The calm between festive storms

Press, 28 December 1987, Page 5

The calm between festive storms

Wilsons Week...

Imagine that a hurricane has just passed you by, and that a tropical cyclone is imminent. That accurately describes this week between Christmas and New Year. Four days to recover from one over-indul-gence and prepare for the next. A time when working clothes and diets are put in the cupboard. But any thought of rest and recreation is blown out with the windows at 6 a.m. on Christmas Day when a herd of stampeding elephants dances on your bed. The smallest elephant has taken the vacuum cleaner tube and is using it to trumpet his elephant impressions. “Look what Santa brought us!” the pair bellow in each ear, ever mindful that daddy is a stereo fan. Mummy and daddy are pretending that this is just a dream; that they will wake up at a decent hour and find the children happily reading in their room. "Wake up!” bellow the tiny duo, prodding us with the vacuum cleaner tube. Daddy does not like being poked with a stick. It encourages him to do his caged-lion impression.

“Look what Santa brought us,” they repeat. “Look what Santa brought you,” the parents mutter from beneath the covers. “How can you? You haven’t seen them yet,” the children reply. Any further parental explanations will destroy a time-honoured myth. Two sets of baleful eyes emerge from the sheets. This is not our bedroom. Our bedroom was tidy. This bedroom has every sheet of Christmas wrapping paper ever made distributed over the floor, the bed, the cat. Toys are balancing on daddy’s head and when he reaches for his glasses he makes contact with a well chewed but ultimately uneaten toffee. After that, things go downhill all the way. Daddy now wishes he had not had those wines last evening. If African drums stopped beating in his head he would feel a whole lot happier. The house throughout this and succeeding days resembles a toymaker’s asylum. Radio-controlled cars zip in and out under the chairs, G.I. Joe figures are found asleep in the freezer and shredded crayons must

be extracted from the salad. Food is the great consoltation. Ham, chicken, chocolates, pavlova — all washed down with an assortment of ales. The marketers of diet foods love Christmas, it generates so much business for them. This is the week friends and neighbours drop in for a chat and a drink and more pavlova. And so you divide your time equally between tidying the house for visitors and tidying after the visitors have departed. The work is exhausting because you must give the impression that you always maintain a show home. Oh gosh! Visitors. Hello, folks. Sorry the house is so untidy. They regard a home in perfect order and leave with a special respect for your immaculate house-

keeping. Their key is hardly in the car ignition before the vacuum cleaner is out, and the table linen, the ashtrays and, inadvertently, the cat, are bundled into the washing machine. The children eventually announce they are bored. A week into the holidays, with every toy in toyland clustered in their bedroom, and they’re bored. Here, kids. A paintbrush each, a can of paint. First one to finish the house gets an ice block. On your marks, go! There, that should buy us a week’s peace. But an hour later they are back. The bottom metre of the house has been painted, and let’s not talk about what they then did to the car. The little one has decided to use his watercolours because they have more colours than the boring old white that daddy recommended. The south wall of the house has become a rainbow. Weeks such as this can be exhausting. Just when your batteries have reached their lowest point, just when all you crave is rest and peace and quiet, the calender declares it is New Year’s Eve.

The front door is kicked open by firstfooters waving flagons of temptation and crying, “Party! Party!”

There is no escape. Just surrender. You can relax as soon as you get back to work. DAVE WILSON