I can’t be in two places at once. Nor can anybody else. Even at Christmas. It is for this reason that in the early years of this century I started buying identical pairs of decorations, one for the tree at my father’s house and one for the tree at my mother’s.
As I and my brothers have acquired partners, who also have families and trees, the number of different places where we all could be has necessarily multiplied. So, therefore, has the number of decorations. This year there are six little pigs, one for our tree and the rest for other people’s. Just because I liked the little pigs.
This year I’ve seen more of my extended family than I’d expected, though not as much as I’d have liked. There has been some lovely news in one part of the family and some awful news in another part. A little china pig isn’t much, to say, ‘thinking of you, missing you, lots of love, maybe I’ll be with you next Christmas’. But it’s something.
Kathleen Jowitt 