‘Yes, thank you, I think I will,’ says the young man who hands me the badminton set, but carries Christmas in the way that people do after a year which could only have been a little bit worse.
Unlike the woman who hands me two balls of wool and pair of needles (size 5) – in a bag which breaks before it is in my hand – who says ‘well, have a happy christmas if you can‘ in such a practised way that neither the woman next to me – nor I – know what to say or where to look, but wish each other Merry Christmas on the way out, and again when our eyes meet over the bookshop shelves.
That sounds devastatingly sad.
Christmas – another tragedy of middle class proportions (to paraphrase a favourite blogger of mine).