We were given early Christmas presents last night by son, who has today left for India, where he will be for five months or so. Then this morning he said, oh I nearly forgot, and gave us each one of those round chocolate orange things, the dark one for me. I baked gingerbread biscuit shapes for his journey, but he only took a few as they wouldn't have allowed it through the check points. I was dithering about whether to go to the airport. Didn't in the end, muscles hurting, I said goodbye in the kitchen, he left with his dad. All grown up, the lovely boy, he was four years old our first Christmas here, we gave him a dark doll and he named it Reuben.
I am eating gingerbread stars, hearts, little men that look like the figures on exit signs, and wedges of chocolate orange. The cat howls and does not know why, but I do, and I tell her that he will be back in May.
All day it has been so dark. I went out and bought more candles.
26 comments:
Lovely tender post.
The season it really 'tis. Darkness, so we light candles and hope.
Ah my dear, a difficult parting but boys (and girls) must go and explore the world and he will be back for gingerbread and chocolate and Mother.
Light another candle.
X
That's a heck of a story: dark and light and gingerbread brown in between the two extremes...to be eaten.
I would rather not be the last comment here, closing down the commentary section...anyone? anyone?
Montag, M'lord Monday!, I usually reply to comments, but just didn't feel able to say anything else, still processing son's absence and otherwhereness.
But even when silent, I do appreciate the thoughts, the gestures, the words.
Well, and I have just noticed that you were the last commenter on previous post. But it was so elegant, it seemed right to leave it so.
I guess I'm not doing too well in my new persona, who does not bring commentary to a crashing end.
Next time, I'll be provocative.
Blast!
Last comment again!
Not so fast, Montabulous.
I have a long history of bringing these commentaries crashing to an end, making people squirm and back away with a startled revulsion as I just keep going on and on and on, never knowing when to stop. It's what I do. It's my thing. It's probably all I've got. You would try to muscle in on my unpopularity?
SIgns - fix this. (I felt there was nothing sensible I could say, incidentally, regarding your son - nothing that would make you feel any better, anyway - and so I opted for an inglorious stramash with Montague, instead. An echo of Mim's three words should suffice, however.)
Warm Decembery greetings to you and Mr Montag (who managed to make me laugh out loud - an actual LOL - with his interventions),
TPE
M'lords Montabulous and Stallion McTPE, I hereby challenge you both to a dual. No, hang on - I don't mean that I challenge you to dual with me, but with each other, to see who shall win the title of Last Commenter - He of the Final, Obliterating Word.
I am going to enjoy this.
And heaven knows I need the diversion, what with everything and all.
Signs, have you any idea the fate you call upon yourself and this, your house?
At least have the cunning to be strange, and do not appear to merrily invoke these consorts of the Furies: the two Ατρόπω, who cannot be turned from crashing convivial commentary-parties...usually drunk on their own words and eloquence! - so alike mercurial and of Mercutio's kindred!
Think! It is the Christmas season. Happy pilgrims will wend their way to your remote and happy homestead, spying out the light of your festive house, eager to see you all once more....
...only to be waylaid by the hounds, literate and loquacious, who haunt the moors around your baskerville-blog, and will waylay your friends with eyes like Ancient Mariners, and tales more ancient yet.
Your holiday guests will at last break away from this charm - at least, the fortunate ones will - and bang your door, and upon opening, you will not see cheery, red, and smiling friends, but pale and ashen visages: "Bar the door! Signs! Mr. Signs! Gord 'elp us! Bar the door, fer pity's sake!"
Or...more ominous yet...you shall have partied long within your Mead Halls, and hosts and guests be put to bed, and sleeping the sleep of the just, only to be affronted by the frightful commentary from the throat of Grendel and Grendel's Dam, who will chivvy you from your warm and cozy burrows bedecked with Christmas greens, and for sport will chase you up and down the tors with the wordy insights of their erudition.
Beware the war and clash of verbal phalanges, and the strategies of witty hegemons, born of hours at the masquerades of printed books, where dancers dressed in formal fonts of black do wend stately minuets across the white marble floors of the paginal salon!
Ah, Jesus, Mary, Jehovah and all the Saints, Montabulous, what have I unwittingly invoked? I always do seem to call up the Ατρόπω, or at any rate they find me. It's the artistic temperament, I suppose (TPE! Where can you have got to? A fine situation I have been landed with, and no mistake, please come and deal with the situation before I am pulverised entirely by Grendel's Dam, and Sir Montague is running riot here).
But look at it this way, Perfesser - you made His TPEness do an outright LOL. And believe me that has to be worth more than a heap of twisted gold.
Indeed. An outright and actual LOL – not merely three mirthless letters scrawled, unsmilingly, with something approaching dishonest desperation. No, I laughed, and very fine it was, too.
But look at the mess you’ve made of things, Signs. I was going to say exactly what Montag said, including the bit about the two Ατρόπω (no, please, you will allow me these gentle, harmless lies), although, thankfully, he has saved me the bother.
And he’s probably saved my poor, much-abused Reference Books from another angrily ignorant screaming session far, far into the night, as I tear at their pages whilst simultaneously trying to stop the remaining empty from falling clean out of my ears and head. This requires a particular athleticism and a keen appreciation of either a) surrealism b) falsehoods and/or c) sport, Signsy, so all is not lost. I may yet still turn my hand to Javelin-Throwing For Depressed Peddlers of Falsehoods. (Don’t mock, we already have Golf and Elton John.)
