Lon­don fog

Yes, tru­ly! It’s my favorite sort of weath­er emer­gency: lots of cov­er­age on the news, but nobody gets hurt. At least, it can last until Sat­ur­day when our friends from New York get ready to fly here for Christ­mas. The fog is sim­ply blan­ket­ing the coun­try, even Lon­don itself, in a misty, sort of frozen fluff. All the air­ports are closed, which is of course mas­sive­ly incon­ve­nient for every­one. But if one does not need to fly, it is very cozy out­side. John and Avery just came in from Christ­mas shop­ping and I am not allowed to go in the liv­ing room. But the smell from the tree is drift­ing into my study. It’s amaz­ing how much more you appre­ci­ate a Christ­mas tree if you have strug­gled to put one up, then strug­gled even more to get it down and out of your house, and then put up anoth­er one. Now I plan just to sit back and enjoy its glit­tery, fra­grant mag­ic. Don’t you love the lit­tle horsey rid­ing jack­et orna­ment? It just came yes­ter­day, in the post all the way from Indi­ana. Thank you, Non­na and Grand­pa Paul.

The guys who came to deliv­er it yes­ter­day were such cen­tral-cast­ing Lon­don­ers. The head hon­cho assured us, “You need a pic­ture hung, or a new tap put in? We can do that for you, no wor­ries. You pay us by the hour, we do what­ev­er you need doing. You’re nice peo­ple, I can see that. Give me that saw, I’ll take the end off that tree for you.” At one point he some­what sur­pris­ing­ly lift­ed up his sweat­shirt to dis­play a large tat­too of a cross. “I’m a real good Catholic, so Christ­mas is big for me.”

I’m catch­ing up on friends’ Christ­mas adven­tures by blog, and stalk­ing oys­ters, for Christ­mas Eve oys­ter stew (I think I’ve tracked them down at the Par­tridges Farmer’s Mar­ket on Sat­ur­day), and putting tips in Christ­mas cards for our porter and clean­ing lady, and lis­ten­ing to Avery while she wraps presents. It feels like the calm before the storm: will we be able to pull off a suit­ably fes­tive Christ­mas for our Jew­ish vis­i­tors, for whom this could be the first and last Christ­mas? Although my friend Alyssa warns me that if Elliot has too much fun, we could have him on our doorstep every Decem­ber 25th for the next 75 years. That sounds just about right.

Tonight we’re head­ed to the Bar­bi­can (don’t wor­ry, I’ll have John with me so I won’t get lost again) to hear the the Choir of St. George’s, Wind­sor, sing Christ­mas car­ols. I can hard­ly wait. I real­ize at the vio­lin con­cert with Rose­mary how much I love hear­ing live music, espe­cial­ly Christ­mas music, so it should be good fun.