The Hare and Tortoise prepare lists

Herself is running mad about the room.

"Where's my Christmas list?"

"You mean, of all the presents you're going to get me?" I ask, innocently.

"No..... Of all the jobs that need doing before Christmas."

I find the list, which is something like three pages long. Lists are things that run other people's lives. I'm not a fan of them. My mother, for example, used to leave them everywhere for herself to look up later and wonder where they came from.

Make breakfast.

Something for dinner.

Then in her later life, she would leave them for me. And notes. I found one in a fold of an old armchair one day a couple of years back. It reads: "Fried stuff for Dad in the morning."

It was reminding me to make the breakfast I made every single sorrowful day, in case I forgot.

Bugger lists.

So, my Christmas list, faulty and all as it is, is inside my head. It consists of two major instructions:

"1. Buy presents (If you want to).

"2. Don't worry (If you want to)."

I'm getting there.

We're all getting there.

Merry Christmas, if I haven't wished it for you already. And even if I did.