Ghosts of Christmas past

Gianni is allergic to Christmas poinsettias so has an excuse- but is anyone else suffering from a touch of seasonal poignancy and melancholy?

The villa is cold. I have attempted to stem the draught from the window in my study by stuffing the tassle from a curtain tie back into the hole. It’s an old villa so the windows are single paned and over enthusiastic strimming led to one of them being punctured by a stone years ago. We have never got around to mending it. The heating is on - you can tell by the constant wooo in the background, but the cast iron radiators are stone cold. It’s too early in the day to light logs and candles and cuddle under blankets watching back episodes of Clarkson’s farm. I started eating Pandora- the enormous light cake that epitomises the approach of the Christmas in Italy - a week ago. We put up the tree a few days back, covered it with lights whilst Nat and Dean crooned and celebrated with a bottle of Bailey’s over ice.

Yesterday, we went for a coffee at our favourite bar in Quiesa. Afterwards we went to admire the precipe or nativity scene which is a feature of every Italy town. The usual suspects were present with Mary and Joseph kneeling whilst staring into an empty cradle. The cradle bedding was a body shaped dimple- one for the head, one for the body. The baby Jesus will of course arrive on Christmas Eve.

Suddenly it hit me rather hard that this year it would just be me and Gianni for Christmas without the fam. Of course we have to share our grown up children with their other families. Of course it is better they all go the same year so we can have them althogether, hopefully, the next. But that doesn’t stop the heart ache and the wish that the fam was in a single village rather than scattered around the globe and that we could all share them for these Kodak moments.

Right now, upstairs in the villa, my daughter’s rooms is warm and smells of shampoo and soap. Her duvet is a tangle, head prints on the pillows, cotton filigree knickers strewn on the floor along with towels and piles of clothes sorted into piles - washing or going. They leave tomorrow.

The boys rooms have already been turned. They are anonymous again- clean and ready for summer guests; this is, after all, a working property, home to holiday makers in the season, ours the rest of the year. If the boys rooms smell of anything it is drying wool from a leak that dripped from the tiles onto the woollen rugs during a November storm. They will be full soon again, old friends arrive tonight to break the quiet.

Outside the hills here in Tuscany are shrouded in mist, tiny droplets of water soaking the air. The way the light catches water on the tiles makes them look white, almost as if there is the lightest dusting of snow. Ghosts could easily hide in the obscurity and blur of these heavy mists.

Ghosts from Christmases past flood my mind.

My dad, God rest his soul, playing carols around the piano, while mum rescues exploding mince pies and sausage rolls from the oven, icing home made fruit cakes that I will pick the marzipan off.

The teenage years of school discos and awkward kisses stolen under tiny mistletoe sprigs.

The professional years of expensive presents elegantly wrapped and a perpetual smoked-salmon thirst to be quenched by champagne.

Motherhood and new childhoods in the circle of life. Christmas and Midsommer, our gentle Emden Geese standing in the snow with fluffed up bantam hens. Merlin the Newfoundland dog helping the little ones build snow men. Cranberries threaded onto wire to make hearts hung from doors. Pulling the sofa cushions on the floor to make a giant bed in front of the fire. Unpeeling sleeping babes from my arms and sneaking in to Father Christmas costume lest they stir and peep, to deliver stuffed stockings. Scoffing the whole of the mince pie before Merlin eats it, taking a bite from the carrot, leaving icing sugar footprints behind.

The cradle is empty this year. But maybe Gianna and I will find some snow in the hills and who knows? Maybe next year the cradle will fill with the first of our grandchildren and the circle of life and magic begin all over again.