Countdown to Christmas

Maths was my worst subject at school. No teacher could ever explain why I needed to learn about logs, anti-logs, slide rules, sine, cosine or tangent. Show me a knitting pattern and I panic, my brain gets dizzy. But a recipe….. now that’s something quite different and my mental maths is fine. When I woke in the early hours of this morning, worried sick (I’ll explain later) I’d got the title for today’s blog in my head and began to think about numbers, not how many sleeps till the big day, but numbers that really matter. Like the hundreds of children who’ve walked through my classroom door. The 63 ordinary Christmases I’ve enjoyed. The 46 years I’ve known my hubbie. The 17 years we’ve lived within sight and sound of the sea. The 9 herons that flew by, going under the Orwell bridge as we enjoyed lunch last week. The 5 people who might be round our table on Christmas day. The one son, far, far away unwell and awaiting a covid test result, hence my anxiety. The one daughter-in-law waiting anxiously at home. The one son working tirelessly to make other people’s functions go smoothly. The one daughter with a heart of gold and the one son-in-law who looks at her with eyes that melt. And the one man who has made all these things possible. It will be wonderful to look back when this one virus has gone, allowing us the return to the new normal. They’re all just numbers, but what numbers. What are your numbers ? Till next time, I wish you all a very happy and healthy Christmas.