"There's nothing wrong with the one we've got"

I am not an extravagant woman - no, really, I'm not. I was brought up in a household whose habits had been shaped by rationing and hard times and I simply wouldn't understand a way of life that didn't involve saving bits of string or picking up the postman's red rubber bands from the pavement (we have a drawer full of them. They'll come in handy one day). For goodness' sake, even my best new raincoat was got from the charity shop. Glorious though it is, I wouldn't have paid for it new.

But even I want new things sometimes. Take our fridge (I wish you would take our fridge). I hate it with a passion that is entirely disporportionate. We've had it for twenty years, and on the day it was delivered - when it finally was delivered, late at night, after many many phonecalls and a huge amount of vituperation, Husband asked me as they were lugging it up the drive if I was fed up enough that I wanted to tell them to take it away again, we didn't want it any more. I said no, now it was finally here we'd stick with it - and I've regretted that decision ever since. (Mind you, I've never been back into the shop that sold it to us and I never will).

It is half fridge and half freezer, neither half being very large. It was the first freezer we ever had, and as we outgrew it, we bought another freezer in addition and it works very well, having the little one in the kitchen and the big one in the shed. But we are still stuck with the little fridge. There were only two of us when we bought it - now there are four and I can't fit into it the things that need to go in. I want a new one and a bigger one.

After twenty years of hard knocks, it isn't in the best shape - bits of trim are missing, one of the salad drawers is broken, and the handle regularly falls off, plus if you push the butter to the back it freezes solid to the back wall. But it does still work. So what does Husband say when I make the case for a new fridge? "There's nothing wrong with the one we've got."

Sages and poets say that the saddest phrase in the language is, "If only". Sages and poets don't have Husbands and knackered (but alas still functioning) fridges.

Going home

There is something about going to Tunbridge Wells that always feels like going home. Come out of the station and there it all is, in the same place it always was, Mount Pleasant and the High Street and Grove Road and - OK, it's another store now where it used to be Weekes, and there's a pizza place where the Cadena should be - but it is still home. I haven't lived there for forty years, not full time - there were a lot of years when I went home to visit or stay with parents, but even that is long ago now and I've lived in my present house longer than ever I lived in Tunbridge Wells. But it is still familiar, I know what people are going to say (and what they mean when they do, which isn't always the same thing, especially in Tunbridge Wells) and there is a great sense of relief and relaxation in being back.

Lots of people feel like that about the towns where they were born, it isn't unusual.

But what I am starting to feel is beginning to worry me, because it isn't just the place I was brought up that feels familiar, but the time. I am starting to look at bits of old film, old newsreels, archive film in documentaries on the television, and I am thinking, yes, that looks like where I'd feel comfortable. Men in hats, and those long raincoats with belts (long before trench coats), and women with wide skirts and duster coats. That looks like where I would feel comfortable and at home.

Now, I hated Tunbridge Wells when I was growing up there, it was dull and boring and suburban and bourgeois and I couldn't wait to get away to that other place somewhere else where all the clever and funny people were. Not only do I want to go back to that place again now, but to the time that it was when I lived there. I don't want to be the person I was then, I don't want to be seventeen again, but oh, wouldn't it be nice just to go home, really home, to home like it used to be?

Now, that was embarrassing

A few weeks ago, walking home from work in the dark, a hunched teenage figure came up the road towards me, hoodie up, and made no attempt to avoid me, coming straight for me - and I thought, ho hum, I'm going to be challenged, or maybe even mugged... Turned out it was Son. Well, they all look the same at that age, don't they?

Needless to say, he thought this hugely funny.

One night last week, the same thing happened. Same teenage figure, same hoodie, same dark road. I wasn't going to be fooled a second time, so I went right up to him and glared at him.

Only it wasn't Son. Just some frightened kid who thought he was about to be mugged by a mad granny.

Frustration

Why does the washing machine always hit its spin cycle at 10 past 11 on a Sunday morning, so I miss the climax of The Archers?

Lies and deceit, deceit and lies

It strikes me every year and, every year as I get more cynical, it strikes me with increasing force, that Christmas, this great time of faith, hope and love, is based on deceit.

There is the great deceit that we perpetrate upon our children, that a kindly old man with a red coat will come into their bedrooms when they are asleep and give them something wonderful to remember. I mean, weird or what? I recall being terrified of that old man and my parents having to reasssure me that he wasn't real at all, just a big fat lie.

And there are all the little "white" lies of the social occasions.

"Oh, it's lovely, you shouldn't have!" (It's horrible and I wish you hadn't)

"They're delicious, they really are, but I honestly couldn't manage another thing" (I wouldn't put another of those greasy things in my mouth if you paid me in ingots of solid gold)

"We'd love to pop round but I'm afraid we can't" (Thank heavens)

I don't think I lie as much all year as I lie at Christmas, one way or another. What a lovely family time it is.

Tins

I was in Morrisons yesterday and saw - tins of fried onions.

Who on earth, if they wanted fried onions, wouldn't fry an onion but would open a tin instead?

And what normal person would think of putting fried onions into tins in the first place?

Socks, and, Trollope

Just to reassure all you eager readers - yes, I am still alive. Cold, grumpy, but not quite dead yet. Miserable in the cold weather, can't get warm, wearing vests, socks over tights inside boots, scarf indoors. Eating too many biscuits for comfort and putting on weight. Last winter's best trousers are too tight to wear. Found a lovely pair in John Lewis yesterday, warm and lined and nice, and £125 marked down to £50. Tried them on and Husband said they made me look fat. No, they didn't make me look fat, I am fat. Didn't buy them. Hate Husband. Hate myself.

Borrowed Trollope from the library tonight, the first of the six Barsetshire novels. Reading Trollope is for old people, it's about the last thing you do before you die.

And it isn't even the shortest day yet.