It’s just a day. I’ve been thinking about that expression a lot lately. Monday morning for us folk who are retired is just another day, a day to wash the sheets, maybe give the place a hoover. But a few years ago it meant a new working week. School life, routines, assemblies and all the stresses of the classroom. John is happy that he has no documents to prepare, no horrid meetings to attend, nor any of the trials involved with difficult clients.

Every day is just wonderful.

I look at people on the street and wonder if on this particular day they might have a driving test, an exam, an interview? I remember being in the graveyard in Kingussie and noticing that on the 2^nd December, but five years apart, both my mother and her mother passed away. I am always particularly careful on that date.

And just recently on the 27^th November, my daughter Geraldine gave birth to Dylan Alexander O’ Riordan. A lovely big healthy baby, 10 lbs 11oz.  It had been a pregnancy from hell, nausea and vomiting for the whole nine months, but as I cuddled him in my arms, he was completely oblivious and seemed happy to have finally arrived. Gerry is just so relieved to be able to relish a fish pie or a cup of tea.

And just last week I had a day from hell. My heart was going like the clappers; I was convinced anyone interested could actually see it through my jumper. It was the day of the tooth extraction. I walked down Princes Street, and browsed in Waterstones where I saw Nigel Slater close up signing his new book, and no one knew that in twenty-five minutes I would be in THE CHAIR.

The whole procedure took forever. I tried to be a Yogi and lift myself up out of the present and fixed little granddaughter Hazel’s face in my mind’s eye.

I did wonder at the drill. Had he got the wrong tooth? More minutes passed. More focussing on Hazel’s face.

Finally, I was raised up and told to bite a swab. It had taken forty-five minutes, and he had to admit defeat. The tooth was out, but the mighty roots had calcified themselves into the jaw bone. The drilling was him trying to get at them. It would mean another visit, but probably in the hospital next time. I staggered home, traumatised. The pain was fine, it soon receded by the next day and soon I felt very good and glad that the big abscess and all its poison had been removed. I was quite ecstatic really, until this morning. There is new swelling. The evil roots and their bacteria are up for more action. I have an X-Ray this Tuesday, so hopefully something can be done, but I am praying I won’t be out of action for Christmas.

The precious days of Christmas this year are to be celebrated chez nous. We shall have Natasha and her family and Gerry and her family for the day and I shall be cooking. I do not want to look like a strange woman with a sling round her jaw. Natasha rang to say that Bonnie was to be a goose at her nursery nativity, and here she is….very goose like!

England is covered in snow, but here in Fife, we have just freezing temperatures and silver frost. John is busy painting doors, and I have been doing my elephants. They are finished, except for the binding. I am quite pleased with them.

The days run into each other, and I couldn’t believe that on Friday I was dancing the night away with my ladies of the Art and Craft club here in the village. A year has passed since we did exactly the same thing, in the same venue, with the same singer. This year Isla, our very own belly dancer, shone like a star as she gracefully shimmied through the throng of other women’s bowling groups and painting clubs.

There was hardly a man to be seen. But we hummed to the tunes that brought back memories and I struggled to read a long-winded verse, tattooed on the back of a large woman dressed in red. Another day.

But for now I must go and make a mushroom pie with brie.

Then I shall gargle with salt water.

Already the light is fading, and the frost from the morning has remained to the evening. It is minus 2, but I must take heart for in that graveyard in Kingussie it is minus 12.

December days.