So let’s not beat about the bush. Christmas is a miserable time. So much pressure to have a good time, to buy the right presents, to spend lots of money, to make sure that everyone is well fed, etc. There’s so much emphasis on Christmas that I believe that this somehow increases the statistical chances of something going wrong. In our case, not only are we running a busy shop, but my mother got taken ill on Christmas Eve. Thinking it was just a cold, she got an emergency appointment at the village health centre and go prescribed steroids and antibiotics. The pills failed to work and she took to her bed, missing out on the Christmas dinner I had cooked for her on the big day.
There was no improvement Boxing Day and so on 27th we called for the doctor again, who visited the house and said: “You are going to hospital”. And so an ambulance arrived a couple of hours later and mother was taken away, delirious and gasping for oxygen. A couple of hours later I received a call from the hospital asking for the next of kin. I’d been this place before and so I naturally thought that her time had come and emotionally prepared myself for the worst.
Thankfully, she wasn’t dead but hooked up to a ventilator and heavily sedated. The nurses couldn’t (or wouldn’t) comment on her condition and so it was a stressful 24 hours. Days later, she has pulled through and is well enough to come out of the Critical Care Unit and be put on a regular ward. Meanwhile, we were a worker down in the shop and so myself and The Missus had to make up for my missing mother, who is frankly the key to the operation, as she gives us breathing space to do things like look after baby Verity, go to the bank and other business related stuff.
So we opened Boxing Day and New Year’s Day and we did it. Myself and The Missus pulled it off on our own (with some help, of course, from our regular morning worker). So I sit here slightly frazzled thinking that a whole new year extends before me and that this time next year I will be even more exhausted. So be it. That’s the forfeit of an honest day’s work.

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