A cold frosty December night

I often look into other people's gardens as I pass by and wonder what their lives are like. Do they have the same worries and insecurities as me? Are they content in their idyllic surroundings? Or are there all sorts of family and domestic problems afoot?

Another weekend has gone by... a lovely lunch on Saturday that lasted five hours; luckily an 'all-day' pub with good food and a roaring log fire as the heavens opened outside - again. Nothing but rain, wind and more rain, for months... in fact, since last spring.

Then a Sunday of washing, ironing, collecting papers, making the last of the Christmas presents and sitting at the computer. Oh how I loath Sundays. Oh how I long to do something different on a Sunday. There is going to be a heavy frost tonight, so the two precious memorial roses of my lovely man and which contain his ashes, have been covered in fleece; the greenhouse lined with bubble-wrap, and the pots of perenial plants moved to a sheltered corner. Kindling wood gathered and indoors, as too the coal and logs ready for a good fire tonight.

I swept out the Garage after bringing out all the boxes and bags of Christmas decorations. I suppose that sometime in the next week I shall have to make the effort and decorate the house, although daughter number two and my granddaughter will be helping out when they come here for the festivities. I wondered today, if this is how it's going to be from now on... years of bringing out the decorations, years of putting them back again. Years of wondering if I am destined to always be on my own, remembering the past, remembering him. It doesn't matter what I plan or don't plan, I know from bitter experience that just when you think you have your life under control, or you have a plan, something unexpected turns up and makes you turn 90 degrees in another direction. So, I ask myself, why plan anything? Why not just let the spinners of destiny do their work and shunt us from pillar to post, or more annoyingly just let us exist in a kind of non-world of nothing. I think I must be a little morose at the moment - Christmas is always a bad time for me, and probably for millions of others. Even those who purport to be happy have a hard time at Christmas - again, I know from experience; all those relatives, all those family games and family 'treading on glass' moments. I've had a few of those in the distant past. But now, I hope to have a good Christmas again with my girls; which I know I will have.

Anyway, back to the mundane; Banjo has decided to hit out at Pebble again. He took a few tentative steps outside the back door and was attacked by Banjo who resents his intrusion on her territory of the garden, just when she'd more or less accepted that he'd taken over the house. Will they ever just get on with it? Will he ever pee outside?

As I shut the gate I wave to my neighbour, also a widow but much older than I, across the lane and wonder if she is content and looking forward to Christmas. What goes through her mind on a cold December frost-predicted night?