Twenty years is nothing

And yet so many things have passed since I bought this Royal Mail Christmas 1993 Presentation Pack.

I was living in London for a term, on my first research stay for my Ph.D. and the letters I started receiving as Christmas was approaching bore stamps from Dickens's Christmas Carol. I was looking forward to going back home for Christmas with my family, but also sad for having to say goodbye to so many people I did not know if I would see again, and anxious about a new avenue in my life. I experienced my first London Christmas season; the first of many to come. I wanted to take home some of that Christmas flavour and this included my first ever Royal Mail Presentation Pack. I strongly remember my looking forward to seeing my Misi again. As I write this, Michi is next to me. Twenty years. Misi was then just one year old. He would have turned 21 this November, Michi is two and a half. Wow, so many things, so many days, so many friends. Who says that twenty years is nothing? It's a wealth of seconds, minutes, hours, days spent and shared. 20 Christmas.
Going through life implies having to learn to live with absences, which are more present than ever during the Christmas season, to remind us that they're not really gone. I have two absences to add this Christmas, and tears cannot really convey the pain this causes me, but I'm sure they're eager for me to know that they're just round the corner, so I won't allow my heart to grow too sad. I will celebrate the Christmas present and past and live in hope for the Christmas yet to come.
"And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One!"

A year and one day

Tempus fugit

367 days - 2012 was a leap year - since I wished Mr Charles Dickens a happy bicentenary and looked forward to celebrating the whole year reading him. Time really, really flies, Mr Dickens celebrated yesterday his 201st birthday and I am far, very far from accomplishing what I intended to do 367 days ago. As usual, time is always more elastic in my mind than it actually is and I tend to think that I can do all sorts of things in 24 hours. What was I thinking, I wonder? Was it too much to devote just half an hour a day to Dickens? Well, it turned out to be impossible some days and I was left with this sense of guilt for letting him down. What started as a celebration was dangerously becoming an obligation, so I decided to take it easy.
Still, I am deep into Bleak House, even if I cannot open its pages every day. I am sure it will accompany me into the spring, when I will have the opportunity of relishing that implacable November weather that I adore (possibly because here in Granada, is not so implacable).
Happy 201st birthday (and one day) Mr Dickens!!!