Well it’s all over now and we’ve all arrived safely in 2011. I for one ended up arriving in the New Year unexpectedly, wasn’t me bloody watch 10 minutes slow; I was even too late to see the fireworks goin’ off on the telly. I know what you’re thinkin’, how come I wasn’t below in Pa’s letting me hair down and helping meself to all them free New Year kisses and hugs from the women like all the other bachelors. I decided to give it a miss this year. Arrah sure it’s the same aul thing year after year, you get fed up of lookin’ at the same aul faces year in, year out, it’s nice to have a few different faces to look at, at Christmas.
The Henry sisters never made it home because of the weather so we didn’t even have them to look at. I heard Pa had a small crowd anyway, sure with no one but Mossy Hayes blowin’ the bejaysus out of a saxophone what could he expect. In fairness it wasn’t Pa’s fault, he booked the Henry sisters last September and there was great anticipation this year with Pa telling us there a fortnight before Christmas that there was going to be something of the burlesque about their performance this year. Alas it wasn’t to be. Maybe Fr Fiachra got wind of it and put a curse on it. If he did someone else must have put a curse on him because his Christmas sermon was woeful, as dry, boring, and uninspiring as them jokes you find in the Christmas crackers. Sure maybe he got it in some special issue papal Christmas cracker. There wasn’t that many at Mass either, even those who used to make an annual effort were nowhere to be seen on Christmas Day.
Anyway we got a sickenin’ from the feckin’ snow and the only visitor home from England here in the village was Martin Smart and sure we all did our best to ignore him and his sports car, the big show off.
Th’aul telly wasn’t up to much either - nothin’ but feckin repeats on it over the Christmas, and if that wasn’t bad enough there wasn’t a wren boy or a wren girl in sight on Stephens’s Day, I thought we’d be plagued with them this year with the state of the economy, but divil a wan. For the first time in years Christmas was a bit of a non-event for a lot of us here in the village except for the snow which was about the only thing that made it feel Christmassy. Sure it was grand for a day or two, I went over and helped young Maloney build a snowman across the road and then I thrashed him in a snowball fight. As usual there was a great outbreak of community spirit with the snow, you know the craic: people talking to one another even though they haven’t spoken to one another in years. The feeling of having a common enemy is often all it takes to get people pullin’ together.
Anyway the good thing about the lack of distractions this Christmas was that we got a great chance to chill out and avoid a lot of that usual aul mad rushin’ about the place, drinkin’ too much and eatin’ too much that passes for an essential part of Christmas.
So there you have it, a quiet Christmas, but optimism is high here in the village that 2011 is going to be a great year. A happy New Year to you all.
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