Alternative Christmas Cards

Playing catch up 

 

A chance glance during a chance 'pop in' to a shop I never really frequent, and a box of 100 postcards of the front cover of The New Yorker from over ten decades, spoke to me. Alternative Christmas cards for all the ones not sent this year. Today there is time and space to compose 'meaningful' messages to close and cherished friends. Thus a lovely two hours of tea drinking and writing alternative Christmas cards has ensued matching wonderful front cover images with specific friends. Such joy.

 

It has also been an alternative christmas. Christmas morning, after an early phonecall and dash to see if an ambulance was needed (not was the decision), did allow for some reflective writing, a bracing walk, and creative thinking for future 'work' options. Christmas lunch plans were hastily reimagined. Later that night/early morning the ambulance needed and 9 hours in Resus followed. Thankfully, for now, slow recovery appears to be the trajectory, but it was touch and go and it could still be touch and go. 

 

Perhaps because the incredible intensity of this year has been less over the last few weeks, and for a week there has been no student work to think about, I sit writing in the early hours of the morning, sensing the onset of a cold. Reading and viva prep is the only thing on the agenda other than hospital visits. The reading and viva prep I can do - the hospital visits will have to be put on hold as visiting a respiratory ward with a cold (even with a mask), would be foolish. 

 

The physical body as decision maker - taking away the option for cogntive/emotional decision-making.