Dormouse

15th December 2011 Thursday

I’m sitting on a deep soft leather sofa in Cafe Nero, wet shopping bags of vegetables by my feet, the umbrella leaning against the side of the chair opposite me. My husband is in the queue to buy us coffee. It’s not even eleven o’clock but I feel as if I’ve run an emotional marathon already - wading through streets of Christmas shoppers. I gaze out of the window and watch the people passing by in the squalling rain and wonder what kind of Christmas they are having. I want to stay on this sofa forever.

The young attractive woman on the table next to us is talking on her mobile phone. She says,

‘Ok Daddykins I don’t want you to eat or drink too much on Christmas day. Promise me?’

I don’t know what Daddykins replies but I think about the big box of luminous coloured drinking straws we just bought for my father. To help him drink his tea and his coffee and his ribena out of the china cups which he is finding increasingly difficult to lift to his lips. So he forgets to drink at all.

I’d like him to be at our table on Christmas day but I think he’d be the dormouse in Alice in Wonderland at the Mad Hatter’s Teaparty and fall asleep in mid-sentence. Like he did this afternoon in his chair. When he woke up a bit later he said,

‘Where did you come from?’

As if I had just sprung out of a teapot.