Making the long, bleak freefall into Christmas

Are we running up to Christmas yet? Are we hurtling towards that happy point when the chest freezer with wings tips me back into England? If we are, that means I have a to-do list as long as both my arms, extending from UK to HK.

Christmas is becoming a multi-dimensional unsolvable problem looming larger with every passing minute. Soon I will be lying in my Hong Kong bed at night wild eyed and staring rigid in terror at the imaginings of what is shortly to pass. It will be like The Pit and the Pendulum retold with tinsel, a plastic Christmas tree and a vat of cooking sherry.

I am anticipating the worst. By 3am, the outlook will look very bleak indeed.

For a start, we will arrive back into a freezing snow-bound Britain and be unable to reach home for days. I am convinced of this, thanks to the many news photos I have seen in HK of dead vehicles and abandoned motorists littering the highways.

When we finally arrive home, having eaten nothing for days but snow and sparrows, we will discover our neighbour changed the locks to the shared front doors. On smashing our way in, we will discover the court summons. Along with the bust water pipe and non-functioning heating.

This is the one bright star in my anticipations of potential disaster. I am sure an engineer will be delighted to call and maintain our boiler, given there is less than 48 hours to go before the total closure of Britain.

But I will already be occupied. Within the first hour of arrival, Tiger will bundle me in the attic and demand that I emerge with last year's plastic Christmas tree that she can tastefully decorate with shuttlecocks and toilet rolls in the fine tradition of family fun. I will have not slept for 36 hours. On being thrust into the darkened eaves I will promptly curl up and fall asleep. If I am lucky, everyone will forget about me and leave me there. If I am unlucky, I will be dragged out amid demands for more tinsel and more toilet rolls. This will take place at 2am UK time because that is 10am HK, and a perfect time to start a craft activity before lunch.

Of course the time difference will work to my advantage. By 4am UK, I will be hitting Tesco to stock up on baking potatoes. Once I am inside an actual supermarket, I am almost certain to be overwhelmed at the availability of a packet of Dorset cereal at under the cost of a fiver and begin to softly cry. I can only hope the security staff will comfort me.

When the actual festivity of Christmas day is over - the cold day to come with no presents, no heating, and a bent tree festooned in toilet paper - I will be faced with the problem of stealing/hiring a working vehicle. Of course I have not overlooked the fact that the present non-working gritmobile (no tax, no MOT) is at the bottom of the garden locked in an ice sheet.

With time running out before a return to HK, I have then to fit in the drive east looking for the other family member in a village in the middle of nowhere. (Actually, I am looking forward to that bit.)

I haven't even raised the problems of the slight hurdle of arriving back in Britain dressed in flip flops and a pink cotton frock, the complete absence of presents for three eager people, and the worry I am already facing in trying to wrestle Tiger back on the plane for HK just as she has settled comfortably into her familiar homely surroundings.

While I contemplate all of this, grit's day might become a place to store more blurred photos, random jottings, and disconnected thoughts.

Like we have lost a library book which has sent HK central library into a tail spin, and I boiled a gecko alive in the kettle. By accident.

Apologies if you come here for anything.