Elsewhere in this beautiful world, Montag appears to have suggested that we are perhaps being rather mock-heroic with all this talk of going to war on – or in – the gentle slopes of a Blogoslavian commentary section. I agree with that, of course – who wouldn’t? - except for his use of the word “mock”. It must be a question of perspective, I suppose. (I saw us in uniforms, Montag, we looked spectacular – we were marching, gallant, fearless, heroic, with nary a mock in sight). I lost all sense of perspective, though, when Picasso came out of his blue period and went doolally, so blame him for the fact that I thought we were really, truly, in actual factily going to war. His bad.
(It’s quite useful to blame Picasso for all manner of things, Signora. If your husband ever says “why are you looking at me with such a peculiar face, Blogger Wife Signs?” Well, the rest should come easy……)
But the thing is, we have tricked you. Yes we have. I think you’ll find, Signsini, that by responding at first to Montag and then to me you have left yourself exposed as the last person commenting on this thread. We lured you here, we exposed you as a war-thirsty hooligan, we only went and duped you into becoming the last least popular person standing. And so it is you, in fact, who brought all commentaries to a crashing end – you must learn to live with this shame - and brought these paper walls tumbling down. So ha and ha and (very probably) ha.
Wait.
(And oh no, but would paper walls “tumble”? Would they not simply fold? Or tear, perhaps? Or maybe just get a bit soggy in the rain? Hmm. I should have spent a bit more time on that. I was trying to end on a ceaselessly triumphant note - the big finish - and kind of tripped over my own hubris.)
(Damn.)
-
I bought a load of chocolate for Christmas last week then ate it at the weekend!!! Its good to eat Chocolate (and gingerbread men) isnt it!
I hope Son of Signs has a good time in India.
Kahless, it is a brilliant time to eat chocolate and gingerbread. And a brilliant time to visit house of Signs, for there is a devilish plot afoot here: basically, the last commenter on this thread is a mashed potato - TPE and Montag are slugging it out whilst at the same time trying to trick me into compromising myself. Plus the Ατρόπω have been alerted, so we're all in a spot of bother, you might say, which no doubt accounts for the appearance of Shrink.
Right, spotted you in the Lingerie department, so will zip across there.
(TPE? Watch it!)
Don’t listen to her, Kahless, she’s clearly as mad as an Arabian otter. Besides, Montag is far too civilised to be “slugging it out” with anyone about anything, and I’m far too weak.
Signs – hello. It looks like I’m coasting towards an epically pyrrhic victory.
Shrink – goodbye. I’ve learnt my lesson and know not to waste any precious words on you.
Everyone - goodnight. It's horribly, horribly late.
Did I win?
Hold that victory crown of myrtle in abeyance, Signs.
I have a sense of Ahab, roused once again to the pursuit: a new ship, a new crew, clear-headed and bright-eyed johnnies to be fed to the Leviathan.
For now, we are still in dry-dock, working on the weekly poem. But once finished, we shall lightly toss the cables which bind us here, and venture forth again, harpoons sharpened, prideful in our cannibal craft, hung and chased with the whitened bones of whales, driven by our fearful hunger to make commment...
Very clever, TPE. For either I don't answer you and sully my reputation, or I answer you (as I appear to be doing) and risk being the Mashed Potato. Now. If you are (as I believe you to be) a proper gentleman, you will come back and say something emphatically final so as to spare me this little indignity. And Montag, I've been thinking about this and reckon you should take more of a pride in being someone who closes down the comments section. Just think, if TPE were to come dashing back, a veritable knight on horseback, and then you looked in for a final coup de grace. Honi soit qui mal y pense.
Signs.....
I feel like Romeo to your Juliet, or Juliet to your Romeo, or whatever, and stand mute as good Friar Lawrence, surveying his situation.
A minute of time separated our comments, and instead of my swooping in and getting a breathing space in preparation for the final blow...or, failing responses, the final blow itself!...you have come in and taken the toxic dram of final commentary!
Montag is quite right, Signs, you appear to be left holding the toxic cup of commentary drams (or similar). Or you were, at any rate, until Montag left his latest comment and snatched it from your hands (careless of him, I’m sure – an elementary mistake).
I think you’re right, however, in that it is slightly unfair to ask questions in these exchanges. This sails close to becoming an abuse of a polite person’s good nature. I would certainly find it very hard (possibly unbearable) to simply ignore a guest who had come to my blog and asked me a question. So, no more questions. Does this seem fair?
Montag - Romeo, where art thou? For look how I am tricked, tricked, I tell you, by the disingenuous manoevrings of the McTeepster. But, look you, I am still alive to tell the tale and have not yet drained the toxic dram to the dregs. In fact my lips never touched it - or only slightly. I live dangerously, Montag, but I have this unswerving faith that all manner of things will be well. As long as I don't end up being the Mashed Potato.
TPE, I'm not going to answer that because it wasn't really a question, was it? Or it was a rhetorical one, but still here I am addressing it, so to speak, because how can a you end a comment thread with a question mark? I insist on a statement - followed by a full stop, is that too much to ask? (These are all, btw, rhetorical questions, but that doesn't let you off the hook). Look at it this way: this is the perfect opportunity to play god and have the final word on - well, everything. You would pass up an opportunity like this?
I need to think about this.
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