine with tinsel.

But isn't it true that we humans, we always want something different. But if we have it, then we want things back the same.

Stopped by snow

There are plenty of jobs I wouldn't like in this world. One is a call centre operator, receiving the 300-plus calls from passengers booked on the flight from Hong Kong to London. I bet all those passengers were hoping to reschedule their arrival in England before Christmas.

The other job I didn't like, not at all, was telling the gritlets that our flight was cancelled, and no, we won't be going tomorrow. Or the next day. Or the next. We might stagger through the door Christmas Eve, but part of me has now come to the gloomy conclusion that it would probably be better all round if we didn't.

Meanwhile, to cheer myself up, salvage something, find something positive, remember to say to Tiger, You might not have snow, but you have sunshine, here's a view from the roof.


And because it's denied me, I want to go back to England more than anything.

Cheer for the origami Christmas

Shark sits for many hours with origami. To me it's a peculiar hobby to enjoy, but hey, I tell myself it's not masterminding criminal enterprise, or dog fighting, or online gambling, or any other pointless and disagreeable activity she could fill her days with. Folding paper into strange shapes and declaring it a cricket seems as innocuous as you can get.

There's a simplicity about origami, too, isn't there? It doesn't need batteries, doesn't make noisy boom-boom-boom sounds and doesn't demand an entire month's salary to feed it. Yet you can still amuse yourself on long bus journeys, and without driving your neighbour into madness or despair. In fact, I'm now claiming that origami is social. Shark can twist your till receipt into a flying crane to amuse you, then she can provide you with a miniature lemur to slip into your pocket to take home.

Anyway, I bet she will drop origami one day, then I will feel nostalgic about it, so I'm holding on to the enjoyment of watching her now. In a few years some awful and adored teenager will sneer that it's a strange thing for a girl to spend time on, or claim is any accomplishment at all. Overnight the origami will vanish and I will be picking up yellow hair extensions from the floor, instead of the yellow folded paper some one tells me is called Derek the dinosaur.

Well, the origami kept Shark occupied today. She's obviously looking forward to the journey home for Christmas, because in anticipation she's sat several silent hours, recreating her own festive front room, complete with decorated tree, presents, mantelpiece, candles and three Santa socks. We all look at it in wonder, I declare it brilliant, and suggest she photographs it.


Yes, she's probably a better origamist than photographer. Or maybe she has the angle of that tree perfect because we never screw it in the bucket properly. And we do stick a floor mop in it, so that bit is true too.

But I remain quietly impressed by her lovely, unbowed nerdy streak. And the hours she can take so simply and gently, without rush or pressure to spoil her time.