39 Weeks (37 page)

Rob and I
didn’t manage to get round to having the
quiet night in
we’d planned,
as we spent Saturday afternoon taking Harry and Flora to see Father Christmas in his grotto in town, and had to queue for nearly two hours for the
privilege
, while Ma
rsha did some
all important last of her Christmas
shopping without the beady eyes of her two small children watching her.
We might have had to queue
for even longer but one of the elves
, assuming that we were the parents and spotting my pregnant state, pulled some strings and arranged for us to do a bit of queue jumping.

I was frankly
somewhat disappointed
at the state of Santa when we finally got to see him
, I mean he was not the kindly old fat gentleman I’d been expecting, he was more of a gangly teenager with a lot of padding, the false beard I’d expected
of course but you’d have thought that at the very least the bear
d would have been stuck on
and not moving about so very obviously disconnected to his chin, and I certainly wasn’t expecting Santa t
o have pimples.
I m
ean they’d charged a hefty five pounds
per child
for the
opportunity to sit next to him, apparently sitting on his knee was no longer an option now in today’s phobic society, what was the world coming to when you had to protect your child from Santa? So you’d have thought they
could have chosen someone a bit older, someone who vaguely resembled the real thing, well not the real thing but you know what I mean. But he did a lot of Ho Ho Ho-ing
and tried hard to be convincing. H
e completely fooled Flora who was
enraptured by the whole thing and
was so excited
when he gave her a gift
she was
almost sick, but Harry
was not so easily fooled. He didn’t actually say why has Santa got a cushion stuffed down his trousers or why does his beard keep flapping about, but you could tell he had his doubts that this was the genuine article.

Then Saturd
ay night we helped Harry
and Flora help Marsha decorate their tree, and ended up staying for dinner.
I wondered if I should get a tree of my own, seemed a bit silly as there was only me, but that’s the thing it wasn’t just me anymore, it was me and Ella, although she wasn’t here yet to see if I had a tree or not, still though, it felt ri
ght somehow, like the start of my own
family tradition or something.
How bizarre to think I was starting my own family, and that I’d be visiting Santa and decorating a Christmas tree every year
for the next few years to come, with my own daughter.

So on Sunday morning I did a bit of Christmas shopping of my own
and bought a small three foot plastic tree
and a lot of baubles and tinsel. And then spent the rest of Sunday
arranging it all. Rob came upstairs Sunday evening and admired my efforts but he couldn’t stay long as he had an early start in the morning, he was going back to Newcastle to re-shoot something and was going to try and get it over with as soon as
,
so he could get back the same day and wouldn’t have to stay overnight.

It was
getting
close to Christmas and
as of last weekend
I
still
hadn’t done any C
hristmas shopping
, well except for the tree of course, but the shops in town were all open until nine every night in the run up to the big day, so
I stopped off a couple of
nights
on my way home from work
to try and catch up
. I’d got Mum another bottle of her favourite perfume, boring I know but it’s what she expected
and liked to receive from me, the one year I’d deviated from that particular tradition she was decidedly disappointed, so nowadays I just went straight to the perfume counter and didn’t even bother looking at anything else.
 

I’d got Dad the CD he’d been dropping some very unsubtle hints about recently, and Shelley and Nick a set of place mats that was part Christmas present and part a house warming present. I’d found a bath set in Boot’s professing to be the ultimate relaxing experience for Marsha, and a DVD of children’s
favourite episodes of TV programmes I’d never heard of
for Harry
and Flora
,
that I thought might keep them quiet while Marsha did her relaxing thing. I’d bought a few of the inevitable boxes of chocs, and a couple of bottles of your bog standard smelly bath stuff, for the uncles, aunties and cousins I never saw anymore, but who still expected a present. I’d even bought my secret Santa gift for work, this year I’d got Jack, and had got him a superman tee shirt I saw on sale
that I thought he’d like as he’d just s
tarted going to the gym and was
recently anyway
driving us all mad
by
telling us how fit he was, and how all this working out he was doing was really beginning to pay off muscle wise.
   

The only present I hadn’t got was
the
one for Rob. I couldn’t make up my mind what to get him. It had to be something nice, obviously, but on the other hand it couldn’t be too nice, or too expensive, I mean what would that say? It’d say I’m
to
tally in love with you and hope
this is going to last forever and ever, that’s what it would say. And although
that wasn’t far from the truth it was the last thing I actually wanted to say, well not unless he said it first . . and he hadn’t . . so I couldn’t
. .
not even in the guise of a Christmas present. Course I didn’t know what he was going to get me. Maybe he’d get me something that said ‘I’m serious’ and then I’d feel bad that I hadn’t got him something equally ‘serious’.
But maybe he’d only get me a friend
ly
type p
ressy that said ‘ok you’re my girlfriend this year, so here’s your present’
.
God this was a minefield.

