How many sleeps until Christmas?

It's a well known fact that I get very overexcited about Christmas and in particular the run up to Christmas.   David resigns himself to his annual trip to B&Q on the 1st December, where he reluctantly adopts the role of Chief Christmas Tree Holder-Upper, while I ummm and ahhhhh over selecting the perfect tree.  Last year, I made the mistake of handing the decision making process over to David and we ended up with a tree so large we struggled to cram ourselves into his Landrover with it.  Decorating it also proved a challenge as we only had enough baubles and fairy lights for our usual sensibly selected 5 foot tree as opposed to this spindly 8 foot monstrosity - proving biggest is not always best and certain tasks are best left to the girls.

Besides decorating the tree, daubing our entire house with gaudy tinsel and twinkly lights, and filling the air with generous squirts of M&S' festive room spray, I dust down the 'Now that's what I call Christmas' CD.  While singing at the top of my voice to the original Band Aid's 'Do they know it's Christmas', I'll crack open the first of many bottles of M&S mulled wine.  David will return from work each night to find that once more M&S party food is on the menu for dinner.  Ever the long-suffering husband, he will feign excitement at mini-steak and kidney pies, pork belly on toothpicks and brie and cranberry bites washed down with a glass of Baileys, silently willing January to hurry up and arrive.

Once the house is decorated, the Christmas music is blasting, and the microwave is pinging repeatedly in time, the Christmas parties start.  With our rapidly expanding waistlines, we don our meticulously chosen party outfits, which seem a bit tighter than when we had last tried them on.  Joining our work colleagues we hastily force alcohol and food down our throats like foie gras geese, before demonstrating our questionable dancing skills.  Then wake up the following morning full of drunken remorse, brooding over what we may have said and done the night before.

This year is different though.  It is 9th December and there is nothing in our flat to indicate that Christmas is fast approaching.  We have no tree and no fairy lights.  I have only indulged in a couple of Starbucks' gingerbread lattes, and not a single M&S canape has passed my lips.  I haven't even bought a party outfit as my diary is bereft of Christmas parties.  Somehow Christmas isn't Christmas for me in 20 degrees and sunshine.  Mulled wine, mince pies and Christmas carols don't seem the same when they aren't shared and enjoyed beside a log fire with friends and family.  But only 4 more sleeps and I'm back home in the UK and Christmas can commence.....

In the meantime, here are a selection of Hong Kong's very stylish Christmas decorations to get everyone in the festive spirit....

 The Landmark

Pacific Place

Tai O Heritage Hotel

  

The Fine Art of Procrastination

Throughout my school, college and university days I perfected the art of procrastination.  I excelled at postponing homework, coursework, dissertations, projects and revision until the last possible moment.  Generally this led to a horribly angst-ridden last minute panic and I still have a recurring nightmare about sitting my A Level exams knowing that I had done the bare minimum to scrape by.  Once I started working I became far more controlled and focused on completing work within defined time frames and without a last minute panic.  This is undoubtedly a necessity in the advertising and PR world where clients will often chuck in a last minute curveball or bring forward a deadline so you need to stay ahead of the game and be highly organised.

Now that I am not working and not in a pressured environment where if you let things slip you will unleash the fury of your client and your boss, I am rediscovering my talent for procrastination.  I'm not enjoying this foray back in time to teenage me, it makes me feel restless and angry with myself.  While I have time on my hands I feel I should be making huge in roads into my novel, blogging regularly and doing all the pre-course reading and studying for my course.  Instead, in the past couple of weeks I have crawled my way through my pre-course studying, made pitiful progress with my novel and hardly blogged at all.  I have been trying to work out what has caused me to put on the brakes and revert to me aged 18.

Excuse No.1 :  Recently we have had a few visitors which has disrupted the routine I had developed and as each visitor has left, I have found it harder and harder to re-establish my daily rhythm. 

Excuse No. 2:  I have attended a variety of writers' events and critique groups which have made me question my writing abilities and quelled my enthusiasm for writing.  Many of the writers I have met are academics, developing cleverly crafted literary work.  I am neither academic nor writing anything worthy of a Booker Prize nomination, and I have felt embarrassed reading my light-hearted puerile prose to them for critique.  As a result I have struggled to put pen to paper while I internally wrestle with myself as to the exact point of turning my back on my established career to do something I may not even be any good at.  

Excuse No. 3:  In the past I know I have deliberately filled every moment of my day, fearful of stopping to give myself time to face up to feelings of discontent.  Maybe I'm no longer scared to stop so with a sigh of relief I've pulled on the handbrake at last.  

Today, I have vowed that there will be no more excuses and the procrastination will end.  The visitors have stopped, so my routine can be reinstated.  So what, if my novel isn't high-brow, some people like light literature and I will learn from the academics to make it as well-written as possible.  And does it really matter if I've stalled for a couple of weeks, it is only me telling myself I 'should' be doing more that has created this angst.  So this is my first step to putting a stop to procrastination.