In the end I got him a jumper, a real jumper
and not a hoody zip up. It cost me a small fortune, well not that small actually, but it was really nice. I had to second guess h
is size but was fairly sure
I’d got it right after wearing his borrowed ‘jumper’ that afternoon at the Willow Tree. And I was reasonably
confident
that it hit the right note in terms of ‘serious’ or not, I mean it was a real nice present, not too personal, not too expensive, not something you could keep forever like jewellery, just nice
like ‘yeah I like you a lot’
and that’s all it said . . I hoped.
 

23
rd
December – Week 29 +
5
Days

It was the last day at work before the Christmas break. Of course no one was working and hadn’t been working all day, it was enough that we’d all turned up. The Steadman brothers had only put in a brief appearance this morning before disappearing at about eleven o’clock, and the rest of us all confidently expected to be let out at around one
as
was customary
on the last day before Christmas.
I say ‘let out’ because that’s exactly what it felt like, somewhere between being let out of school
at the end of term,
and making a
mass
prison break
out.

It had been a busy morning, what with listening to David Steadman’s little speech before he did the off
,
along the lines of how hard we’d all been working this year, and how it hadn’t gone un-noticed, and next year he confidently expected the sales figures and general growth of the company to be even better, and he hoped we’d all have a nice Christmas. Then Norman had his say about half an hour later which was almost a word for word reiteration of his brothers little homily. Then after they’d both left the building
and we had the all clear from Clare,
everyone could officially get on with the
serious
business of skiving, as opposed to the unofficial skiving we were all doing
anyway
under the gu
ise of pretending to be working
as if it were
a normal day.

There was a formal presentation for George of his gardening vouchers, and Grahame said his set piece when anyone was leaving that we’d all heard a million times before, course he
tailored it a bit to suit George
, and
waffl
ed
on
for a while longer than usual
given that
George had worked at Fishers for so many years and was retiring rather than leaving to work somewhere else, and we all clapped half heartedly, except for Doreen who was practically standing on her desk whooping for joy and had to be physically restrained by Jack. George didn’t say much, after years of making everyone’s life a misery if he could possibly manage it, today on his last day he looked almost
contrite and sorry to be
leaving. But it was too little and way
too late, especially for Doreen.

Then we did our annual secret Santa ritual of handing out all the gifts. Obviously pretty much everyone had already worked out who was buying for who
, so it really wasn’t
that
much of
a
secret
.
Jack seemed to like his Superman tee shirt putting it on over
the top of
his shirt and tie
and posing hands on hips like the man of steel, but Christopher Reeves he wasn’t, not even close.
My not so secret Santa present from Jackie was
a ‘Baby’s First Year’ book to record
every minute detail
of the baby’s life from first burp to first step
. T
hat would make a total of four of these things I had now. One from Mum, one from Dad, and one in the post from Aunty Phyllis that I hadn’t seen since my thirteenth birthday.
If I used them all I could see I was going to be pretty busy, never mind the actual looking after Ella I’d have to do when she arrived, just filling in all these ‘First Year’ records was going to take up most of my time. But it was a nice thought of Jackie’s and of course I played along saying how much I liked it.

We spent the last half an hour chit chatting with each other about what we would be getting up to over the break, most of us ha
d booked a few holiday days so w
ould be off for a whole week, while what we were actually doing was watching the clock and waiting for it to be one o’clock so we could all leave.
George had opted for the meet him in the pub for a last drink
get-together
option, rather than having any sort of a formal do, so a few of us felt obliged to drop in at least
,
at the pub
on the corner
, even if we had no intention of staying for any meaningful length of time. And I couldn’t stay even if I’d wanted to as I’d already promised Shelley, Tricia, and a few of our gang that I’d meet them all at about two
in Chic
ago’s.
After a hastily consumed shandy, a hug from Doreen and another from Jack, and a polite best wishes for the future to George, I made my escape and drove to the other side of town to meet the girls, who as predicted
had
also finished work early.

This last minute pre-Christmas get together was so
mething of a tradition for us
. Back in the day we would all meet on Christmas Eve for what we hoped and expected would be a legendary ripper of a night out, before having to be
our more subdued selves with our families for the following couple of days. But in more recent years, what with wanting to spend Christmas Eve with whatever boyfriends of the time any of us might have, and
for some of us anyway having to travel
nowadays
to be with our families over Christmas, the Christmas Eve ripper night out had transmogrified into an after the last day at work
afternoon
drink.
 

Shelley and Tall Fran were already there when I arrived, and Chicago’s was so packed th
at there was nowhere to sit, so I almost didn’t
find them
at first
.
They were both full of Christmas spirit, literally as well as emotionally, and tall Fran immediately went to the bar on my arrival for another round including a non-alcoholic
glass of white for me. I asked Shelley if everyone knew about Tricia and Daniel, I didn’t want to put my foot in it if Trish wasn’t telling anyone yet.

‘Oh yes everyone knows.’ Shelley said
acerbically.

‘Why d’you say it like that?

‘Because even if she hadn’t phoned everyone last week I think they’d guess something was up today.’

‘Today? Why what’s happened?’